Projects that look straight out of the late 90s or early 00s with an HD sheen are popular among the olds these days, so young people aren’t the only target audience here. (Yes, Sega has a lot of these.) Both those titles are noteworthy because this game’s art style resembles a combination of the two of them, though Ohshima only worked on Nights’ character designs and not Billy Hatcher’s. Both were also involved in the development of the woefully underappreciated Nights into Dreams, and Naka himself additionally helped create the also-underappreciated Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg. This is the first time both creators are collaborating in 20 years. Yuji Naka and Naoto Ohshima were heavily involved with the creation of Sonic the Hedgehog and the establishment of Sonic Team. The ex-Sega talent working on Balan Wonderworld is a big deal. There’s a reason games like this that don’t occasionally come from Nintendo need to be crowdfunded, but it’s commendable that Square Enix is giving it a shot. It’s enough for me to think that Square Enix must have lost their goddamned minds green lighting this, albeit in a good way. It’s beautiful aesthetically, exhibiting the kind of look rarely seen in non-indie and non-Nintendo products these days.
How the costume switching works won’t be (and hasn’t been) the first thing anyone notices about this game after watching the trailer. There are a lot of “ifs” and “maybes” here, but clarification will be provided through future gameplay demonstrations.
(Not to say that won’t happen regardless.) Not having the option to switch powers at will sounds limiting ostensibly, if that’s the case, but that won’t feel like a limitation if the stage design is good enough. This should also make life easier for the game designers with 80 outfits containing different powers, players feeling experimental would have inevitably figured out ways to break the game in half and exploit their way through stages and their secrets. Chances are there’s a good reason for that, considering how cumbersome and time-consuming that could become. The outfits mechanic sounds great when described, but the trailer suggests that the characters won’t simply be able to switch between a multitude of outfits at a given time. They’ll grant powers like freezing, walking in the air, and object manipulation. Those costumes, of which there will be around 80, will provide different powers needed to defeat enemies and overcome obstacles. The key gimmick will involve the characters’ abilities to equip different costumes. They’re led by the titular Balan, a maestro who needs their assistance to restore balance and happiness to the inhabitants of Wonderworld. And even if they did, they wouldn’t have guessed they were green lighting a platformer from Yuji Naka and Naoto Ohshima, both important video game development and production names from Sega’s golden days.īalan Wonderworld will feature the adventures of Leo Craig and Emma Cole, who venture to a mysterious world through a similarly mysterious theatre.
Not a single person would have guessed that Square Enix would announce a new 3D platformer in 2020 given the types of titles they publish these days, even if they’re taking more risks. (The PS4’s only Ratchet & Clank game was a reimagining released alongside the movie.) There’s now another one to add to the pile: Balan Wonderworld.
#BALAN WONDERWORLD TICKET SERIES#
Sony also announced the return of the Ratchet & Clank series with Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart for PlayStation 5, the first brand-new title since the PlayStation 3 days. It’s for this reason that the announcement of Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time a month ago from Activision was a big shock, even though it shouldn’t have been thanks to the success of the Crash Bandicoot N. Even then, which ones have Nintendo released outside the Mario franchise? You’d be hard-pressed to name one that didn’t come from Nintendo in the last several years, outside crowdfunded titles like A Hat in Time and Yooka-Laylee. One of the biggest examples is 3D platformers. Publishers no longer release games in certain genres within the big-budget AAA and mid-tier AA spaces at the rate they used to, thanks to the all-around rise in development costs and fear of releasing a bomb.
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