Wander Review

Wander is a game that in many ways is very unique, this is a multiplayer adventure game where the focus is on exploring the world and uncovering the mysteries that it holds. There is no combat, no levelling up. Voice and text chat is non existent instead the game gives you a new language to discover and learn. In a world of endless sequels and remakes the developer has to be commended for trying something different, unfortunately the game is plagued by technical issues that undermine its impressive ambition.



 The game is set on a peaceful tropical island, there is no death and very little direction given to what you need to do, you are simply encouraged to explore and discover the game yourself. This sense of security is liberating and meandering around the island can be relaxing and enjoyable however this is where problem number one presents itself. For a game like this to work the player needs to be successfully immersed in the game world, and while the world can sometimes look very pretty graphical glitches break that immersion on a near constant basis, bushes trees and foliage randomly disappears and reappears or flickers horribly. The same is true of shadows, rocks, water and pretty much everything else in the world. Indoor areas seem to fare a little better and there are some interesting places to explore  among the islands cave system.

  You start the game as an oren which is basically a large walking tree, this is fun for a while although the avatar moves very slowly which combined with the temperamental sprint button which only seems to work about 25% of the time. This  lends the early stages a ponderous pace which quickly gets tiresome, luckily you can transform into various other species, by discovering locations in the game that let you transform I discovered a human like race, a flying griffin and a lizard.



 If you can try to put the technical issues out of your mind  then the game is very peaceful to play, with no identified objectives simply wandering around and exploring and trying to discover the secrets of the island can be quite enjoyable, the sound is very good with the sounds of the forest and lapping waves on the beach very well represented, the music is also very minimal but very nice when it does make an appearance (cleverly the music only kicks in when you are close to an objective which allows the game to have a minimalist HUD and helping the player to focus on the world). Although the game is rather empty, there are a lot of nice things to look at in the game but beyond that there isn’t really a great deal to do.

 The game is an MMO although in practice this is fairly irrelevant, I saw very few other players in my time with the game and communicating is very difficult .The game has its own language called rozhda that is the only way of communicating with other players, you find words on stones around the world and input them into the game by drawing a symbol on the ps4 touch pad and then tapping with two fingers. In practice I found this so fiddly that I ended up just giving up. The other people I encountered seem to have felt the same as I didn’t encounter a single person who was able to successfully say anything to me.



 When I initially heard about Wander I really wanted it to work as it sounded like a really interesting game that was trying to do something different. While  this is the case it is very difficult to recommend due to its technical shortcomings and empty world.

3/10

Good work.

I am saddened by this as I was totally intrigued by this game. Also, the industry really needs new ideas like this to be successful.

A great shame and a missed opportunity.

Thanks for the review mate

Good review bud

I reckon if the price of this was a bit lower and they issued a significant patch to sort out the technical problems then it would be worth a go

Great piece fella, made for a interesting read. Hadn't heard of this game I wonder if graphically it fairs better on the PC? Thanks for posting up.