Balan Wonderworld

Genre: 3D Platformer

Players: 1-2 Co-Op (Local)

.

Review:

Balan Wonderworld is a 3D Platformer released on multiple platforms in 2021, including Nintendo Switch. This is a game that drew a lot of attention for reuniting classic Sega game designers Yuji Naka and Naoto Oshima, known in particular for their role in making the Sonic the Hedgehog series and NiGHTS. Then this game gained a different kind of attention when its demo was released. Suffice it to say, those who were looking forward to the game were… disappointed.

At a distance, one may wonder why Balan Wonderworld has garnered so much negativity. This is in part because the one thing it does quite well is its presentation, which has an undeniable charm, with whimsical character designs and colorful worlds that morph and shift as you walk around them, the inverse of the effect that Animal Crossing’s “rolling world” design presents. Likewise, the soundtrack here is lovely, and well-suited to the bright and cheerful visual presentation.

Unfortunately, this visual splendor needs to come with some heavy caveats on the Nintendo Switch. I can’t speak to other versions of the game, but the Nintendo Switch version suffers from terrible framerates with some noteworthy slowdown in places, a fair amount of pop-in, a miserably low resolution, and some absolutely terrible aliasing – quite possibly the worst I have seen on the Nintendo Switch, in fact. On top of that, these visuals take up a massive 9.93GB of space in your Nintendo Switch’s memory. For comparison, that’s nearly double Super Mario Odyssey’s 5.61GB. What the heck is all that space being used for?

When it comes to the gameplay, one can’t help but wonder how an industry legend like Yuji Naka could get so many of the basic fundamentals of 3D Platformer design so wrong. The camera, for example, is so horrendously fiddly that players will need to constantly babysit the thing. Character movement is terribly slow to the point that simple traversal becomes a chore. Your character’s jump (when they have a jump, but more on this in a bit) is pretty lacking, and combines with the slow speed to make even small gaps insurmountable. This is basic stuff, stuff that most platformers figured out or at least got to a satisfactory point generations ago.

It gets worse though. Players are told very little about just what the heck it is they’re doing and why. You’re collecting gem stones… for some reason… oh, you feed them to the fuzzy critters in between levels… for some reason… and there are keys… that presumably do something. At some points during levels you’ll transform into the game’s mascot, Balan, himself… where he will karate kick crystalline enemies as a QTE event… for some reason. Players looking for some semblance of logic here simply will not find it.

The issues with nonsensical design may occasionally pass as whimsical, but often they dip into tedious and even “infuriating” territory. In one early level, players release a ball that must be dropped into a hole. That much, at least, is made clear. However, what isn’t made clear is that the ball is inexplicably following the player, and is meant to be avoided. Repeatedly I found myself getting crushed by the ball when it suddenly lurched toward me as I was trying to figure out how to push it to the hole, being tossed back to the last checkpoint, and being forced to slowly trudge my way back through the level to the same spot… when it turns out what I was meant to do was lead the ball on, guiding it to the hole rather than pushing it. If the game simply communicated its mechanics better, this frustration could have been avoided.

But then there’s the game’s centerpiece, its costumes, and the game advertises that it features 80 of them. Players can hold on to a few of these at a time and swap between them, and the idea seems to be making smart choices about which to hold on to for the purpose of solving the game’s puzzles and challenges. Unfortunately, each of these costumes is a one-trick pony – all of them do only one thing, and players functionally have only one button to do it with. This might make for interesting combinations, but the game rarely does anything interesting with these mechanics, and instead switching back and forth between the costumes becomes a chore that has you waiting every time you do it for the pointless transition to end.

And the real kicker is, because there is effectively only one action button, that means that if your costume doesn’t use that button to jump, you won’t be jumping in that costume. If none of your costumes jump, you won’t be jumping either. In a Platformer. It is actually possible to get stuck and need to intentionally receive damage just to get rid of your stupid costumes for the basic ability to jump… all because this game decided players would never need more than one button.

Putting aside all the complaints about the randomness, the poorly-explained mechanics, the lack of depth in the player’s abilities, the slow movement speed… at its core, Balan Wonderworld simply isn’t fun. Beyond perhaps the whimsical presentation, there’s nothing here that filled me with joy or compelled me to play more. The platforming isn’t interesting, the combat isn’t deep or well-executed, exploration isn’t fun… just why are players supposed to be playing this game?

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate Balan Wonderworld. In fact, at first I was mystified why so many others did. When I keep talking about how charming the game is, I mean it – the game has that same spark of appeal that made some of Yuji Naka’s earlier Platformers really stand out and seem like such a delight to engage with. Unfortunately, when you actually do engage with the game, it becomes clear that this presentation is a facade built on the face of a shoddy, ramshackle work that has not only failed to make use of the foundation laid by decades of 3D platformers that came before it, but it makes some really questionable design choices that are at best inexplicable and at worst seemingly designed to frustrate players.

Balan Wonderworld isn’t the Worst Game Ever, but it is inexplicable that a game so ill-conceived and poorly-designed could have come from industry veterans like Naka and Oshima. Whatever may have led to them designing a game so lacking in basic fundamentals, fundamentals you would think come naturally to men like these… whatever tortured design process led to this mess, you don’t need to suffer for it, and you certainly don’t need to spend a full $60 paying for it. Do not buy this game.

tl;dr – Balan Wonderworld is an absolute mess of a 3D Platformer that fails some of the basic design fundamentals of the genre. Its presentation is charming and inviting, but underneath that is a game with some nasty graphical issues, inexplicable design choices, shallow mechanics, tedious pacing, and a terrible lack of fun. I highly recommend you don’t pay any price for this game, but certainly not the $60 they’re asking for it.

Grade: D+

^{You can support eShopperReviews on Patreon! Please click HERE to become a Sponsor!}

^{This month’s sponsors are Lee, Andy Miller, Stov, Vazkii, u/wonderponder, Ilya Zverev, Eli Goodman, and KC. Thank you for helping to keep the reviews coming!}