Wildermyth

released on Nov 13, 2019

Wildermyth is a character-driven, procedurally-generated tactical RPG. Lead a band of unique heroes as they grow from a reluctant farmers into legendary fighters. Battle threats lurking in the Yondering Lands and discover secrets that the land has to offer.


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Fun little storybook simulator, DND crossed with XCOM. Subsequent playthroughs can feel repetitive but that's part of the charm

Lots of good story lines in here. Unfortunately, given that they're randomly generated, they seem to repeat fairly easily. That being said, it's a very cool way to see different stories play out and affect each other in varying ways

DnD inspired is an attribute that can be given to many games, but I feel that most of the time this is just referring to the way combat is designed or the setting. Rarely does it mean the way the party grows and develops throughout the adventure. Characterization of randomly generated characters is rarely done, especially when the entire party is like that. Most of the time they presented as a hive mind, that does and goes through the same things. You can imagine my surprise when Wildermyth does exactly the opposite. That is the main selling point of the game - the randomly generated character arc your party goes through. I highly recommend it to people who enjoy turn-based combat and DnD.

Story
Before you even begin playing Wildermyth you have to choose which campaign to play. This determines the overarching storyline that will be followed in the next 10+ hours of gameplay. They are okay, but if it was just them, then my rating wouldn't be so high.
If you've read the description, you would have seen it described as “character driven”, this couldn't be more true. At the beginning of the campaign, you pick your party of heroes. Unlike most games, these characters aren't just weapons like fighter, tank, healer. The game gives them as much personality as possible, through banter, backstory and interparty relationships. This could even lead to doing an entire sidequest with just one character that serves as their character development. All of this turns the usual lifeless party into an actual group of “people”.
After a campaign is done, starting another gives the player the choice to include some of their previous party members in their new adventure.

Mechanics and gameplay
It DnD kinda.
There is generally an objective that has to be completed. This is represented by a far-off place you have to get to in the overworld. The overworld is split into many plots of land, all of which have different random encounters. Liberating an area by completing the encounter allows you to use that area for recruiting, craft and so on.
Sometimes these encounters can be done without combat, but that's rare. Combat is turn based and yeah it's practically DnD. I won't go into the details because there is nothing groundbreaking, and it does get boring after a while. It's the main reason why I stopped playing. It was after completing two campaigns, so I have sunk a good amount of time into Wildermyth.

Graphics and artstyle
It's alright. Nothing too fancy as this is an indie game, I believe. Much of it is heavily stylized and thus quite distinctive. Although some NPCs did start to blend in after a while.

Atmosphere/Immersion
Hardly anything I can say about the immersion and atmosphere. However, I did get quite attached to some of my characters by the end.

Soundtrack
It's enough, I can't give it any compliments, though. For most of it sounds the same. My favourite part is “a quest” (I don't know if that's the real name, that's just what I found on YouTube).

Final Thoughts
I've always wanted to be a …. crow

I didn't find the randomly-generated story and characters to be compelling.

The presentation is lackluster at best. The bland and samey-looking characters, flat environments, and stilted animations (that movement hop looks like something straight out of a 2004 Flash game) make Wildermyth feel cheap. I think it would've been better to go with a different art style if there were budget concerns.

I encountered a screen flickering issue when playing with an uncapped framerate, which is disappointing. I should be able to play at 165hz without the risk of a seizure.

The tactical gameplay appears to have a lot of depth at first glance, but I didn't play for long because of the aforementioned problems.

do like two campaigns and there's nothing more to be gained from this game but it's fun enough for those two. really cool magic system actually