Wanderlust Travel Stories

Genre: Visual Novel

Players: 1

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Review:

Wanderlust Travel Stories is a Visual Novel following the tales of various tourists talking about their travels around the world that plays out in a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure style, with players managing their various tourists’ money, fatigue, and stress levels while making choices along their journeys. This game was released on PC and mobile devices in 2019 and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2020.

In terms of presentation, Wanderlust Travel Stories is extremely simple, with plain white text over photos of various locations, with relaxing music and at time atmospheric sounds. There’s nothing truly extraordinary going on here, but the tone it sets is pleasant nonetheless.

As for the stories themselves… I’ll be honest, I quickly found myself getting bored. It’s one thing to hear family members recount the mundane stories of their last vacation, but it’s a whole new level of boring to read about it from a complete stranger (purportedly inspired by real events, but undoubtedly at least somewhat fictionalized to fit the “choose your own adventure” format.

The issue is, not only are these stories not all that engaging, but they seem to tend toward jump to one of two sides of a spectrum – either tourists as adventurous thrill-seekers on a great journey of self-discovery… or they’re ignorant presumptuous small-minded morons chasing after caricatures of parts of the world they’ve idealized in their head without any notion that the people who live there are, you know, people. Far too often the choices these stories allow players seems to either be a binary of these two options, or have a third, noncommittal response that doesn’t really indicate what’s meant.

In a way, this is a problem borne out of the structure of this game being built on the stories of multiple people rather than one, resulting in us not really getting to know any of these characters very well, something that most visual novels don’t have as a problem at all. I found myself frustrated that not only could I not guide a tourist I was following into the sort of choices I wanted them to make, but I didn’t get a very good feel for their personality either. As a result, this mundane story came with a dispassionate distance to it.

That’s not to say that Wanderlust Travel Stories is a terrible game, but don’t expect a highly engaging story either. This is more light-hearted fluff, and it’s something that may fascinate those looking to get a feel for stories that touch on various world cultures, it’s not something that most are likely to find deeply moving. If you’re looking for something light and not too stressful though, this may suit you.

tl;dr – Wanderlust Travel Stories is a Visual Novel that follows various tourists telling stories of their travels. The stories themselves are light and honestly a bit unsatisfying, but those looking for a little bit of a feel of various world cultures may find it engaging.

Grade: C

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