Balan Wonderworld is a new adventure platformer from Square Enix, but it’s nothing we haven’t seen before.
There’s a lot to like about Balan Wonderworld, especially if you’re a fan of laid back collectathon games. Your main objective, essentially, is to explore a variety of quirky levels in search of shiny objects. In this case, you’ll be hunting down golden Balan statues – but you’ll only be able to bag them all if you wear the right outfit for the job. The game lets you pick from two large-handed teens, Leo Craig or Emma Cole, who embark on a mystical adventure to the imaginary land of Wonderworld. Led by the enigmatic maestro named Balan, you’ll enter stages that represent a person’s emotions, which is just as weird as it sounds. You can expect lots of dancing creatures throughout. After playing through a couple of the game’s early chapters and acts, it’s clear that we need to temper our expectations. If you were hoping to see the same sort of sophisticated level design and ingenuity that help make games like Super Mario Odyssey or even Sackboy: A Big Adventure so engaging, Balan Wonderworld isn’t for you. What it does do, though, is rely on a tried and tested formula that delivers a fair amount of enjoyment, even if it’s to the game’s detriment. There are over 80 different costumes to discover in Balan Wonderworld, and the core gameplay revolves around finding the suit you’ll need to overcome an obstacle, enemy or reach a new area. The outfits you’ll don are nothing short of adorable: you can dress up as a pig, which lets you perform a ground pound to flatten pegs; a kangaroo that can flutter jump to reach ledges that seem just out of reach; or a weird, elastic flowerpot thing that lets you extend your body so you can grab items in high places.
