Hey, Balan, are you a friend or an enemy?
It’s always nice to see one of the most important designers of video games return after so long, but honestly, I was worried that Naka would come back with a 3D platform game. Even though I love games like Sonic Adventure, they are not particularly good. Naka has never really made any good 3D platform specialists. With the exception of Lightning in a Bottle, which was part of Phantasy Star Online, they never managed to make a really great 3D game. This brand new Balan Wonderworld demo makes me even more excited about the final project.
The first thing that surprised me in this PS5 demo is that you don’t actually play the role of Balan, the Nights character seen all over the promotional material for this game. Instead, you play either a boy, Leo, or a girl, Emma, who is taken by the famous poster boy Willy Wonka to a world of mystical dreams. I still don’t know if the guy should be the bad guy or the ally.
Balan Wonderworld is characterized by a high level of design.
This is where the wonderful world of Balan shines brightest: it is absolutely stunning. The presentation looks like a Pixar animated movie, with colorful characters, original design, great use of color and fantastic framing, all thanks to the PS5’s superior hardware. All characters were created by Naoto Oshima, the same man who created most of the characters in Sonic and Nights. Load times are also virtually non-existent. Finally, the excellent soundtrack is by Square Enix’s own composer, Ryo Yamazaki. He does an excellent job, at least in the few levels the demo contains.
I have to thank Balan and Square Enix for giving players such a long demo full of levels and unlocks. You can see how the developers created these fantastic environments clearly inspired by the old 3D Sonic games and Super Mario Galaxy.
What are you looking at?
In Balan Wonderworld, you only use two buttons and an analog stick to move around. One button allows you to switch from one costume to another in each level, while the other performs the only action that allows you to create that costume. In the demo alone, you could choose from more than a dozen costumes, ranging from a flower costume that lets you stretch vertically, to a sheep costume that lets you soar through the air, to a Jack O’ Lantern costume that lets you launch Rayman-style missiles, and more. These costumes are varied and creative, and each level is full of both mandatory and optional puzzles that will help you progress.
In the world of Super Mario 3D, your main goal is simply to reach the end of the level, but each level offers a variety of well-hidden collectibles that you can find. They act as the stars of the game, because the more levels you unlock, the more trophies you will find. This gives you an extra motivation to replay each level after you have finished it once, for which I must congratulate the developers.
A love baby between Kingdom Hearts and almost all Deviantart sites dedicated to Sonic.
Unfortunately, that’s where the problems begin. While I love just about everything about the design and art departments of Balan Wonderworld, the gameplay leaves a lot to be desired. The controls are best described as slippery and cumbersome, like those in Sonic Adventure 1 and 2. Yes, you read that right: even though we live in an era where 3D platform controls have already been perfected, Balan Wonderworld looked like a platform game from the Dreamcast era. I love the Dreamcast dearly, but I’ll be the first to admit that all the presenters had the same hovering moments. The camera was not very reliable.
I hope it is a small tribute to the Chevalier Horloger.
Balan Wonderworld will be released in a month and a half after this preview is written. Hopefully by then Yuji Nake and his team can fix the weaknesses in the physics and controls in this game, because there is a lot of potential here. The game has phenomenal graphics, an exceptional level of design and a fantastic soundtrack. If they manage to make the gameplay look more like a modern 3D platformer and less like the good old (worthless) Sonic Adventure, the game might become a cult classic in the making. If not, Mr. Nucky’s return to the spotlight will be much shorter than expected.
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