I liked Balan Wonderworld.

I’m as surprised as anybody, believe me. It was weird and dumb, brilliant and asinine, but ultimately it was just good fun. Jumping on a bandwagon online is just about the easiest thing in the world. I understand being deliberately contrarian online isn’t much harder at all, so please know this is not my intent.

Balan Wonderworld is a colourful 3D platformer from a bygone era: hubworld, collect x number of items to progress, boss fights: we’ve seen this all many times before. The gimmick is the costumes, 80 of them to be exact, each of which has one (and only one) function. Herein lies a lot of the criticism I’ve seen: that some costumes are useless, that many costumes can’t even jump, that some are duplicates. These complaints are not without merit, though the incredulity of certain commentators is, in my estimation, way out of proportion.

I don’t find anything fundamentally wrong with the idea of single button play. Simplistic gameplay is not in and of itself a criticism. For every blood-curdlingly difficult game I enjoy, I find a relaxing adventure just as appealing. Certain costumes are admittedly very context-specific, though I think this was somewhat inevitable once the gimmick of multiple costumes was set. It could have been improved, but not a gamebreaker.

I do not wish to paint a picture that I think Balan Wonderworld is somehow a misunderstood masterpiece. It is not. There are a couple of bewildering oversights which even a nominal amount of playtesting would surely have rectified.

First, losing the jump function on certain costumes is definitely jarring. It is therefore possible to have no jump function in any of your currently equipped 3-costume rotation. It should be noted this can only happen through player carelessness as you are in control of which costume gets removed when you pick up a new one or losing costumes by taking damage. In my playthrough, this happened to me a grand total of one time. If I tore down any game where I felt the need to deliberately die once, I’d be a sad individual indeed. Yet for the life of me, I do not understand why switching back to the no costume is not an option to alleviate this. The levels are (almost) always designed such that they can be traversed with costumes you can find locally (stairs and ramps where appropriate), but this is still a glaring omission.

There is also the fact that you lose your currently equipped costume when you die. This is certainly annoying, forcing backtracking to the nearest checkpoint at best, or if you have none of that specific costume left and you really need it, heading to another level at worst. Why not at the very least have unlocked costumes available permanently at checkpoints? Again, such a simple quality of life solution that a round of quality assurance would have brought up.

There are also completely unnecessary QTE sequences scattered through levels: again ask a few playtesters what they think about them and remove them accordingly. The less said, the better.

On to much stronger ground, the bosses are genuinely fantastic. Their designs are detailed, appropriate to the theme of the level and animated perfectly; the accompanying music is equally brilliant. I also loved that you are rewarded with more trophy collectables for damaging the boss in 3 different ways, turning each boss into a 3-piece puzzle. The only downside to this (like many games) is once you know the pattern the boss becomes trivial so there’s no reason to return.

The levels themselves are a typical mixed-bag for a 3D platformer, some better than others. What strikes me as odd is what may have led to the initial negative reaction, snowballing into what we see now: the demo. The three levels in the demo might very well be the three worst in the whole game. Not to mention, with limited costumes early on, full exploration is impossible. The demo shows a poor reflection of the game and then blocks you from even exploring that. I wonder how many opinions (including professional) would have changed if they’d gone past these levels?

I’ve mentioned some good and some bad, now onto the weird. Full disclaimer, I love me a bit of weird in video games, but holy hell the choreographed dancing threw me a loop. Upon completing a chapter, the protagonist and main character of that world team up and dance off. The two slowly come together, this being particularly weird when the first one you see is your young protagonist and a middle-aged male farmer heading towards each other like long-lost lovers, and disco. In another life, this is the sort of shit cult classics are made of.

The game needed more time in the oven, it needed more testing, improved performance and a competent marketing strategy. That this did not happen may be a sad indictment on the state of the industry and the perceived lack of value of certain genres.

There is no doubt that Balan Wonderworld is flawed, and yet I do genuinely believe there is something good at its core. Despite all the issues, the bosses are great, the levels are (predominantly) distinctive and creative, platforming is fun, and it all looks and sounds brilliant! If these are not the main ingredients of a great 3D platformer, then I’m lost. The strange design choices around that core are a mixture of wonder and bafflement, but I, for one, do not wish for an industry unwilling to try weird things.

Sixty dollars was dumb as fuck though.