#retroid interactive

You play as the Wunderling, a simple game goon. You have your default AI behavior - you walk in a direction until you hit a wall, then turn and walk until you hit the next wall. One day, after the hero has rampaged past, you’ve found yourself elevated beyond your station. You still uncontrollably walk in a direction until you hit a wall. However, you can now jump! With great power comes great responsibility, however, and you’ve also been tasked with tracking down and getting revenge on the hero. Oh, and if that wasn’t stressful enough, you also have been given a powerful addiction to magical seeds - your new powers require a lot of fuel. 

That is the basic premise of Wunderling. You progress through a series of short side-scrolling stages. Your goal is to make it to the portal to the next stage. However, getting there is not as simple as moving from left to right. You can’t control your movement. You simply move in a direction until you hit a wall, then your turn. All you can control is when you jump. As a result, each stage becomes a sort of puzzle - you need to find the right times and locations to jump to carve a path to the exit. 

You can’t take it as a leisurely pace either, as you need to constantly feed your need for magic power or face death. Each stage is filled with magic seeds that buy you more time. However, each seed can only be activated once - after hitting it, it blooms into a flower and can no longer sustain you. Now, often this isn’t a huge problem. However, each stage also has a hidden treasure - a cosmetic item that you can use to customize your Wunderling. 

Wunderling, then, is a bit of a cross between an endless runner game like Bit.Trip Runner, a traditional platformer, and a sort of puzzle game where you try to find the most efficient route through each stage while also trying to find as many treasures as you can. It’s a weird and clever blend of ideas that I have found surprisingly satisfying to work my way through. 

A lot of that satisfaction comes down to clever design from the developers at Retroid (who, as it turns out, are in the same town I live in - Gothenburg, Sweden). Wunderling is quite polished. The levels rise elegantly in difficulty, adding new tricks just as you start to let your guard down. New abilities and challenges are brought in at a nice pace, and you never get too overwhelmed. If you make a mistake, it is easy to restart and try again. Even the controls feel snappy and responsive. I was quite impressed with the level of polish.

I haven’t quite enjoyed the presentation as much as the core gameplay. The pixel art is functional, but nothing memorable in the constant stream of pixel-based indie platformers. Also, while I found the premise amusing, the writing itself is a little over-the-top and the jokes are a bit forced. I found myself clicking through the cutscenes in order to get back into the action. Still - there’s nothing particularly offensive or wrong with the presentation. It just didn’t click for me. 

Overall, Wunderling is an addictive blend of puzzle, platformer, and runner. It takes an amusing premise - placing you in the shoes of a random grunt - and runs with it, creating an inventive little game. I recommend giving it a shot.

A copy of Wunderling was provided for this review.

Nintendo eShop