Wildermyth

Review

Imagine being in a fantasy world crafted from paper, where you are being persued by the weirdest monsters and have taken refuge in the only liveable room inside an abandoned tower. This room has a table, chairs and a spectacular bookshelf and your eyes are drawn to a bright yellow shiny book located right in the middle of one of these shelves. With no way out and stuck in the room with monsters on the other side of the door, you decide to open this book and discover incredible and entertaining short stories, which really seem like myths. But here comes the big one . . . there are a few empty pages after the last story; space to write your own story in the book of Wildermyth!

Wildermyth is a turn-based strategy/RPG game, developed and published by Worldwalker Games LLC and released on the 14^th of November 2019 as early access on Steam.

At this point, the game offers two main campaigns; one with three chapters, and for the other you can choose between three or five chapters. There is also an editor mode and two new campaigns in the works.

After selecting your campaign, your level of difficulty (4 in total from C.S Lewis to H.P. Lovecraft), and your randomised character (either a warrior, a hunter or a mystic), you’ll be on your way to an exceptional storytelling and turn-based strategy game.

There are two main screens in Wildermyth: the world map and the combat phase. The map has several regions, and to give you an indication, the first scenario will have 20 areas to discover. These regions will have a fog of war over them. You’ll need to send one or more of your characters on a scout mission to be able to see the content of these places. You might find a river or a small chain of mountains between both regions, and if this is the case, you will need to build either a bridge or a mountain pass before sending your scout to a new location. Some have a town and where you can occasionally hire a new character if you have calamity points, a cave or other structures, but all have essential resources within them which you will collect at the end of each chapter if you manage to hold that region during your playthrough. These resources will be precious to create new weapons and armour for your characters.

There are other actions you can carry out within a region you acquire, such as building defences, re-building a structure and clearing an infestation. Bear in mind that each action within the map screen, including within a region, will take a certain number of days to complete. Now, at the top of the map you’ll see two shield icons: the calamity card and the next enemy’s incursion icons. Several calamity cards will appear on your screen every 150 days. These cards will show the evolutions of the enemy’s monsters. It might be extra damage, health or armour points for one of more monsters, for example. You can stop these monsters’ enhancements if you have calamity points at hand.  The other icon will tell you when the next group of enemies will arrive on the map. They can only come from regions that you haven’t scouted. Each chapter will have one or more objectives to complete, and a red flag or weapon will be displayed on the specific region(s).

The combat is really cool. Your warrior characters will be stronger in melee attack, while your hunter characters will shine from a distance with their bow and arrows or crossbows. Personally, I enjoy playing with the mystic’s characters as you can use items within the environment (rocks, trees, flames from campfires or lanterns, to mention a few) to inflict damage upon the enemies. Early on, your characters will have only a couple of options to choose from in combat, but as you progress during the game and win fights, your character will gain experience, and when they level up, you’ll be given three options to choose from each time they reach a new level. In some instances, one or more of your heroes might take a bit of a beat-up (no more health left).  You’ll also be given a choice of three options; one is to live another day, and the character will leave the fight with an injury, or the loss of a hand or leg, for example. They’ll go back to town to heal and come back with a wooden leg or a hook instead of a hand. They also getting older after each chapter if they manage to survive - just fabulous and fun! Each time you win a battle you’ll win one or two new items which you can choose either to use on your characters, or dismantle them to resources. You’ll occasionally earn Calamity points as well, which you can use to stop some the enemy’s evolution every 150 days.

The other aspects of this game that I really like are the storytelling and the choice matter element. You might be on the world map or at the end of a battle and a window will appear in the middle of the screen and slides will come one by one telling you the story. It’s just like when you read a comic book you go from one slide to the next. But then you’ll have to make choices which can affect characters relationship with each other, and therefore how the story develops. It’s just brilliantly done!       

Beautiful artwork, the soundtrack is ok, and the game works pretty well but has a few bugs which you should expect on early access. Plenty of options for settings to choose from and the game is played with mouse and keyboard. Despite being an early access title, it is solid with plenty of re-playability.