Never have I seen more confused than what it wants to be, never have I seen a game utterly destroy its messages, never have I seen a game that essentially wastes your time more than Balan Wonderworld.

Preamble, I never wanted to cover this game at all, i played the demo on switch when it came out and did not like it, but some friends gifted this game to me on my new Switch so whoop de doo i get to play the killer app for the Switch, Balan Wonderworld.

So, Yuji Naka, made all of our childhoods and created games we all love and hate, then after a racing game he mysteriously left, no big bang, no message in the next game, nothing. He then did some weird odd jobs that didn't really leave much of an impression on people, i mean Wii Motion Plus? Ivy the Kiwi?, the great Yujj Naka working on mediocre side games? Well Rodea was a quaint success for the Wii Version but nothing really hit that high that Yuji did for Sonic, except of course, Sega Hard Girls.

But finally, fans finally got to see what he was cooking up alongside Sonic creator Naoto Ohshima to make a new ambitious game, Balan Wonderworld, and it bombed, both critically and commercially. Just happened? Well apparently Naka was binned from the team 6 months before it was supposed to release and he was campaigning for a delay, well given how he was the director of the game and other aspects of his past, I feel there's something missing here. But the game itself? It's awful.

Let's start with the story of the game, good lord it's a mess and it really irks me as it tries to touch on themes that not many aspects that aren't normally done in Platformers, so first of depending on the gender you choose the character deals with a thing that they have to overcome, anxiety, Leo does it in fear of getting into another heated argument with a friend (which is from Wikipedia so take that as you will lol) and Emma does it in fear of people talking behind her back. They then escape to the Balan theatre where they met Balan and are thrusted to his Wonderworld. This whole scene is pretty great, the animation as a whole in this game's cutscenes are pretty good but then it takes a nosedive.

Like for the rest of the game you're helping people with their problems, okay cool but are these real? are they acts in the theatre like it's not very clear what it is, but we have much bigger problems with the story. Each chapter follows someone with a problem they have and how they overcome it, okay cool but there's one problem i have with this format: due to the games poor communication of it's world and story it's not clear what the problem is in some cases especially with this games lack of voice acting some of the problems like the farmers are fine i guess but i really love some the themes it touches on such as how you shouldn't enclose yourself with other people who can help, having a creative slump, pushing yourself further and further to the point of destruction no matter what you do that special someone does not notice you, how having a odd hobby makes you shunned by people close to you and no matter what the circumstances may look like, you can do anything you're capable of, It’s really cool as i have dealt with these things to varying degrees and seeing this type of game cover them was really sweet, but there's also some pretty jarring ones or ones that don't make sense, in particular Chapter 2 and Chapter 6. Chapter 2's i just don't get, so basically this girl likes the water right? Well then for some reason the dolphin turns evil and nearly kills her? What? What was the point? Why did the Dolphin attack her? Is it about how sometimes people who may like you can get sick of you? Is it about how your personal interests can sometimes destroy your real life? Like what is the point??? Even the tie book doesn't explain this, speaking of to fully understand this game's plot you need a book that doesn't even come with the game, it's side material, You essentially need side material to fully "enjoy" no, understand this games plot you need a book. It explains a lot of the oddities of this game like the main villain, Lance (get it Balance) and his plan though I just used the Balan Wonderworld Wiki to look it up since I'm not buying it lol. But a decent Book should not explain this game’s plot at all, Sucker Punch games like inFamous and Sly Cooper have side-material like that, but it’s not instrumental to understand the game’s plot, you can still enjoy them and your get to see more in the world’s you love, since they did for the sequels, sure is it weird that Zeke and Cole are best buddies in inFamous 2 again despite InFamous saying otherwise and Moya’s absence in inFamous 2 and also how Sly met Mcsweeny, sure but it doesn’t not make these stories any worse, but with the Book it essentially carries the entire plot but anyway.

Chapter 6 is way more egregious at first, first watch these scenes beginning and ending cutscene and tell me what you think or comment it or I don’t know keep it to yourself,

Well I don't know if it’s my dumbass brain perceiving things when I first played it but it looks like the Cat died then Balan turned back time to bring the cat back? I was both confused, laughing and somewhat angry at this, was this really a solution to this problem? It was even worse as one of the other chapter’s plots had the parents die and the person was enclosing people close to her, so what Balan gonna turn the clock on that one too? But in actuality, the chapter was about how the girl DIDN’T see her cat die so she left before something happened and now it’s okay? Okay how was any player supposed to figure that out? Obviously this Pegi 7 Game isn’t gonna show a cat being run over so the player would obviously assume the Cat dies, also if they were gonna do this solution to a problem wouldn't it be better for something else like how she forgot to feed it and it runs any or something.

But anyway the Plot of this game is quite a mixed bag, on one hand you got isolated scenes such as the opening and ending as it does that thing i love in media and shows what the characters are doing after the events of the film/game, and some of the themes the chapters touch on is really cool and mature, but on the other hand, the poor communication due to speaking in Balanese and the stage cutscenes being a bit lazy albeit still looking nice. It’s a shame that the execution is so mixed but the story is the least of our worries.

Presentation wise i feel Balan presentation is mixed, i feel the character designs are amazing, especially Balan, Lance and the Boss designs but the enemy designs are really simplistic and not in the good way, the music is pretty good with more musical and gospel feel despite the Balanese Lyrics sounding terrible but the environments, they're the most generic environments you can think of, Grass, Ice, Jungle, Forest, Lava etc (I Was surprised when there was no Desert lol) some of them are also repeated too so that’s nice. The environments also sometimes do this warping the ground, it just looks very disorientating and has no reason to be like that. The game on switch is surprisingly terrible, like why is it so bad, this game isn’t so demanding, it looks so bland and boring like it’s an early PS2 game that had a very rushed PS3 port with not that many upgrades, why is the framerate so awful? Why is everything at such a low resolution, why does it crash so frequently and why did people have seizures at the final boss, seriously what was it and Platformers in 2021 giving seizures to people?

Now, it’s time for the most anticipated part, the gameplay. It’s awful, shockingly so. You have to play 12 Chapters of the most boring, bland painfully easy stages ever crafted in a platformer, it’s quite amazing honestly, before then the physics and control in the game don’t feel good, bad control in a game doesn’t matter if the core gameplay is fun enough,but it’s not here. Characters feel way too slow, heavy and stiff, making platforming feels so awkward and not that fun due to the controls. But this Level Design, you have 2 Main Acts then a Boss at the end plus an extra Act in each stage after you beat the final boss. The level design in this game does not know what it wants to be, it is a collectahon due due to gating your progression when you haven't a certain amount of statues? Or a more linear game due to having an end goal, nah man how about Both. Throughout these longass stages you're trying to find the most easy collectables in a Platformer with no challenge or effort whatsoever, topped with weird ass Mo-capped NPCs, Crystals awkwardly scattered throughout the stage so you can feed your discount Chao to grind for the Balan costume and the most bland combat in a game I've ever played in terms of enemy variety and the bosses themselves and with that bagpipe theme blasting whenever an enemy emerges from the ground, damn man didn't know you made Sonic Unleashed. I don't think I've seen a game where I can say I didn't have fun with it at all apart from some isolated so bad it's good moments after beating bosses with those dance sequences, like when I'm playing the game looking at the environment with these NPCs I keep thinking it's a shitty unity indie game but no, this is a game that was released for nearly £50 on release and published by a big name such as Square Enix and was behind the eyes of Yuji Naka.

Oh lord I haven't mentioned the 3 most InFamous features of this game, the 80+ costume gimmick. I mean it speaks for itself, why would your game have 80 power-ups and you can only have 3 at a time? None of them are really that fun to use, some like the gliding one especially the ice step ones make the stages more bearable and completely break the game but others either are completely situational to the stage, copy of other games like the Homing Attack or Uproots, are a pretty simple action you can use in most other platformers, an offensive/defensive attack or just useless like Fox Box, not the ambitious crossover but the insanely amazing power-up where your character turns into an un-rendered blender Box, You can't jump as well so move aside Fire flower & Power Pullet, BallBone Wankerwell has the most influential power-up in gaming history, there's also just one button you use other than for movement and switching costumes, why is Naka and Arzest so hellbent on making this game so simple? Kids are smarter than this, don't dumb down the game like this, the reason why Kirby works so well and why Balan fails with level design and it's copy abilities due to is it's complexity, You don't need to make your game DMC5 or Smash Meele to make it fun but it adds an extra layer to a on already good game and that's what the amount of Copy abilities, all of them being so unique and complex yet simple to use makes them all pretty fun to use in later games, but here the game is painfully simple and genuinely thinks your a little baby that can't even use one other button.

And finally, Balan Bouts & Sport minigames, these aren't fun at all, the sport minigames are so strict but it isn't fair given how much you need to get right in some of them to get your statue, and the Balan Bouts, if you thought Qtes were bad in any game these are on a whole nother level, You have to time Balans actions with your button as he just flies around destroying stuff I guess for other than it looks cool, but the amount of times you do it especially in later world's as they use it as a crux for statue placements, You have to watch the same damn 5 cutscenes with the music blast your ears of as if you fail once (which is likely due to input delay) then good luck, You have to do the QTE all over again next time to get another statue.

So overall, this game sucks and I think I may have found my least favourite game of all time, like sure it isn't a 1/10 But does that really matter? Oh wow it's not a fundamental failure like cool, but the game treating me if I'm braindead and undertaking heavy themes like this is honestly worse to me than any Sonic 06, Big-rigs, Devil May Cry 2, Mega Man X7, Sly Cooper Thieves In Time, Life is Strange etc because at least those games don't waste time or belittles you as much as Balan so fuck this game, if Sly 1 & 2, Super Mario Galaxy games and Odyssey, Ratchet Trilogy or Sonic Generations is how you should do a Platformer with fantastic gameplay, endearing world and characters, amazing and unforgettable Presentation, Balan couldn't be the antithesis of it even if it actively tried to be.

If there was one typically maligned game that I had expected to get more out of than the average person, it would’ve been this one, after all, it’s a colourful 3D platformer with a lot of weird ideas thrown into the mix. The amount of discussion surrounding such games to make them purely out as these punching bags to point and laugh at in bad faith is a tiresome thing to witness time and time again and my hatred for such a mindset is ultimately one of the many reasons why I strive to approach art with optimism. Unfortunately, while I definitely think I have a bit more appreciation for this than I often see, there’s a bit too much about Balan Wonderworld that is downright baffling to me, which when combined with how utterly milquetoast other elements of the game are, makes for a very stilted experience that never fully achieves the grander heights that it’s going for.

I think that the one button control scheme that the game goes for is one of the biggest missed opportunities here, as a lot of the groundwork for something really cool is in place, but the level design simply isn’t strong enough to accommodate for the weird ideas in play. There are over 60 costumes in the game, and due to the simplistic controls, each of these will only have one function, with an occasional 2nd one that will be activated in a less conventional way, and unfortunately, jumping counts as a function, so in this platformer game, you’ll be in situations at times where you’re unable to jump. This isn’t as inherently bad as it may seem, but the level design doesn’t seem to be thoughtfully designed around the potential limitations that the player will face. Another aspect that doesn’t help is that even though there are so many costumes with a lot of different effects, a solid chunk of these exist to interact in a very lock and key way with the environment, having only one specific use that’s blatantly stated, with no way of utilising it in any other ways. This results in a lot of costumes feeling extremely underwhelming to unlock, as you know that the only thing it’ll be good for is to open the paths in specifically designated areas, making it feel functionally worthless and boring in any other scenario.

Adding to the frustration is that getting hit a single time will make you entirely lose the costume you’re wearing, forcing you to go and recollect it if you want to use it again. This doesn’t really do anything beyond add a layer of tedium to it all, since it’s not like it even returns to an inventory or anything, it’s just gone. This feeds back into the frustration with not being able to consistently jump, depending on your costume loadout, since taking a hit can straight up leave you in a situation where you need to backtrack and grab another costume since you can’t progress otherwise. Despite my issues however, there’s definitely something here with the idea in its current form, it’s offbeat for sure, but not a totally lost cause either. Rather than crafting each stage to feel like the most barebones, basic 3D platformer stuff out there, the game would work a whole lot better if there were a bunch of different, branching paths within the stages that took advantage of specific abilities, or at least multiple ways to reach the same location so as to not completely lock you out of progression by getting hit once and still contribute to a sense of exploration, as a collectathon should feature in some capacity. This would lead to a more varied set of obstacles to tackle and would also be a great way of more deftly incorporating some hidden collectibles, having multiple ways to approach a situation, with each of them rewarding you for doing so.

This would also tie into the boss fights of the game much more smoothly to create a more cohesive experience on the whole, due to how they function and reward the player. While these fights are very simple for the most part, they’re also conceptually my favourite element of the game for how they’re able to work both as something very easy and approachable for the kids that are going to play the game, while still requiring a bit of thought for those who want to collect everything. Each boss has 3 different opportunities to hit it in its attack patterns, often requiring different costumes to hit its weak points, and for each way you utilise in the battle, you’re awarded one additional Balan statue, the collectible of the game. This shifts each encounter into a bit of a puzzle, since some of the methods of hurting the boss are pretty tricky to work out, and it adds a lot of nuance and intrigue to what usually are the blandest, or at least most simplistic elements of a platformer in this vein.

Despite the stages also not utilising it super well in a lot of cases, I also quite like the game’s artstyle, it’s very colourful and cute and absolutely shines in the boss fights especially, along with the character designs of Balan and Lance, further making me wish that a lot of other elements of the game were more fleshed out and vibrant. The one exception to my distaste over the fact that everything looks very “gamey” in the stages, for lack of a better term, is that it contributes to a certain vibe whenever you have the snow fairy costume that lets you completely break levels and skip large chunks of them, evoking a very similar feeling of exploring the boundaries of a game in the way that a lot of my favourite platformers hone in on. Hiding more stuff like this in especially out of reach and unconventional locations is another way that I think I’d have enjoyed the game more, it’s a very specific brand of weirdness that appeals to me greatly, and this game has all the tools to be able to accomplish such things with a few tweaks.

The one element of this game that I cannot really defend or appreciate in any major capacity is the Balan Bout however, these things SUCK in a way that very few game mechanics ever have to me. Having to do a QTE whenever you grab one of the Balan hats is tedious beyond belief, with a lot of the sequences that play out being over 2 minutes long and just, repeating sequences you’ve seen many times before, without any way to speed up or skip at all. The fact that you need to do these perfectly in order to get the Balan statue from them is a pain and a half as well, especially with certain telegraphs feeling borderline impossible to hit, and the fact that if you don’t get a perfect, the hat disappears and makes you beat the boss of the world if you want to respawn it, making each attempt at it an ordeal to get to. These made me genuinely mad and never stopped completely baffling me each time I had to think about them.

Overall, I liked Balan Wonderworld a bit less than I was hoping, the stages were dull and felt almost entirely lacking in progression, making the game feel stagnant, the weird mechanics were kinda just thrown into an otherwise extremely standard game, and the Balan Bouts are atrocious. With that said, I think the thing that disappoints me most is that there are elements of intrigue to be found here with how off kilter so many ideas truly are, even within the bits that I don’t really like in their current state. I love when a game is packed to the brim with idiosyncrasies, it just so happens that in this case, those idiosyncrasies do not gel well with the exceptionally standard foundation that the game is built around, it tries to feel dreamlike, but just ends up being either frustrating or pedestrian.

To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand Balan Kino. The symbolism is extremely subtle, and without a solid grasp of theoretical physics most of the story will go over a typical viewer's head. There's also Balan's creepy outlook, which is deftly woven into his characterisation- his personal philosophy draws heavily from Narodnaya Volya literature, for instance. The fans understand this stuff; they have the intellectual capacity to truly appreciate the depths of this game, to realise that its not just simple- they say something deep about LIFE. As a consequence people who dislike Balan truly ARE idiots- of course they wouldn't appreciate, for instance, the humour in Balan's existential catchphrase "Emoclew!" which itself is a cryptic reference to Turgenev's Russian epic Fathers and Sons. I'm smirking right now just imagining one of those addlepated simpletons scratching their heads in confusion as Yuji Naka's genius wit unfolds itself on their monitors What fools.. how I pity them.

with all this taken into consideration i can safely say that this is the worst video game i have ever played and you should stay as far away from it as humanly possible

>Naka: You're awful, Nomura.

>Nomura: Me? I'm Awful? How am I awful?

>Naka: Telling me Square would allow me one chance for an console action game, and then giving me mobile game budget. Making me release that demo knowing full well people would hate it, and then refusing to give us more time to finish the game in spite of the demo reception. You then pushed it out to die on the same day Monster Hunter Rise comes out. You invite me to your company to make a game, but you just wanted to make fun of me. You're just like the rest of them.

>Nomura: You don't know the first thing about me pal. Look what happened because of your ego, what it lead to. You ripped of DBZ, canned Sonic Xtreme, added a human/anthro subplot in 06, and when SEGA finally had enough they kicked you out only for you to repeat the same stupid mistakes once again.

>Naka:Laughing

>Nomura: You're laughing. Your game bombed today and you are laughing.

>Naka: I know. How about another game, Nomura?

>Nomura: No, I think we've had enough of your games.

>Naka: What to you get when you tell an action game enthusiast he can make his dream game-

>Nomura: Stop.

>Naka: ...and send him to a publisher who abandons him and treats his project like cheap cash-in trash?!

>Nomura: Call the police, Kitase.

>Naka: I'll tell you what you get. YOU GET WHAT YOU FUCKING DESERVE!

I went into this game being as fair as possible but I now understand why everyone hates it.

I think it fails completely as a Platformer. Look at any other game in the genre, this game is just missing everything from them. It uses a control stick and one button. Like it’s being played an Atari. Absolutely insane. X,triangle, circle, square- they all do the same action. To make it even more frustrating and useless, the your current power does an action that doesn’t include jumping when you press the button, then it can’t jump. In a platformer.

It’s not even like the metal cap in 64 where it’s one single power handicaps jumping and makes sense since you are made of metal. No this game just doesn’t let you just for no reason. And to make it even worse again, there isn’t a double jump?

It has fun ideas like the Tims but they are just not fleshed out and you are given no sort of idea or reason to why they are there or why you should feed them.

The game just feels dated. Like it came out in like 2004.

It doesn’t help that I just played Kirby and the Forgotten Land. This is the perfect version of Balan wonder world. It has costume abilities, tons of content, looks amazing. It only has just over 10 abilities but they are all so unique. This game has like 60 or something insane but they are just boring, and don’t get attached to them because you will be using them in 1 level and then you will never see them again unless you go back into that level to collect it, then venture into another level with the power up. But be careful because if you get hit 1 single time you will loose the suit and have to go back and get it again.

Balan Wonderworld is a unique disappointment.

The character designer and lead programmer behind Sonic the Hedgehog unite once more, and while Arzest doesn't have the best track record they do have some number of former Sega staff. While its initial reveal didn't have much of an effect on me, as the months went by I began to wonder if this could be a kind of return to form, a rebirth of that classic Sega ethos that was largely lost not too long after they started releasing games on hardware that was not their own. The release of the game's demo, of course, quelled whatever hopes I had.

Discourse on the game around the time of its launch followed a clear pattern:

"The game is mediocre at best."

"It's for kids, of course an adult would find it dull."

"A game being for kids doesn't excuse its flaws."

Frankly, even if this game wasn't meant to be anything more than an ultra-accessible spectacle for toddlers (which I don't think is particularly unlikely), I think it trips over itself to get there.

Much has been said about the "1 button" philosophy, and at the very least I do think there is something interesting going on here. The sticks and buttons on the face of the controller, the part of the controller visible to the player, are manipulated with the thumbs and control the character; the shoulder buttons, atop the edge of the controller and pressed with the index fingers, control the more indirect and abstract costume switching. There is a very clear sort of psychological separation between these two elements of the game's control, and at first it could seem almost clever, that this is something which a person unfamiliar with games could find intuitive.

But there's one glaring issue with trying to interpret the controls this way: why do the triggers, which are also obscured by the face of the controller, act like face buttons when it would make more sense in this framework for them to have the same effect as the shoulder buttons? Is it because the game expects you to control the camera yourself, meaning that if you couldn't use your index finger to jump you would be stuck using the claw grip if you wanted to play with any degree of finesse? Is it because the game released not too long after the launch of two new consoles, each boasting their own form of Adaptive Haptic HD Rumble trigger vibration?

Whatever the case is, it's just one aspect of how this particular manifestation of the "1 button" mandate fails. Sonic the Hedgehog was a game that aimed to take the Mario platforming format, and lower the skill floor while raising the skill ceiling. It made the character control as simple as possible: get rid of the run button, and make acceleration a standard feature of movement. Jumping is then the only remaining action, but the complexity comes from how the player's basic abilities interact with the slopes and hazards of the environment, this is what makes the game hard to master.

What made Sonic easy to learn was not so simple as "all the buttons do the same thing", or even that the player could always jump. The most vital piece of the puzzle is that pressing a button always consistently performed a single action.

Balan Wonderworld is not a "1 button" game. That one button can perform so many possible actions that this simply isn't a worthwhile way to think about the game. It's an entire modular keyboard, but you only have 3 key caps, and you can only press one down at a time. The player's capabilities lie in such a tangled web of conditions that the simplicity of a single button is completely undermined, yet the limitations of each of those abilities are so rigid that there's no room for growth. Balan Wonderworld is a game that is hard to really grasp, and this knowledge has no reward.

Balan Wonderworld is a game with beautiful cinematics (that look so good in fact that they make the in-game graphics somewhat pitiable), a memorable soundtrack (though a certain amount of this is definitely due to how heavily it leans into tropes and borrows from its contemporaries), and lovable character designs (that are made mostly forgettable by the fact that this game has no dialogue and the story is instead buried in supplementary material). It even has some well-structured levels that would probably be a lot more fun to explore in a game that wasn't so scared of letting you interact with them. Even the mere conceit of the sort of "Sonic Team Reunion" that put this game into motion has since been revealed to be a begrudging one.

There are things to like about it, but each comes with some obvious contradiction nested within. I can't bring myself to truly hate Balan Wonderworld, but it is one of the most hollow and rote platformers I've played in years, possibly ever.

Well, I gave the demo a fair shot. But there are a lot of problems.

1. 6 of your buttons are to jump, and there's no dash or dive button. As such, your movement options are just jumping and walking around. Pretty limited for a 3D platformer.

2. You can only hold onto 3 costumes at the same time (from the demo), and you can apparently collect duplicates of the same costume. This can result in situations where you have duplicate costumes delete costumes that you actually need to progress in the level.

3. The background curves toward the player (sort of like Super Mario Galaxy), but it's actually all a linear world. This results in the background constantly bobbing up and down as you explore the environment, and can easily cause motion sickness.

4. Combat is kinda lackluster, due to the limited movement options (where you have to jump on enemies to defeat them) and the few costumes that have other attacks cannot jump because the one button action is linked to the attack rather than jump.

5. The game sort of works like a metroidvania where you will have to bring in other costumes from other levels to access all the collectibles. But as I've sort of implied from the above comments, you'll lose your costume immediately after taking a hit or falling off the stage. Thus, there's very little room for error when you're trying to bring in costumes from other stages to 100% a level (because you still need room for the costumes in the level that are required for navigation).

I hate to say it, because as nice as the visuals and background music are, this might be the worst 3D platformer that I've ever played. The movement just feels so sluggish and the gameplay feels like it's lacking a lot of quality of life features. Really disappointed, and I would not buy this on sale unless it got major improvements.

This isn’t even remotely as morbid a failure as it’s being made out to be (imo this is far from being the worst platformer of the year, let alone of all time), and they clearly responded to what criticism about the demo they could in the small window of time they had, but this is still a very disappointing release from someone of Yuji Naka’s pedigree. There are some real easily corrected choices here that totally perplex me: why do you need a key to unlock the costume pickups when these keys are, without fail, placed directly next to the box pickups and mindlessly accessible? Why are Balan’s Bouts dreary, maliciously unforgiving QTE sequences instead of cute little rhythm games that would enhance the game’s theatrical motifs? Why do you have to “stock” costumes instead of just being able to swap to them once encountered? Like almost everybody, I have LOTS of problems with the game, but it feels a little cruel and incurious to see people hammer so hard on BW for not being this conventionally engaging mechanically tight platformer (none of Yuji Naka’s games really are lol) when to me it seems like Balan’s priorities… clearly aren’t to be that? I agree that the game fails on its potential in a myriad of frustrating ways, but I’d much rather discuss those briefly glimmering unique elements that could have been pushed further rather than rail on it for feeling “dated” while simultaneously condemning it for not being kinesthetically identical to a legacy platformer series that’s pushing 40.

I think, ideally, the game’s one-button input philosophy and limited level design are intended to create a hyper-accessible fanciful spree of cutesy quick changing aesthetics and encouragement--a sugary character randomizer musically shifting between different flavors of low-stakes whimsy--and thats a vibe outline I can definitely see merit in. Sometimes this almost kind of works: a lot of the costumes are goofy and adorable! It’s genuinely kind of fun to get a new suit and wonder what it can do! There are a few rare moments where the level design and powers are in great harmony and the whacko dancing npcs appear and seem to be cheering just 4 u--u go girl!!! Unfortunately, the levels and costumes rarely feel as exuberant and symbiotic as they should to make something like this work, and the game REALLY underestimated just how meaningful any ability that overwrites your jump function needs to be in order to not feel completely disempowering. It can feel patronizing and dull, but it’s absolutely not some utter atrocity of design; The game is internally consistent and it functions coherently within its own parameters, despite them being pretty mystifying and insipid at times--it’s not some Sonic 06 level technical failure in any regard. I was let down by the mechanics, sure, but my real problem is that the game is rarely as bold and engaging an aesthetic experience as something like Nights or Chu Chu Rocket. However, there are still some bits of genuinely quirky individuality I really enjoyed.

The musical theater aesthetic is a totally bonkers camp delight. Some of the scenarios leading to these redemptive dance numbers are hysterical and charming (I particularly love “girl and her dolphin friend had a falling out (???) and need to reconcile”) Seeing the motion-captured choreo kind of poorly translated onto all these wonky deviantart original character costumes has a synthetic but silly sort of jankiness that fully circled back into an earnest and endearing place for me. The cutscenes are genuinely lovely, and the craftworld sort of cgi stuff they do is great. I kind of love the enigmatic stupidity of the Tower O’ Tims and its ever-expanding marshmallow peep Rube Goldberg device that appears to do nothing but exist for its own sake--I couldnt help but laugh when I spent 10 minutes watching the dumb little critters revolve around in their weird merry go round in order to unlock a third “tim trampoline” i literally never saw any of them use. The soundtrack is unequivocally pretty excellent, although it definitely feels a bit slight on tracks.

I have to wonder what a kid playing this would feel like, someone with a looser outlook about what the genre should do, someone with a less claustrophobic understanding of competence/quality than me--someone who can play games and not even compartmentalize them into genre expectations at all! I’m not even sure those kids exist or would care about this game, but the kind of frustrating letdown experience of Balan was still memorable to me despite itself, and playing it had me thinking about my own processing and approaches to design when playing games. And hey, my partner and I have been swinging our little terrier around and belting the game’s wannabe Idina Menzel gibberish anthems to her for the past week so that’s gotta be worth something right!!!

Guys we’re okay now, Yuji Naka’s been arrested he can’t hurt us anymore

On October 30th, I broke my right arm. Doing this, unsurprisingly, left me with very few options for games for the first couple days, which was clearly the worst part as it left me considering playing Balan Wonderworld. My singular praise of the gameplay comes from that fact. Great job Balan Wonderworld, for being a game that people with an unusable hand can play. Unfortunately that’s also where a majority of this game's issues originate from. Everyone else has covered that already though, and honestly I’d much rather talk about other things. Said other things are really almost everything else, because in all honesty? I really like a lot about this game. The cutscenes are all so adorable, the game looks beautiful, the little dance numbers after every boss fight are really cute, the character and costume designs are great, everything about this game aside the game itself really is truly wonderful! Just a little experience I had were with the couple of ending cutscenes, which very surprisingly had me tearing up a bit, and really had me thinking “Y’know, maybe this was worth it.” I can only wish that actually was the case.

This game sucks. Everyone knows it sucks, even its creator who is going to prison (though not for making Balan unfortunately).
However this being Backloggd and indeed the Internet generally, in a couple years times everyone is going to pretend that actually Balan is secretly genius and cool and smart you guys.

So I am going to play the long game and pre empt the re evaluation of Balan (or reebalanuation I should say) before anyone else does.

Balan Wonderworld is good, actually! The one button control scheme is a great attempt at making platformers more accessible. The Balan bouts are actually an intentional metaphor for the unforgiving nature of punching emo willy wonka across space in this Late Capitalist hellworld we call earth. The BoxFox is actuallly a really funny joke and if you didnt find it funny youre stupid! The framerate drops are actually an accessibility feature allowing kids to nail tricky jumps with bullet time. The story written by a dude who said he worked out how to write stories by reading hero with a thousand faces once is actually really deep and smart and something something, theatre of the mind, carl jung, subconscious, pychonauts etc. I take off half a star for the CGI cutscenes, their polish clash against the intentional roughness of the graphics for thematic reasons (People are sad and dont clean their brains)

Now you may shower me with praise for being ahead of the curve, contrarians of the future

I went into this with the most optimism a diehard sega fan could have and still gave up after the fifth world. Switch port is basically unplayable and freezes for seconds at a time in handheld mode, it's insane

All of this game's problems come from a combination of arzest being a shit developer and naka completely misunderstanding what gen z kids look for in a game. The level design and 1 button control scheme are insanely condescending, and the organization of costumes and collectibles serve just to pad out the game with THINGS to meet a length/content quota.

This game could have and should have been good and im hurt that this was the first 3d platformer with this style in the longest time - let alone with an actual BUDGET. This was such a missed opportunity, it sucks so much.

For the last few years, I've taken to digging through old PS1/PS2/Dreamcast/Saturn games, including unlocalized ones, to find new tastes of what I consider the magic of video games: to step into an interesting space that plays by a unique set of rules. I delight in finding something like Napple Tale, Ape Escape 2001, or Robbit Mon Dieu that has a colorful, weird, unfamiliar world to experience. While I've often been satisfied with mere morsels of this feeling--Napple Tale's hub world, Ape Escape 2001's miniature playgrounds---Balan Wonderworld delivers a whole feast.

Every stage is surreal, varied, and bursting with color. A cornfield bends as you run across it. An Escher-esque interior littered with giant art supplies reorients itself when you pass through a mirror. Mysterious creatures dance just out of reach. Each of these is packed with secrets, requiring creative use of the game's 80 costumes. Often, puzzles will have an obvious solution using a costume you don't have, and you'll need to think outside the box. What at first appears to be a rigid lock and key puzzle quickly becomes an invitation to knock down the door.

You collect these costumes and maintain a persistent stock of them. You can carry three at once to swap between at will, and exchange these three with ones in your closet at checkpoints. If you are hit while wearing a costume, that costume is lost forever, but you can stock multiple of each one. This system is fascinating, versatile, and elegantly encapsulates both action mechanics and health. You may get a rare costume that is extremely useful, but have to use it sparingly lest you risk losing it. You can always replay stages to collect costumes, or with a bit of time investment grind out a large stock of any costume you want. Or you can wing it, risk running out, and improvise.

Each costume can perform only a single action, such as a jump or attack (or, if you're lucky, a jump that is also an attack). That means the strongest in combat are often also unable to jump. Almost every moment presents an interesting decision with real stakes and tradeoffs. The most useful costume I found for damaging the final boss was also incapable of dodging one of its rarer attacks, and if I stocked up three of them for the fight, one would have to be sacrificed periodically. I love this.

The storytelling is entirely wordless. It opens with your character, a child, experiencing such a tragedy (perhaps the death of a parent?) that she sulks around the house and the maids speak of her in hushed tones. She encounters a mysterious being - the thing on the box - that helps her conquer her conquer her grief by empowering her to help others. Each stage is the mind of a different character experiencing some kind of trauma or despair: a snowy mountain representing a girl who lost her sister and is unable to love, the aforementioned Escheresque nightmare of staircases folding on themselves representing an artist trapped by the pressure for artistic growth. Their stories are told through ornate, stylized prerendered cutscenes. Once you help them defeat the manifestations of their despair, you join them in a dance sequence that (sap that I am) brought a tear to my eye more than once. Understanding the pain of others is the best tool for overcoming our own despair.

Balan Wonderworld is one of my favorite games I have ever played. The discrediting and imprisonment of its creator lends the quality of an elegy--for a man, for an era, for a design sensibility unfettered by convention and expectations--that underscores the reality of the pain it depicts, and the desperate need for the hope and resilience we can find by sharing it.

Surrealism might as well not exist in our pointless efforts to reach realism in the modern day space of video games. While every studio is currently looking to make the AAAA metaverse game that will consume the rest of our lives, this quirky, downright nonsensically designed one-button 3D platformer recalls the glory days of the Dreamcast with a sincerity embedded in its cast of regular folks who just need some cheering up, clearly coming from a place of bizarre, but undeniable empathy via Yuji Naka's direction. If you've played Naka's NiGHTS into dreams... before, you should know what I'm talking about. There is a deep, Seuss-like respect for childish imagination that has no place in our angry, confused current world. Of course everyone hated it.

This game has heart, I just wish playing it was much better. Great soundtrack, playful visuals and a whimsical theatre style, it is those wondrous factors that make a Sonic Team game for me. Balan Wonderworld feels like an art project that wasn’t finished, though I am able to see the spots of beauty glimmering out.

Don’t think I could ever recommend it to anyone, but if this is Yuji Naka’s last major game, well damn. There’s always Prope’s Rodea the Sky Solider to replay. Every second was an adventure…

I only played the demo to this but this is easily in the top 2 worst games I've ever played. It baffles me how much this game gets oh so totally wrong from the mechanics to the level design to the art-style. This shit is irredeemable and I'm honestly shocked that it wasn't flat-out cancelled. The only redeeming factor is the very ok soundtrack which is masterful compared to the rest of this abomination. I'm not trying to be a troll or a hateful meta-bomber, I genuinely think this game is an abhorrent abomination from a fundamental level. The fact that I can tell this from a demo is just shocking. Also for those who will comment, no a day 1 patch won't fix jack shit because Balan is a fundamentally flawed experience.


Also apparently the final boss of this game gives non-epileptic people an epileptic response without warning which is shocking and truly ignorant that this was allowed past console certification and testing.

Do better Yuji Naka, do better

I played this game / demo for an hour and I’m not convinced to play any further, let alone to buy the full version.

The controls are way too slow and basic and the jumps slow down your movement. It’s not fun. You can find different costumes to obtain different abilities, but you can’t interact with the world. There are many objects, but they’re only decorative. You can’t throw them, you can’t destroy them and you cant whirl them all over the place. The world is static.

I don’t expect a brilliant narrative in a game like this, but even for a collect-a-thon, it lacks some oomph.

The CGI cutscenes are very beautiful, the soundtrack is neat and I think this game has a strong sense of decoration, but that’s not enough to truly impress me.

I recommend playing the demo before you buy this game with your hard earned money.

Edit: I need to lower the score a smidge (from 1.5 to 1.0), because Balan Wonderworld producer Noriyoshi Fujimoto “addressed” the demo feedback and instead of delaying the game to fix all or at least most of the problems, he plans on giving us a day one patch. That’s not how feedback demos work. The only way to address this game is with a flamethrower and I hope Balan Wonderworld is his last game.

Balan Wonderworld, but feels more like Blunderworld

Balan Wonderworld is a 3d platformer where you choose your character, Leo Craig or Emma Cole, and help the troubled hearts of twelve individuals with the help from someone named Balan. Or at least that is the jist of it, as the story is not really made clear within your whole time playing. I knew that I was “saving” the person in their world, but the cutscenes and lack of dialogue of the cast makes it a little hard to piece it together. I know there is a book alongside this game, but I am not able to find the time or drive to read it.

The story is not even the confusing part of this game. It is how the brains behind the creation of this game made a platformer that feels half-baked. My time with the game felt like a drag, the levels felt void of creativity, the Quick Time Events (will call them QTEs from now on), and confusing narrative really drove home that this game is not complete.

Before I just lay into this, I will say it had some very good moments. The boss levels are great and I do like how they reward you with a collectable for figuring out all the ways to damage them. The bosses are 100% the best part of this game, and thankfully you have one for each world plus the final boss. I will also say the creativity of where the statues and entrances to where the “Balan Bouts” are located are extremely well done. I was challenged to find all of them, and I had to expand all the costumes and their powers to find them. I can name two that made me scratch my head till I figured out that I needed a certain costume. That will be all the praise I have for this game.

The meat and bones of this is what every other gamer who has played this game has said: It feels unfinished and rushed. I will heavily agree with this statement, all the levels I played were easy as cake to complete. None were challenging to get from start to finish, and the levels never really made myself excited to revisit. Which guess what, you will be revisiting EVERY level at least once if you want to advance in the story. And the QTEs are very cool, till you see you have to do them more than 5 times. A total of 48, and if you want to 100% the game you will be doing them a lot.

With those levels, you collect costumes to advance. In the whole game there are 80 costumes. The issue is, there are repeats. An example of this is the Gear Prince and Gear King. They both function the same, but one block can only be done by the Gear King if there is a light bulb on it. In the end, it could be just the Gear Prince could do both. Definitely could have shaved down 15 costumes to give more ideas for other costumes. But it is a point that every costume is used at least once to get the game fully completed. I do appreciate that you will need to get them all, but the repeats make me think why they added slight off versions.

If someone asked if they should try it, honestly I would say save your money unless you like Banjo-Kazooie (N64) or Super Mario 64 (N64). People who grew up with those platformers will get that blast to the past, but just in the most boring fashion possible. I had this game hovering around 1.5 out of 5. But I will bump it up to a 2 out of 5. I do think you will find your fill if you are obsessed with the 3D platformer genre.

My PS Plus Extra subscription is inspiring me to make bad decisions and a friend did tell me that the PS5 version is "the best one".

Well, I did it. After abandoning the Switch version, I finally beat Balan Wonderworld. I got every costume and beat the extra acts too, just for good measure. I have 41 out of 47 trophies and that's where I'm stopping because I sure as hell ain't getting the Platinum and those Balan Bout statues can kiss my ass.

What are my thoughts? It's bad! It's bad for all the reasons that people say it's bad but the most frustrating thing to me is it doesn't even fully commit to the bit! I wanted to fully immerse myself in those goofy musical theater flash dances and they reuse the same four songs! The game wants to be whimsical so bad but feels like it stops itself before it gets too weird and this game of all games needed to be weirder.

BUT there's more to it than that.

After putting 20 hours of my life into this thing, I truly believe Balan Wonderworld is one of those bad games that needs to be experienced, albeit very cheaply (I've seen this game hover around the five dollar price tag) or with a subscription service. Watching a review or stream of this just isn't enough. You need to live through Balan's Wretched Wonderworld. You just don't know how bad the Balan Bouts are until you try to make a serious effort in getting all the statues and you screw up the last button input in a 6 prompt QTE. You just don't know how bad the grinding portion of this game is until you have to fight a boss again and again just to reset a world so that raindrops, minibosses, and eggs respawn. The Tower of Tims needs 24,000 spins of that Tim Wheel for a trophy. I hatched and bred 100 Tims for another. It took me 25 soft resets for the Tim of Legend. Balan Wonderworld is not just bad, it's relentless.

This was an accomplishment in just how much I can endure before I call it quits, but this game truly earned its reputation. My time on this planet is finite and this is how I used it, and I do hope others do the same because sometimes, consuming bad 3D platformers make you better appreciate the decisions made in better games like Gex 3: Deep Cover Gecko, Vexx, Ice Age: Scrat's Nutty Adventure, and Dr. Muto.