Continuing to occasionally get blazed and play this game. I’m on world 6. The combat is definitely the worst thing about it, especially that terrible celtic jazz fusion music that sounds exactly like the terrible soundtrack to the terrible Dr. Stone anime.
I did realize something fun last night. You know the classic platformer trope where you beat a level and your character does a little dance to a fanfare? I think the over-the-top dance scenes at the end of every Balan world are riffing on that. They took the end-of-level dance and extended it out to a whole Bubsy Berkeley musical scene with an entire pop song.
That’s my sense of this game… A bunch of 3D platformer veterans going off on completely bizarre design tangents, overthinking things to the point of illegibility.
13 Likes
played the first world of this game and my bottom line review is
Balan Wonderworld is a guy on mushrooms thinking he invented a new universal language but he just reinvented punch and judy (****1/2)
12 Likes
this game’s dirt cheap right now btw
so far i highly recommend it, it is inexplicable
8 Likes
One of the last actual videogames we talked about on Hinge Problems before warmovis, because what more can you say about videogames after Balan.
3 Likes
it does remind me of fortnite in that it’s The Logical Conclusion (Absurd) of a certain kind of video game
3 Likes
Exactly. “What if we made All The Mascot Platformers?”
4 Likes
the price drop I’ve been waiting for thank you, merry timsmas to all!
6 Likes
This game overwhelms me in a way it shouldn’t. It’s got the energy of a game for toddlers, like one of those early CD-ROM games that were like point and click adventures without any puzzles. But on the other hand it has “puzzles” and challenges that are more suitable for 8-13 year olds. And on the other other hand it seems to be referencing nearly 30 years of 3D platformers in a way that only adults would understand.
I can’t play this game for more than an hour and a half without feeling physically overwhelmed. I think that the issue is the Signal:Noise ratio is extremely high in favor of Noise. It’s mostly noise.
I’m getting maybe 30% of the Balan statues in each world, so it’s clear that I’m missing tons of shit. And some of the ones I have gotten have relied on some very bizarre and unconventional platforming. I’m pretty sure that the ones I’m missing are probably even more deeply embedded in the weird geometry than those. And! You can take the costumes between worlds! So that opens up like, 50+ powerups that might be the answer to any of the puzzles that i am not even seeing!!
So I have to pay attention to literally every piece of geometry because any of it could be important. However, most of it does not seem to actually be important!!! So I end up staring at walls and blocks and pieces of coral and platforms and Giant Corn going “what does any of this mean?” and most of the time the answer is “nothing at all, chump”.
It’s also constantly doing a song and dance number including nonsense visual effects tied to the music, marching and dancing NPCs that will appear sometimes for less than a second before somersaulting into nonexistence, stationary dancing NPCs that will fade into nothing if you try to get too close, literal song and dance numbers between levels, and just like…god i feel like the walls themselves are trembling with some sort of anticipation of dance.
Literally like nothing else I’ve ever played, except it’s also like every other video game I’ve ever played all at once. Terrifying and pointless and mundane and absurd.
21 Likes
and that doesn’t even begin to talk about the Tims!!!
9 Likes
I think it’s also refreshing because so many modern games treat design as a solved problem, or a problem that will be solved shortly. And this game ignores 30 years of design wisdom to produce something that doesn’t follow any “best practices” whatsoever.
And yeah, the result is a huge mess, but its something new in a space that hasn’t seen anything new for fucking years.
As usual, I find myself liking the thing that takes big swings and misses every one rather than the safe bet.
Well, “liking” is a strong word I guess.
12 Likes
This is Balan Wonderworld except instead of Devil Daggers being the only video game, it was every Rare platformer ever made.
7 Likes
I totally agree. This game was deeply unsuited for the dominant “Consumer Reports” style of games criticism and tanked for that reason, but it does have a lot to offer… The game’s aesthetics make it look like a conventional 3D platformer so it’s easy to miss it from press coverage, but when you actually get your hands on it you realize it’s deeply experimental, albeit in a very messy and haphazard way that constantly clashes with its own apparent goals.
9 Likes
i’d go as far as to say balan is one of the most consistently interesting video games of the 2020s thus far. it deftly sidesteps questions like “is it good” because in the context of this game, “good” ceases to mean anything.
i was talking to rudie and booji at the meetup about how this game never takes any design decision for granted. every single fork in the road is a moment to make some new decision, rather than import something from some other, earlier game. i feel similarly about death stranding, though that one is expert enough at the task that it generally feels like a “reasonable” decision was made even in lieu of the expected “best practice” decision a less creative game (all of 'em) would have made.
but! in balan, these bits of design are effectively never a reasonable decision, which has its own appeal.
8 Likes
was there even an audience for non-nintendo(/minecraft/roblox/etc.) kids games on consoles by the time this came out? i think it tanked because the bottom dropped out there, and its status as a critical failure and curio is almost unrelated
4 Likes
Fair point, I’m sure I’m overrating the actual sales impact of the bad press around the game. I think you’re right that kids aren’t really playing console games for the most part when they could be playing free2play and mobile games.
If anything, the negative press probably mainly suppressed sales from older nostalgic players who might have been drawn to a rare new big-budget 3D platformer. But how big is that market and how much were they really relying on it?
4 Likes
i think for balan to be a commercial success you’d need a different audience of new players without the expectations of the form, willing to learn. most of the new original 3D platformer games with a sizeable audience are deliberately in the style of something else (spark the electric jester, yooka-laylee, a hat in time, etc.)
that’s not to say kids don’t make and like new, weird stuff – roblox obbys are like super mario sunshine bonus levels from hell – it’s just happening elsewhere
3 Likes
it’s hard to say but it does seem like a lot of surface-level-similar titles have done at least pretty well
Yooka-Laylee - over 1 million sales within the 1st year
A Hat In Time - around 1 million sales within the 1st year
New Super Lucky’s Tale - 3 million+ sales across SLT and NSLT
Crash 4 - sold at least 1 million, though exact sales aren’t public
Spongebob: BFBB Rehydrated - at least 2 million sales
Psychonauts 2 - at least 1.7 million sales
Sackboy - at least 1.28 million sales
Sonic Frontiers - at least 3.5 million sales
balan’s sales figures are effectively unknown outside of the abysmal launch (only ~2000 copies sold in Japan in the first week)
8 Likes
Don’t forget to laminate your tickets if you got one with a physical version. I keep mine with my passport because I am going to super confuse someone.
4 Likes
I’d like to thank obbys for being the #1 cause of my son with ADHD and anger issues screaming and punching the screen of his ipad. Thank you obbys, you’re doing a real service out there
1 Like
Worth noting that thanks to the Insomniac leak we know that the PS5 Ratchet game still has not made back its development cost.
7 Likes