We Just Played: Wander (PS4)

Oh Wander, what a beautiful mess you are. Having recently seen the intriguing story trailer that promised a vast world filled with exploration and base jumping, I started up the game ready for an adventure where I would bump into people and traverse floating islands. What I got was, well, not that. To give you an impression of what happened you can watch the rather long video and I’ll outline some of my issues below.

It was off to a pretty good start. I’m a tree, there’s a lush and strange world around me and a narrator with keen interest in my existence. But everything after that became kind of frustrating. Wander is a game primarily made up of wandering and eventually flying. After transforming into a girl you have the ability to walk and run. Walking is pretty much useless with its current pace, so if you’ve set yourself a goal for a place to see, make sure you have the time for it. Running helps for a little bit but she gets tired real fast and spends ages recuperating. The only thing that kept me going at this point was the fact that I could glitch the game into a constant running state. This worked as long as I didn’t switch into 3rd person view, in which she would get instantly exhausted again. Right. Sure, it’s about exploring stuff, but no one wants to do it as a limp snail.

Communication is done by drawing on the touch pad and then putting two fingers on it to have her say the word. Huge stones around the world teaches you new drawings for new words and it’s all a really neat idea. Too bad though that it’s incredibly hard to pull off and all you’ll hear is yourself coughing and stutter. The developers apparently know this since they included a trophy for screwing it up 100 times.

Wander is a game I’d love to enjoy and play. It has a zen-like atmosphere for a chill evening of playing but ends up frustrating the hell out of me. At one point in the video you can see me swimming/exploring a structure, and to get back down I have to, under water, swim into a wall so the game glitches and puts me in a free fall state that sends me hurling down while I inadvertently have to look up her skirt cause that’s the immediate angle presented to me. Awkward. There’s also an option in the game if you’re stuck and can’t move that will reset you to another position. If you need a function like that you might want to have a second look at your game.

I met one other person on my stroll, still in tree form, wandering around looking just as lost as me. Maybe I’ll meet that person again because I will be back. I will suffer through the inability to move efficiently in human form, I will get stuck and will get the occasional scare as the ambient sounds suddenly kick in from nowhere. Why? Because the premise is sound, there’s still places I want to see, people I want to meet and griffins I want to fly. And apparently I really enjoy punishing myself.

Wander is out and you can grab it right now.