8/21/2023 0 Comments Balan wonderworld concept artBut while the idea behind the costumes is well enough in concept, its execution leaves a lot to be desired. The game’s primary unique offering is its abundance of costumes, which offer different abilities to the wearer to solve puzzles, and which are littered throughout to allow the player the agency to choose which costumes to wear. It all gives off an air of unwavering positivity that’s a breath of fresh air in a lot of ways, but it only does so much to hold up the gameplay. It’s nearly incomprehensible at points, with cutscenes loosely related to the worlds you’ve completed, though the most interesting aspects are the impossible-to-hate showtune-like musical numbers that come after you beat a boss. The opening cutscene portrays your character getting laughed off a basketball court and taken in by a mysterious man in a big top hat, and you’re then transported into this unexplained new world. They don’t always push the limits of the hardware, but the art style is easy enough on the eyes. While they’re diverse in design, they all maintain the same cheerfulness, with consistently bright colors and dancing NPCs. There are twelve cabaret-inspired chapters, each of which contains two stages, a boss, and a third stage unlocked after you complete everything once through. The platforming isn’t as tight or precise as many modern peers of the genre, but if you can tame the often-unpredictable camera, it’s inoffensive enough on its own."Įverything you do in Balan Wonderworld is contextualized with a cheerful story about overcoming inner demons. "In most instances, Balan Wonderworld plays it straight as a 3D platformer challenging you to use the different abilities of the playable character to collect various items hidden around each level and defeat bosses to progress. The platforming isn’t as tight or precise as many modern peers of the genre, but if you can tame the often-unpredictable camera, it’s inoffensive enough on its own. In most instances, Wonderworld plays it straight as a 3D platformer challenging you to use the different abilities of the playable character to collect various items hidden around each level and defeat bosses to progress. Even though it comes from the creator of Sonic, it takes the clearest inspiration from many recent 3D Mario games, most evidently Super Mario Odyssey, and the comparisons are as unflattering as they are inevitable. Immediate comparisons don’t flatter Balan Wonderworld. Its lack of continuity and failed attempts to create a multifaceted experience means that its appeal is far wider than it is deep, and it tries to juggle too many unrelated pieces to ever really find its footing. While the aspects of the game you’d expect to amplify the experience are there in pieces, Balan Wonderworld instead fails on a larger front to create an engaging long-term gameplay loop. On paper, and even in the run up to its release, it seemed like there are a lot of things about it that should give it a jolt of enjoyability, catharsis, and nostalgia for a long history of costume-based platformers, especially as it’s helmed by Yuji Naka, one of the original creators of Sonic. While there are some overlapping themes and visual similarities to Nights Into Dreams with Balan Wonderworld, the title failed to garner a significant portion of Sega fans to become its own franchise.Playing Balan Wonderworld is a lot less entertaining than it should be. During its development cycle, many Sega fans anticipated that Balan Wonderworld may be similar to Nights Into Dreams given that the lead behind it was the co-creator of the series as well as Sonic the Hedgehog, Yuji Naka. Twitter user Game Boy Demakes recently shared several images and videos of their Balan Wonderworld demake concept in addition to a ROM of what they've made so far for other fans of the Square Enix game. Balan Wonderworld was released in 2021 to some initial interest which has since fizzled with much of the community, except for a dedicated Game Boy demake artist who revisits the title in 8-bit. An artist has created an impressive Balan Wonderworld Game Boy demake concept that fittingly turns the colorful 3D models into small sprites that fit on the screen of the handheld device.
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