Wilderplace

Things I like: - Very pretty art and colors - Great music - Cute story and nicely written dialogue, makes me interested to play through all the levels - It's challenging enough that you have to put in some effort. Don't expect to get through it without some thinking

[code]For other game reviews, please [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/40640212/]follow us at What The Game?[/url][/code] Wilderplace is a puzzle game involving moving and placing 'spirit' objects from one location to another in discrete turn-based moves. The levels are basically a grid of varying sizes with obstacles displayed in an isometric view. These spirit objects move and latch onto the nearest living being. The player is a Shaman that is tasked with moving the spirits and placing them on small trees, which then become big trees and sprout small trees around the new tree. Big trees are obstacles, small trees can be traversed. Along with crystals and other formations, the player will discover more and more levels (gardens) with increasing complexity. Wilderplace has some settings and options like sound and music levels, but not much in the way of graphics. The graphics are styled as pencil hand-drawn, and fortunately, there is an option to toggle off the wiggly line effect. There is a reference for the controls, so several controller methods of movement and actions are supported, including keyboard, game controllers and mouse or touchscreen. The game begins with some tutorial information given by an NPC, however this was not well thought out. Some of the game's mechanics are not explained at all until a few levels into the game, and this causes some trial-and-error frustration, with results that seem inexplicable. For example, a spirit locked on to the player gives the player three moves before the player is turned into a tree (game over). This isn't explained until three or four levels in, although sharp-eyed players may notice a nondescript counter right away. The gameplay is limited to moving and using the casting action to place a spirit. This casting action is also not really explained until a few levels are completed; in fact, the player may not understand how the early levels even completed until the casting is understood. The casting is odd because it is not a separate control if the player is using the mouse exclusively. Click and drag is both casting and moving, the difference is the time the mouse button is held down. It would have been better to make it something like click and drag to move, right mouse button to cast. Anyway, after five or six levels, the mechanics are easily understood and the real difficulty begins to show. In the deeper levels, many gardens will have a few possible ways to solve them, but many will have only one way. These one-way solves mean that the player will be replaying that level over and over until they get the exact move/cast sequence down. There is an undo-move that is acquired, which allows easily back-tracking, but in many cases it's easier to simply reset the level and start from the beginning again. In its own way, Wilderplace feels a lot like a Sokoban push game where exacting move sequences are required to solve the puzzle. There isn't a lot of adventure or tactics in Wilderplace, it is simply a puzzle game that requires a lot of move calculation and planning after the first ten or so levels. Wilderplace is good for at least a few hours of puzzle solving, after that it may feel tedious for players that are not into move calculation as a game. [b]Wilderplace is recommended for Sokoban style puzzle lovers, although the asking price may be a bit high.[/b]

Despite the minimalism in its design, this simple little puzzle game somehow manages to convey a sense of nuance about the complex nature of relationships between humans, nature, and machine. The creators really did a phenomenal job typing all the elements together to create a very memorable experience.

This game is wonderful in so many ways. The art is whimsical and the characters are waggish. They're complemented by some incredible music and sound design that make this one of those perfect puzzle games for relaxing. But that's not to say it's easy and the level design and gameplay concept are to be admired on their own! The game develops at a great pace with challenging spatial-thinking puzzles reminiscent of games like Baba is You. TLDR: If you like relaxing but challenging puzzle games, you'll love this.

Wilderplace is a brilliant puzzle game. It does that thing I like where you discover mechanics as you're playing and exploring, not because they're explicitly explained to you at the start. It also feels like quite a few puzzles have multiple ways of being solved. There is a really wonderful sense of discovery here, and the completely unique and super polished vibe that the sound and art design bring to the table only adds to that. The narrative is wonderfully integrated into the gameplay, never feeling like it interrupts the flow. The theme of the game also feels really unique, reminding me of Mushishi, which is a really wonderful thing. It's also a challenging game, and though the store page claims the game to feature a "Metroidvania-style world map" I didn't feel like I often had multiple avenues of exploration available to me, and really only was able to progress on one set path. Personally, I enjoyed the challenge, but if you shy away from more difficult puzzles, it's something to keep in mind. Towards the end of the game, I sadly also found it to be somewhat buggy, and I'm afraid that for as much as I loved the game (it seriously was a 5/5 title for me), it left me with a bad aftertaste. There are some non-obvious collectibles in the game. You eventually earn the ability to fast-travel, and so you're able to quickly hop around the map to places that point out where you're still missing those collectibles. Only, for a few of those places, the collectibles were in literally impossible-to-get-to locations. When trying to see if refreshing the level would help (another late-game ability), the level layout would suddenly look completely different, sometimes clipping me out of the navigatable area. The game sometimes fully froze up on me in those instances, prompting a restart. Upon closer examination, I also noticed that the collectible markers on the map were slightly more than the collectible counter said there would be. I honestly have no idea what went wrong there. I tried recording a video of this, but my screen recording (through Nvidia) did not work with this game for some reason, only recording motion for a few moments before freezing up. It's worth mentioning that the Steam Overlay doesn't work either, and so taking screenshots was something I had to do with my phone if I wanted any. There is also a final encounter that, in my opinion, drags on for too long, as you encounter a new enemy type / boss that introduces new rules. They're fun to figure out at first, but you need to navigate a sizable section of the map where you constantly encounter this boss. In addition to that, there are multiple ways to interact with the boss, providing different endings. The game even gives you an option to revert back to your first encounter of the boss to try for different endings... however, if you haven't found all the optional collectibles before that point and would like to go back for them, you're basically screwed, as once the boss is there, each previous level is now a boss encounter, and fast travel is also deactivated. Ideally, that final save you can revert to should have taken place BEFORE you encounter the boss, not AFTER. I'm not weighing these factors too heavily against the game, because it's optional side content, and if I hadn't tried to go for all the collectibles, I might not have encountered any of the bugs, or the issue with not really being able to go back for them once you initiate the final boss encounter. Still, it's something I hope gets fixed, because this is a genuinely brilliant game that I would LOVE for more people to play - and with hopefully less frustration towards the end than I experienced.

Disclaimer: I did get an opportunity to play Wilderplace in beta & provide feedback before launch. Overall, I think Wilderplace is a lovingly crafted, polished indie title that's definitely worth your time. The art style, music, and interacting with the story through various gameplay mechanics is very enjoyable. Games I've played before and felt similarly about are FEZ and A Short Hike. Wilderplace is give-or-take longer than the games listed but all are largely atmospheric and immersive in their worlds.

This game is great! A puzzle game with actual unique puzzle mechanics, good difficulty curve, simple but not cheap art style, and a narrative that I actually want to pay attention to. How are people sleeping on this game?!?

good puzzle! very captivating! forgot my dog outside and burnt my ramen! note: its not easy to burn ramen all of the water has to completely evaporate from the pot but I now know that it is indeed a very real possibility. It was only until i could smell the burning ramen and hear the dog yelping outside that I realized I needed to take immediate action idk how much time passed but it was a good minute

It's a great puzzle game that makes you feel soo satisfied after (almost) every solution. I imagine artstyle can be a hit or miss for some (I love it but it was a little hard to read initially) and controls takes a little to time get used to; but puzzles are great.

a simple yet [i]revealing[/i] puzzle game w/ great narrative (and, surprisingly, tied seamlessly w/ its mechanics!) i'd say get the game w/o 2nd thought, despite these subtle flaws: [list] [*] ui/ux feels like "mobile first": in a single turn, you can move onto an adjacent tile, or stay on the current tile and interact with another. in other games it'll be like, WASD to move, or hold shift during WASD to interact; some games employed left/right click to distinguish movement/action... in this game, it is tapping WASD vs holding WASD, which got wrongly interpreted quite a bit [*] mouse cursor isn't easily visible (thx to its semi-transparent color) when going to some "dark" zone of the map --- however, you can play the game keyboard-only or controller-only, but for me lazy brat, i like to use only just a trackpad on my right hand [*] game's map has branching paths w/ multiple entries to each sub-area, which quite suggests a metroidvania genre; however, you can only follow the standard level sequence ::sadge:: [/list]