Want to spend an hour or so wandering around colorful cartoon dream landscapes created by the creators of Sonic the hedgehog? Do you enjoy feeling pleasantly bewildered? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you will want to play the demo Balan Wonderworld. It’s something else.
That Something Different is a dreamy platformer in which some of your heroes, Leo Craig and Emma Cole, are sent by the mysterious maestro Balan on a journey through imaginary worlds created from other people’s dreams. In the demo, coming out tomorrow for PlayStation, Xboxes, Switches and Steam, we explore the dreams of a farmer who has had problems with harvesting, a boy who dreams of flying and a girl who met a kitten.
The demo opens with your chosen protagonist in a place called the Isle of Tims, a green field with portals to the available levels. Here we interact with the Tims, tiny fluffy creatures who follow Leo and Emma on their adventures. By giving these creatures crystal drops collected in the different stages of the game, we can change their colors, which affects how helpful the Tims are while exploring. Red Tims are attacking. Pink Tims searches for hidden items. They are definitely not Chao’s Sonic the hedgehog, but they are a bit.
Sonic’s similarities make perfect sense, given Balan Wonderworld‘s family tree. The new game is directed by Yuji Naka, director of the original Sonic the hedgehog, with art direction by Naoto Ohshima, the designer of Sonic and director of timeless classics Nights Into Dreams and Blinx: The Time Sweeper. Echoes from each of those games can be found in Balan Wonderworld.
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The gameplay stages of the demo are sprawling, twisted wonderland filled with dancing creatures in fancy costumes, golden statues to collect, challenges to overcome, and puzzles to solve. The colorful landscapes take cues from the dreamers they dream. For example, the farmer’s levels are dotted with giant vegetables and haystacks. “The Boy Who Would Be One with the Wind” level in the demo shows the real boy, gigantic, lying in the air, presumably dreaming of flying. The designs are wacky and imaginative, as you’d expect from art director Naoto Ohshima from Sonic and Nights Into Dreams fame.
The nuclear mechanics of Balan Wonderworld is changing costume. Leo and Emma unlock costumes as they go on an adventure. Each has a unique ability. With the Soaring Sheep costume, the heroes can transform into puffballs, which can control the wind created by rotating fans. The Elastiplant costume allows the couple to stretch their torso to access crystals and switches placed a little higher than other crystals or switches.
Other costumes mimic moves you might encounter in a Mario or Sonic game. The Aero Acrobat outfit gives Leo and Emma the ability to hold enemies and objects in the air and run towards them to launch an attack. That’s Sonic’s homing attack. The Pounding Pig costume is Mario’s ground pound in adorable pig shape.
Rather than giving the characters all of these abilities and letting them go to town on some dream landscapes, Balan Wonderworld let them juggle up to three costumes at once. This gives the player something to think about as they scour levels in search of Crystal Drops and hidden secrets. Checkpoints in levels can be used to exchange players’ costume lineups, so don’t worry if you come across a path that isn’t accessible to your current wardrobe.
I can’t honestly say I have a good idea of what exactly is going on Balan’s Wonderworld of playing the demo. Much of my playing time was spent pointing at the screen and asking my husband what the hell was going on. Why are they dancing? Why is this fan here? Why does that gigantic boy float there? Our characters seem to be some well-meaning kids wandering around trying to solve people’s problems, and that’s okay. We can also hallucinate, which can be fun. I’m looking forward to figuring out this trippy mystery when the full game comes out on March 26.