Preview | Balan Wonderworld

In a world where so many big-budget video games feel rather homogenised, to the point where most new releases can be easily described by just comparing it to another (e.g. Avengers is just Destiny but with Marvel), Balan Wonderworld really stands out from the crowd.

This looks good but this style can only do so much when translated out of a pre-rendered cutscene and into gameplay.

Wonderworld is the first title from new Square Enix subsidiary Balan Company, which is being directed by Yuji Naka (one of the men credited with creating Sonic the Hedgehog). Balan Wonderworld wears its inspiration on its sleeve and is quite clearly meant to evoke a sense of nostalgia from players despite being an original IP.

I’m sure you’ve seen every other outlets make obvious comparisons to old Sega games like Nights and Billy Hatcher, andyou can hardly blame them. Watching the announcement trailer made me feel like I had stepped through a wormhole back to the late 90s or early 2000s but despite some trepidation about the whole thing I was admittedly quite charmed by just how strange this game seemed. The world could desperately do with more 3D-platformers that aren’t Super Mario or crowdfunded indie projects like A Hat in Time.

So, with a surprisingly sizable demo now available, it made sense to investigate this new world of Balan and let Naka and his team try to convince me to give this new (planned) franchise of theirs a look-see. Unfortunately, that aforementioned trepidations turned out to be justified.

The demo starts with you choosing between a boy or girl main character, with an intro cinematic seeing them brought to a mysterious theatre, where they are greeted by the maestro Balan.

There, he tells them that they are missing a piece of their heart and so he takes them on a whirlwind adventure across multiple worlds to reclaim that missing piece by helping other people with their own problems.

You are telling me this character comes from the people that brought us Sonic and Nights?

I never would have guessed.

Anyone who has played either Nights game will notice blatant similarities to that game’s concept and storyline from the get-go, though Balan is far more energetic than Nights ever was.

Unlike the purple jester, Balan comes across as a circus ringleader with the madcap persona of the Genie from Disney’s Aladdin and his animations in the intro do a great job making him appear appealingly zany character, even if he’s not the actual star of the adventure.

The demo then drops you into a hub-world called the Isle of Tims (Tims being these small, round bird/bunny things) and, from there, you head to a variety of different worlds which consist of two acts and a boss fight.

The demo contains the entirety of the first world and the first acts for the fourth and sixth worlds, so there’s definitely enough to give you a good idea of what the full game is about.

Each act is a mostly linear level, with slight deviations to explore for extra goodies (mostly differently coloured crystal things that you can feed to the Tims back in the hub-world), with the goal being to simply reach the end. However, you’ll also want to grab as many Balan Statues that you can find, as they act as the game’s main collectable and you need a certain amount to unlock more worlds.

Your player character can do very little on their own. In fact, every face-button you press just makes them jump. To progress, you need to find and use a myriad of costumes scattered across the level. The final game will feature over 80 different ones with their own unique abilities and, while that sounds amazing, this system quickly leads to some big problems.  

Every costume basically comes with one power-up but many of them fall into the pitfall of being entirely situational and just there for the sake of padding a number on the back of the box. It is also pretty clear that some costumes received far more love than others. While the “Tornado Wolf” makes your jump act as a spin attack for breaking boxes and fighting enemies, something like the “Gear Prince”, which is used to activate certain mechanisms, has no special attack or anything else besides its one function.

Of the 10 costumes included, only one of them felt really fun to use – the “Aero Acrobat”, which comes with a homing attack similar to what Sonic can do and was quite satisfying. The rest, by comparison, feel very one-note.

Theater kids, amiright?

One thing worth praising is that you can hold onto three costumes at once and switch between them at will. You can even have more than one of the same costume, which can be helpful if you take a hit and lose the costume you need to bypass a puzzle.

Costumes can be found in crystals dotted about the level and require a key to open them. In my experience, keys tended to be really close to these costumes which, while useful,  kind of feels like an arbitrary extra step. On top of this, the keys respawn after a while so the whole rigamarole feels a bit null and void. Why not just let me pick up the costume?

What’s more, needing to backtrack for a specific costume can be rather irritating considering your movement speed is just slow enough to get frustrating. Not achingly so, but enough to quickly become annoying if you need to retrace your steps. And while we’re on the topic of controls, the jumping itself doesn’t feel particularly great either and doesn’t even cover a lot of distance, which is a problem in a platformer. I found myself slipping through some obvious cracks between platforms because I overestimated how effective the jump actually was going to be.

Some costumes take away your jump entirely, which also doesn’t feel ideal in a platformer. I even came across one area in the first level which, if entered with the “Dainty Dragon” costume on, you wouldn’t be able to get out of without walking off the side of the level to respawn at the last checkpoint.

One costume called the “Box Fox” actively got me killed. Some failed platforming attempts left me with it being the only costume I had available. The costume’s power? To randomly turn me into a box. Before I could make a jump, the transformation kicked in and I could only watch this bloody box slide over the edge and into the sea of clouds below. The worst thing is you can’t just remove a costume either. Once it’s on, it stays on.

I have no idea what is happening here, but I am willing to bet I’ll have to hit something 3 times.

But perhaps the biggest problem is how uninspired the gameplay actually is. It’s certainly simplistic enough and easy enough to wrap your head around, which is ideal for younger players, but there isn’t much meat on the bone here. Balan Wonderworld isn’t doing anything different compared to every other 3D-platformers to come before it, even ones that were released almost three decades ago.

In terms of art direction, these worlds are visually unique and have a bizarre, fever dream-like charm. However, graphically speaking, I wouldn’t blame anyone for thinking this was a HD port of an early Wii game.

The pre-rendered cutscenes look fantastic though, it’s one of the places where you can clearly see the money Square Enix pumped into this project. Even with the simple art style, the amount of detail spent on the lighting and textures is something to behold. Tragically this only makes the in-game graphics seem even more lacklustre in comparison.

It’s also disappointing to see the Nintendo Switch version be hampered at 30fps, while the likes of the PS4 and PS5 versions run much smoother. It’s not like there’s a lot happening on-screen at once.

But what’s most disappointing of all is that I feel like this demo has already given away everything the game has to offer. Sure, there are still 70-odd more costumes to uncover, but if the 10 they showed up front were this lackluster, I can’t imagine those withheld from the demo are much more thrilling than what’s been shown so far.

Balan Wonderworld pulls you in with a wild concept and striking style but quickly loses you and lacks any real hook to keep coming back to it. The minimalist plot means I’m not invested in the story or characters and the level design and gameplay (while not awful) are both rote, repetitive and sometimes frustrating.

There are certainly aspects that, had the gameplay been more engaging, I’d be eager to return to. You're actively encouraged to revisit levels once new costumes have been unlocked to get more statues and there’s a mysterious machine in the otherwise empty hub-world that likely (...hopefully) has some neat purpose. There’s just nothing new here, and when you compare Balan Wonderworld to classics like Super Mario 64, the core gameplay only appears weaker.

The devil’s advocate in me wants to argue that the game is likely intended for little kids, but that is an argument that thinks very little of young people. That being said I can think of several other platformers that would make for much better introductions to the 3D-platforming genre.

It is not a Chao, its a Tim! Completely different… And more importantly legally distinct.

For as simple as it can be, Balan Wonderworld surprisingly does a really bad job explaining certain mechanics. I only found out while doing research, courtesy of the Square Enix website, that the Tims that follow you around can attack enemies and that standing still on a checkpoint will let you go to a dressing room and equip costumes you’ve already managed to collect. Where was this info in the game? How is anyone, let alone a child meant to know about this mechanics?

The £50 price tag for the full game doesn’t help either. Do you want to know what else you can get for £50? Super Mario Odyssey, which literally does everything that Balan Wonderworld does but 100 times better and has a lot more content to boot. It’s harsh to compare the two and Balan isn’t trying to beat Mario but that’s the reality and Square want this to be a blockbuster franchise.

In an interview with IGN, Yuji Naka said that Balan Wonderworld is his one chance to make a platformer for Square Enix. And I fear, based on what I’ve seen, that it may end up being the only chance he gets.