When it was announced, Balan Wonderworld certainly raised my eyebrow with its dream-like visuals
and unique-looking platforming, along with it being directed by one of the Sonic creators,
and Nights producer, Yuji Naka.
Unfortunately, that eyebrow soon lowered upon playing an underwhelming demo, but I was still
hopeful the final game might turn out alright in the end.
But did it?
Well, Let’s find out.
Balan Wonderworld is a Mario-style collectathon platformer focused on making use of a huge
amount of swappable costume powers to work your way across a variety of levels.
The levels each take place inside the mind of one of 12 troubled characters, such as
diver who’s scared of dolphins or a chess player dealing with the anxiety of losing
to a newcomer, and you’ll have to help them out by battling their inner demons . It’s
a neat idea that often results in unique looking environments to match, like a mix between
Cirque du Soleil and Disneyland.
I especially liked this Inception-like wrapping effect, which even becomes a challenge when
trying to judge floating distance.
Unfortunately, the cool set pieces are outnumbered by environments that are simple and box-like
at times, looking more artificial than I’d expect in a dream-like setting.
There’s generally a clear primary route through to each level’s end point, with
the collectible statues being hidden off the beaten path...sometimes quite a ways off the
path, which reminded me of some early N64 platformers, in which you almost had to test
the limits of the world’s boundaries and collision detection.
I appreciated that it was possible, though it could be annoying at times too, such as
with the coral layout, which was tough making my way around with the costumes available.
While some of the statues are hidden out in the open, others are locked behind platforming
or areas requiring a particular costume, while others feature minigames, such as baseball
or bowling, which weren’t particularly fun and didn’t really match the theme.
One of the signs of a great platformer is having fun just getting around.
But that often isn’t the case in Balan.
This is partially due to the running animations being stiff and not quite matching up with
your movement speed, but also due to the costumes limited or restricted mobility.
Which is a bit of a problem since costumes in this case play a major role--I mean, there
are 80 of them-- with each granting a different power, along with an extra hit point, to better
explore these worlds.
You can carry up to three at a time and swap between them freely.
They include costumes such as Pumpkin Puncher that...punches, or ladderman who swiftly springs
from ladders it creates, to Seal Skater who can skate down halfpipes.
While some can be fun, such as Tornado Wolf and his spin jump, others are slow and painful
to use.
Box Fox and Iron Apollo, I’m looking at you..
While there were a handful of decent ones, a smaller selection of better playing ones
would have been preferred.
Part of the issue is that Balan Wonderworld only has a single action button, meaning that
some costumes sacrifice essential abilities, like jumping, for its special ability--which
can be frustrating when you encounter, say, a 1 foot ledge you can’t climb without swapping
to another costume first--assuming you have one.
Sometimes I had to take damage on purpose just to ditch the costume and regain my ability
to jump to clear that 1 foot gap.
Some costumes work around the one button issue by tying their power to a timer or only when
stationary, but I’m not a fan of that, such as with Invisible Man where it was difficult
to even see where I was when the Invisible power would activate during thinner platforming
sections.
I know control schemes sometimes get a little crazy at times, but I think two buttons would
have been an acceptable compromise!
Especially since the lack of control options might be why there are simply too many costumes!
With each chapter having at least 6 of them, they’re often introduced too quickly in
succession without providing enough time to fully explore their idea--sometimes just 10
seconds or so before thrusting me into another costume.
Adding to this, swapping between the three selected costumes takes annoyingly long, especially
after experiencing how snappy a similar feature was in Bowser’s Fury.
And to top it off, collecting Power-ups in and of itself is annoying, as it requires
that you find a key to unlock them first--every single time, which quickly becomes tedious.
Even though they’re usually hidden nearby, it’s still an annoying extra step that just
feels like needless padding!
I would often stock up on keys and costumes when I could to avoid having to do it later,
since you can bank extra costumes to access at the start of each level or at checkpoints.
As a result of all this, the initial part of the game in which I had to find 25 Balan
Statues to unlock more levels felt like a slog--especially since some statues require
costumes from later worlds that can't yet be accessed, which isn’t always clear.
One of the recurring statues is “Balan’s Bout,” which features sequences reminiscent
of Yuji Naka’s Nights into Dreams...except it’s been relegated to an interactive cutscene.
The missed potential here throughout the bulk of the game is disappointing, considering
how great flying felt in that other game.
Between levels, you’ll be in the game’s hub, the Isle of Tims, which is a somewhat
relaxing place where I could take a break and feed Tims the crystal drops that I collected.
There’s not a whole lot else to do in this small hub aside from building up a Tim “playground”
in the middle but I’d take it over a simple 2D menu to select levels any day.
Plus, feeding Tims can be worth your time, as they tag along during gameplay, fight enemies
or find collectables and bring them right to you.
Unfortunately, the game doesn’t do a great job explaining how they work, making it easy
to miss out on their potential.
Of course, there are Bosses too, which can be a highlight, relatively speaking.
Most of which were fairly easy, but they each offered a twist in that they award more statues
if you can figure out how to counter more of their attacks, which was kind of neat.
The victory cutscene afterward might be the best part, where an animated cutscene shows
how the level’s character overcomes the issue that was plaguing them, like someone
who’s shy finally asking someone out, which was emotionally satisfying, though I could
live without the handshake and dancing part.
The music can be grandiose and very fitting to each level’s theme, just sometimes there
are smaller segments such as celebratory dancing tunes after a checkpoint that feel a bit out
of place, and almost gave me a jump scare at times.
Graphically, the Switch version definitely isn’t among the platforms better ports,
as it has frequent frame pacing issues, such as slowdown whenever enemies spawned into
the world, causing the system to chug for a half second, messing up the flow of the
game.
It was pretty painful at times, where I would clear out a room of enemies, then immediately
respawn dragging the framerate down again.
The frequent slowdown, combined with characters fading in and out, and collectathon gameplay,
certainly reminded me of the 64 era of 3D platformers...but not in a good way.
And that might be the biggest problem with the game.
It feels dated, like it belongs to an era long since forgotten.
Now there are some positives: the pre-rendered shorts before bosses and at the end of a level
are wonderfully done and fun to watch.
And one costume is essentially a panda version of BB-8..which is kind of amazing.
I should have stocked up on that one.
And Balan Wonderworld actually does improve and become more tolerable towards the end,
when I was able to choose whatever suit I wanted from various chapters, providing more
freedom of movement.
But every time I started to enjoy something, it promptly smacked me right back with some
new downside.
It was hard to push myself through an experience that clearly needs more polish.
Perhaps with a little more time in the oven, and a slender more focused experience, with
fewer costumes and levels, it might have been a fun time.
Maybe future patches will alleviate some of my issues, but in its current state, I simply
didn’t like Balan Wonderworld, although I feel for the developers as developing during
a pandemic couldn’t have been easy.
And with that, thank you for watching.
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