In fact, get your tomatoes at the ready for this musical theatre flop because as much as I wanted to like Balan Wonderworld (and believe me, I really wanted to like it) this game gets more than a few boos from me. The Verdictīalan Wonderworld gets no standing ovation for me – not even a clap. This would be an interesting way to make collectables more than just that but the tower itself doesn’t offer much in the way of rewards until the game's completion where you unlock one final costume. Ohshima is the current Vice President of Arzest, who is co-developing the game. Naka joined Square Enix in 2018, forming his Balan Company label within the company. The more you collect and feed, the bigger the Tower of Tims gets, which is a structure in the middle of the hub world. Yuji Naka and Naoto Ohshima, original team members on Sonic the Hedgehog and Nights into Dreams, are helming Balan Wonderworld. Tims are small creatures you feed with collectables found in the many worlds you traverse. The game’s hub world is also a key point in Balan Wonderworld as it includes another new mechanic in the form of Tims. These are commonplace and poorly explained, and alongside oddly-placed sports minigames, adds to the idea of the developer throwing everything at the wall and little sticking.
Keys to unlockables are often placed within spitting distance and the 'three hit' boss trope is one many players would have seen before.Įasy quick time events are also scattered around levels where Balan appears to fight pieces of debris, rocks and certain foes.
Titles like Super Mario 3D World strike a solid balance between challenge and approachability, but here everything is too easy. For any old school platformer fan, the elements of Yuji Naka (programmer on the original Sonic games) and Naoto Ohshima (character designer on the original Sonic games) are very prominent in its visuals and remind me of Nights Into Dreams or Sonic Adventure just without any of the fun gameplay.ĭespite being aimed at a younger audience, Balan Wonderworld falters in its approach to challenge, too. One thing worthy of mention is art and music. These are some of Balan Wonderworld’s only redeeming features. Problems vary from crops not growing on a farm to a child being bullied for her love of insects, and as a game that's primarily for kids I see no problem with trying to instil values into them and spreading the ideology of helping one another – it's just that aiding said characters with their problems and completing 3D platforming levels that share little to no correlation makes the storytelling in Balan Wonderworld jarring at best.Īs per the theme of musical theatre, at the end of each set of levels after you’ve successfully solved a person’s problems there comes a small song and dance number. Here, players complete levels to help another character outside of Wonderworld with a completely unrelated problem in their life. The story sees the player character, an unhappy child, wander into a spooky theatre where they find the game’s mascot Balan who takes said character to Wonderworld.
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