NOCLIP Pocket E54 - Humble Bumble - Wandersong

I hope I was able to prove I’m more handy than the average podcast. Welcome back! Our first game of 2022 is going to be Wandersong, the indie adventure game that refused to just be an indie adventure game. In this game, you play a Bard who is clued in to the forthcoming apocalypse and sets out on an adventure to save the world. Carried by an immutable (literally and figuratively) enthusiasm, the Bard overcomes obstacles using a combination of song and some light platforming mechanics. Tonally, this game is delightful, with the bard meeting all comers with a positive attitude and a desire to make peace over all else. It’s a great way to express the game’s philosophy in a way that manages to be heartfelt and funny while feeling appropriately storybook even if it’s a bit on the nose. Mechanically, it’s more of a mixed bag. If you want to see a developer really try everything, this could be the perfect game for you, and you certainly will never get tired of any one thing. However, you can see a bit of a lack of polish across the game’s many unique mechanics and challenges, although you’ll never engage with one of them for more than a few minutes at a time. Put together, this is a game worth giving a shot to if you’re looking for something colorful that isn’t afraid to experiment. We’re going to be talking about focusing your game on a musician and what that means both in presentation and in mechanics, how a simple narrative can work well when you’re priority is getting across an emotion, and we determine whether this game’s McGuffin is better or worse than the Triforce. Thank you for listening to the podcast this week (and this year)! We should be back to releasing more regularly from here on out, but it was nice to have a bit of extra time on this game for the sake of our other responsibilities over the holidays. Let us know what you think of this game in the comments or over on our Discord. Were the rapidly shifting mechanics and simple story a bit too hard for you to take seriously, or did they come off as amusing, entertaining or just a novel experiment? Next time, we’re going to be talking about Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight to coincide with our main episode on Metroid: Dread, so get your Metroidvania brain in gear because we’re going to be lookin’ at maps for the rest of the month.