Wildmender

by Aethyna Oct 12, 2023 | 1 Votes | 49 Played | 0 Reviews

10 rate

Genres:

Adventure

Graphics:

Labels:

Co-op , Building , Garden , Nature , Adventure , Survival , Exploration , Farm

Platforms:

Publishers:

Kwalee With the help of a mysterious yet helpful guide, you’ll learn to navigate the harsh, sun-beaten landscape, figure out what happened to the world, explore new areas, uncover stories of the people before, and ultimately, bring life back to the barren lands in this cozy, survival adventure game, Wildmender! Play Now Similar Games

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Summary Plotline Gameplay Community Graphics/ Sound Conclusion

Summary

Wildmender is a cozy, survival adventure game where you play as an unnamed young boy who found himself trapped in a small oasis in the middle of a barren desert that is almost devoid of life. With the help of a mysterious yet helpful guide, a glowing shard that can speak, you’ll learn to navigate the harsh, sun-beaten landscape, figure out what happened to the world, explore new areas, uncover stories of the people before, and ultimately, bring life back to the barren lands.

Plotline

The game began with an introduction that doubles as an interactive tutorial. Here, you’re introduced to your character – a young boy who somehow found himself trapped in a small oasis in the middle of a barren desert – as well as a mysterious yet helpful guide, a glowing shard that can speak. With the guide’s help, you’ll learn not only how to navigate the harsh, sun-beaten landscape, but also to explore new areas, figure out what happened to the world, uncover stories of the people before, and ultimately, bring life back to the barren lands.

Gameplay

At its core, the gameplay in Wildmender mainly revolves around gardening or farming around the spring at your little sheltered oasis during the day, and venturing out into the desert to explore during the night, when the sun isn’t as harmful to you. There are also some crafting and building here, requiring you to gather crafting materials like wood, sandstone, and ore, turning them into useful tools or structures like a storage basket.

The gardening or farming aspect of the game is pretty typical here. You’ll need to get the seeds of the plants you want to grow, which you can do so by either gathering the from their respective parent plants or by digging at shiny spots around the plants. Once you have the seeds, you can then decide where to grow them.

The best spots are, naturally, around the spring since the soil nearby tend to be more fertile, allowing you to easily grow more plants without having to manually water them all (because the soil is damp from the spring water nearby). However, there’s a catch here – similar plants tend not to do well if they are planted within close proximity of each other. Thankfully, the game provides a handy color indicator to show you whether or not a spot you’ve chosen is too crowded for the plant you want to grow or not.

This part of the growing process can also be a bit tricky since the water from the spring may, for the lack of a better word, “expand” if you don’t use the water as much. In a way, this is a good thing since it means that the dry desert soil around the spring will gradually become more fertile, further expanding the area where you can grow more plants without having to water them.

That said, you’ll have to put in some effort to move the plants when the spring expands as plants submerged in water will drown. If you grow a lot of plants, which you will, the chore of doing so will take quite some time from the day. Note that different plants may also have additional growing requirements, with some needing more shade while others needing more light.

There are plenty of different crops you can discover and grow in Wildmender, but all of this requires you to go out and explore. The reason exploration mostly takes place at night in this game is because the sun tends to be the most harmful during the day. Without shelter, your character will end up dehydrated way too quickly for you to really go anywhere.

Exploration is a gratifying activity here. Not only will you come across wandering spirits of the people before you to learn their stories, but you’ll even gain memories that function like skill points in this game, allowing you to unlock new crafting skills and talents. However, to gain those memories, you’ll need enough Essence to do so. You can gather them via plants you grow only at night.

Of course, if you love collecting things in games, know that there are many different plants out there that you can discover on your travels. Even for the same type of plant, you may encounter different varieties, including rare ones that may bear rare fruits. You may also stumble upon reward chests that contain free loot, sometimes including seeds you’ve not found before.

From time to time, you may run into enemies that you can take on using your magic mirror, either to shoot a beam of light at the enemy to dispel it or to reflect their own projectiles against them. Combat in this game is fairly simple to resolve, which is fitting for the game’s cozy theme.

Interestingly enough, to make traveling and exploring even more feasible, especially for faraway places, the game has stone paths that you can run on, which will boost your running speed. There are also teleports that you can eventually activate and use, making a return to your “home base” almost instantaneous.

As a survival game as well, you’ll need to keep a watchful eye over two main survival criteria in Wildmender – your hydration level, a.k.a. thirst, and your satiety. Having too low of either one usually spells disaster, especially during long trips away from your oasis, even if it’s during the night.

For thirst, you just need to make sure that your bottle is filled to the brim before heading out, and that you don’t use too much water to… well, water any plants you may come across. Unlike hydration, there’s a lot more ways you can restore satiety in this game. You can consume a variety of fruits that you may gather from plants that somehow still managed to survive under the harsh desert sun, or you could also dig up seeds that can sometimes be edible, despite being a bit on the drier side (they may cost you some hydration in return).

The concept behind Wildmender is truly brilliant. The idea of being able to work the land to bring a barren land back to life is something that’s really appealing to many players, and its cozy nature means that the game is perfect even for young children to enjoy.

Community

Wildmender has a co-op feature, allowing you to play the game with your friends; or, in the case of a parent, with their children. That being said, some players have reported having latency issues despite having a pretty good rig to host the game.

Graphics/ Sound

Wildmender has cute, cartoonish visuals that match well with its cozy theme. The graphics aren’t really unique per se, since quite a lot of cozy games tend to use the same style, but the way this game differentiates itself is by allowing you to literally transform a barren, desert land into a lush garden paradise. This kind of large-scale graphical manipulation is quite rarely featured in games, especially when the power to do so is placed in the hands of the player. The game also comes with a photo mode.

In terms of sound, the game features a series of beautiful orchestral-driven soundtracks that tend to sound and “feel” melancholic and soulful, which, in a way, fits the barren scenery of the game, especially at the start. The music is designed to be relaxing to listen to, and is, personally, one of my more favorite parts of the game!

Conclusion

Cozy games are really the next breakout genre to dominate the gaming market, but many of newer games within the genre tend to feel like a copied version of other more successful cozy titles. Wildmender is definitely not one of these games!

The idea of being able to transform a barren land into a thriving one alone is unique enough to make the game stand out. Of course, there are many more to the game than just revitalizing the land. The exploration part is both fun and exciting, and there are just so many different plants you can grow and tend to at your growing oasis. The survival adventure aspect of the game does add a bit of challenge to the game, but it doesn’t prevent the player from enjoying a cozy experience overall.

So, if you’re looking for a cozy, survival adventure, where a mysterious world is ripe for you to explore and terraform, that also happens to support co-op, Wildmender is one game you’ll want to play.

New Game Added: Wildmender

by Aethyna Oct 12, 2023

With the help of a mysterious yet helpful guide, you’ll learn to navigate the harsh, sun-beaten landscape, figure out what happened to the world, explore new areas, uncover stories of the people before, and ultimately, bring life back to the barren lands in this cozy, survival adventure game, Wildmender!