Platforms: Switch and Windows (Steam)
As I’ve gotten older, platformers have become less and less appealing to me. I’m not sure when it happened, but I don’t find too much joy in them anymore. They seem to be either designed to be a good entrance point for someone more new to them, which is not particularly engaging. Either that or they seem to border on kaizo level design that I just ram my head against over and over before I call it quits. I was interested enough when I saw Wunderling that I decided to give it a whirl.
In Wunderling, you play as the low-level enemy in a platformer. Think Goomba, and you’ve got the idea. Wunderling can only move in one direction. He’ll turn around when he hits a wall, but you have no direct control of his horizontal movement. That doesn’t really lend itself to interesting gameplay, but give him the ability jump, and now you’ve got something. Every couple of worlds, you’ll earn a new ability to utilize. Once you have those abilities, the level design implements them while the difficulty steadily increases.
I’m one to throw in the towel on games that expect a level of mastery of them that I just don’t have the time or patience to achieve. Wunderling kept me challenged throughout, with me only needing to walk away from the game a couple of times to come back to it later. I didn’t collect all of the extras in each stage, something the game throws in to challenge you if just finishing each stage leaves you wanting more. I managed to snag a few of these through the game, but never really felt compelled to go back and try for them.
I think this is why Wunderling sat so well with me. I knew there was more to do if I felt it was getting too easy, but it never really left me feeling unsatisfied. There was plenty of game there for someone like me who doesn’t enjoy dying again and again trying to make basic headway, but I see the collectibles as a great way to compel people to go back and get even more out of it.
My only complaint with the level design is in the final world. Checkpoints come every couple of screens (it’s one continuous stage). I went from feeling challenged to feeling like they were cutting me a break for making it this far. It’s still smartly designed, but a few less of the checkpoints would have made it feel more rewarding once I reached the end.
Wunderling is easy on the eyes. There’s a lot of little detail in the stages that didn’t need to be there, but those extra details make it obvious just how much love and care the developers put into this game. While there’s not a lot of characters, they’re incredibly detailed. In particular, the cow with the camera on its head is my favorite. There’s a variety of cow sprites with different things on their heads, and they’re all a delight, but that camera one tickled me every time I saw it.
The only thing keeping me from recommending this one wholeheartedly to people more akin to my abilities and/or patience level is the ending. Skip the next paragraph if you don’t want the ending spoiled for you.
Still here? Okay. After playing through the game in its entirety, if you haven’t reached some sort of milestone, you’re not going to get the “good” ending. For something less skilled based, I’d normally be inclined to go through and try to get what I need to get it, but when I had such a nice time getting through the game, hitting this wall felt like a major stumbling block. This is really the only time I felt punished for not being particularly good at platformers. It’s a large frustration in what’s an otherwise well-crafted game. I don’t feel inclined to go back and do whatever was necessary to get the “good” ending. Doing so would likely sour my experience with Wunderling, and I enjoyed it enough that I don’t want to associate it with kaizo levels of frustration.
I can’t really recall when I last reviewed a platformer, but this one stood out enough that I wanted to give it a shot. Aside from the gripe mentioned in the previous paragraph, Wunderling is a charming game with a lot of top-notch design choices to keep players of all skills engaged. And really, when you put the level of detail into a sprite of a cow with a camera on its head that we got here, it’s impossible for me to not recommend it if you’re looking for a fun platformer for any age or skill.
