Wildermyth - procedural storytelling tactical RPG

[GentlemanCthulhu]

I hear a lot of good things about this game but the art style is definitely not for me.

 

[Zombra]

So this is good?

You've seen screenshots of the "comic pages" by now. If you think they look charming, and like the idea of high stakes C&C from your decisions, then you'd enjoy the game (and it's OK, I won't tell the Codex). If not, I'm not sure what you're looking for.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

So this is good?

Wildermyth is an interesting experiment in procedural storytelling based on character traits, which you have some control over at character creation, and the choices made by players in the scripted events; C&C enthusiasts should have flocked to this game, although seemingly did not. The majority of the game is spent in combat, which is turn-based and tactical but overly simplistic, while exploration is minimal.

It is possible to obtain interesting chains of unrelated events over the course of a campaign:

Spoiler

 

[Yosharian]

Hmm interesting

 

[Percy]

I found the game enjoyable. If you're having doubts I think you'll know whether or not you like it within the time you can refund on Steam. For example I can see how the art work or the story may not appeal to everyone.

Personally I find the whole concept interesting and if someone made a similar game expanding on classes/items/tactics and a darker story line (with community based campaigns maybe?) I could see it being my favourite game ever.

Its a bit light on in a lot of aspects (classes/itemisation/story) but I think it works.

 

[InD_ImaginE]

Out of all the "PROCEDURAL STORY TELLING! INFINITE CHARACTER TRAIT BASED STORY!" generation of games that Avellone think is the future... this is probably the one where it is actually good.... by the virtue of the dev writing shit ton of pre-made events for the game.

 

[Infinitron]

GameBanshee review: https://www.gamebanshee.com/reviews/126929-wildermyth-review/all-pages.html

Introduction

When Worldwalker Games' party-based RPG Wildermyth launched into early access back in 2019, it intrigued me. A unique art style, tactical turn-based battles, tabletop inspirations and the promise of truly procedural storytelling - it all seemed almost too good to be true.

But with the game getting almost universal praise initially, and following its full release in 2021, my curiosity got the better of me. How can a game with a randomized story be coherent, let alone good? I had to see it for myself. And now you can find my thoughts on it below.

Roguelike? How about Bardlike instead?

Wildermyth offers a total of six standalone story-driven campaigns (you'll have to unlock some of them by playing the previous ones) and some fully-procedural options without a big overarching story, just a series of randomized quests spread across three to five chapters.

All these campaigns are presented as fairy tales from a faraway land. Stories of unlikely heroes fighting monsters, protecting their homes, and passing down their legacies.

You start by rolling a party of three characters - a Warrior, a Hunter, and a Mystic. Later on, you can recruit additional heroes. Your combat party fits in up to five characters, but your overall group can have more members, allowing you to have multiple parties roaming the world and performing various tasks.

When creating your party, apart from customizing how your characters look, you'll also be able to pick a number of "hooks" along the lines of proud, greedy, or lucky. These will determine how your characters react to various happenings, the personal quests they get, and certain options during encounters.

And this is where the game's procedurally-generated nature gets to shine. While the big story moments are predetermined, each time you do something in the game, like visit a town, explore some ruin or attack an enemy stronghold, you get an event presented as a comic strip.

The event you get is drawn from a very large pool to the point where you'll probably complete several of the game's campaigns before you start seeing repeats. The only unifying quality of these events is their general air of whimsy. But other than that, everything goes there. Dealing with marauding bandits, following a mossy giant through the woods, falling through the ground to discover an ancient shrine, or getting fused with a bear spirit. You never know what the game has in store for you next.

And then, your characters and their associated hooks will adjust the specifics of how those events unfold. For example, during one of the repeat events I got, I found an idol with a huge gem embedded into it. The first time around, I had a choice to leave it alone or steal the gem. But then in another campaign, I also got an option to psychically communicate with the idol.

The game also has a relationship system where your characters can become friends, rivals, or romantic partners. And not only does this provide combat bonuses, like when a character deals bonus damage to an enemy that damaged their lover, but these relationships are also reflected in the comics.

It's impressive how many variables each event takes into consideration to then craft a story for you on the fly about maybe a family of adventurers that travel and fight together. As the campaign progresses, and chapters have decade-long breaks between them, you watch your characters grow older as their kids join the group and go from fresh recruits to hardened veterans themselves. And then, some of your characters die, others retire, and their kids and friends get to carry the torch.

I'm honestly amazed by how well this all works and how all the standalone events come together to create a solid narrative.


It helps that the actual comics are very conscious of word economy and don't overload you with pointless exposition. All the exchanges you get are punchy and to the point. And sure, some of the events fit your current campaign better than others, and on occasion, some wires get crossed and an event makes close to no sense in or out of context. But that doesn't happen too often.

The game's papercraft art style also does a lot of heavy lifting. All the backgrounds in Wildermyth look like paintings, and all the objects, which includes your characters, look like they're made out of paper - low-budget but well-crafted miniatures in a board game. This approach allows the developers to keep their backgrounds pretty and their characters modular. And they seem to have mastered the art of making their rather simplistic models portray emotions. A crooked smile here or a raised eyebrow there is all that's needed to elevate some simple joke from a forgettable comic strip to a chuckle-worthy moment.

And after an event is finished and your choices get preserved to be brought up at some later date, you're oftentimes treated to a combat encounter.

Systems and Combat

Your enemies come in several distinct factions, ranging from mutated forest animals to robot-skeleton hybrids. Each campaign generally has a primary enemy group for you to fight, with all the others appearing from time to time to provide some variety.

Each faction comes with its own theme, like the aforementioned skeleton robots getting bonuses when they stand close to each other, and can boast a decent number of distinct units.

A fairly unique feature of Wildermyth is that initially, you'll only be facing a couple of relatively weak enemies. But after each battle with a particular faction, that faction will get an upgrade - a new unit type, more units per encounter, or some buff to their existing roster. This keeps things fresh and exciting throughout the campaign without, in my experience, ever getting overwhelming.

Going back to your side of the battlefield, Warriors are good at dealing melee damage, manipulating the battlefield by throwing their foes around, taunting and intercepting attacks. Hunters are your standard Rogue/Ranger hybrid specializing in dealing ranged damage and being a stealthy backstabbing git.

And Mystics are where things get really interesting. Instead of just getting spells to cast, they get the ability to "interfuse" with various objects you can find in the world. Interfuse with a rock, and you'll get the ability to launch it at your enemies. Possess a loom, and you'll be able to entangle your target with magic-infused fabrics. Get in touch with a nearby lamp, and you'll be able to "steal" its fire to chuck it at your foes.

There are a great many objects you can interfuse with, each with its own unique options, and as your Mystics level up, they'll be able to specialize in certain types of interfusions, making them more potent and expanding their functionality. Furthermore, the act of interfusing with an object has a decent range, and once you perform it, the interfused object will provide you with vision, turning this action into a useful scouting tool as well.

Basically, if you have a tactical mind for it, Wildermyth's Mystics provide you with a very wide array of tools and turn what would otherwise be a fairly standard D&D-inspired turn-based combat system, into somewhat of a puzzle, similar to something like Subset Games' Into the Breach.

That, of course, doesn't mean that you have to play the game like this. Instead, you can choose to focus on your Warriors and Hunters and just fight your enemies straight up.


In that case, you'll be mastering a turn-based system where each character has two main actions per turn that you use to move and attack, a single swift action for something like laying a trap or going into a special stance, and unlimited free actions for swapping between weapons and the like. During your turn, you can move your characters in any order you like, so there's no initiative, and, as a fairly annoying design choice, once you move your character a single square, it counts as an action, meaning your movement points aren't granular.

Upon leveling up, your characters will get to pick a new ability. Reinforcing the game's procedurally-generated nature, the choices you get are random. But you can reroll them by using Legacy Points that you get for completing encounters and undertaking optional tasks.

Thanks to this approach it's quite difficult to power-game and build an optimized party, but at the very least, all the options you get tend to be useful in some way (new interfusions, multiple attacks per turn, the overwatch maneuver). And the random element just makes things more memorable in the long run. It makes your characters feel imperfect but unique.

After you're done with an encounter, you also get some loot, and here, I feel, the developers may have dropped the ball. Sure, you have a decent number of weapon types with their own special uses, like axes being able to "shred" enemy armor, maces knocking your enemies back, and spears having increased attack range, but the actual weapons follow a linear tier progression and even the unique and elemental weapons you can find don't really offer that much in terms of variety. A minor bonus here, an extra effect on crit there, and that's about it. And armor gets even less love since it only has two tiers compared to the three tiers of weapons, and doesn't seem to have any unique variants.

When it comes to objectives, usually you're tasked with eliminating all enemies on the map. But from time to time, you'll get asked to reach a certain tile or defeat a boss. You'll also get bonus objectives on certain maps, and depending on your choices leading up to the fight, you'll get different starting bonuses or penalties.

The game has four difficulty levels and the option to decouple combat difficulty from the overall campaign difficulty, in effect allowing you to have challenging fights while, putting it into Pathfinder: Kingmaker terms, automating kingdom management.

Overall, if you know your turn-based games, the highest difficulty level offers a decent degree of challenge with some opportunities to mess up. However, due to the game's campaign structure where your characters can easily die and your recruiting opportunities are usually limited to a single rookie character per chapter, cranking things all the way up might not be the best idea if you're looking to have an organic experience without too much reloading (there's also an Iron Man mode if you can't trust yourself with a load button).

With that in mind, the second to last difficulty may be on the easier side, but it's still not a complete cakewalk and will allow you to have some tense moments without outright putting you into a long-term death spiral.

Now, connecting all of this is an overworld layer. And the best way I have to describe it is a very, and I mean very, pared-down version of Jagged Alliance.

Basically, you have a big world map separated into a number of regions. Initially, the "forces of good" control only a few of them, and it's up to you to scout the remaining areas, clear them out, establish defenses and production facilities, and finally, fulfill some big goal. This ends the chapter and advances the game's clock for about ten years.


While you're doing that, you'll be dealing with a couple of timers - one for calamities and another for invasions. The former from time to time make your enemies stronger, though you can spend some Legacy Points to counteract these effects, while the latter send a wave of enemies to rampage through your territories.

At the end of the day, this whole layer feels like a bit of an afterthought and doesn't really do anything to improve the overall experience. All the threats it brings to the table are negligible, and all the benefits you get from upgrading your areas boil down to some resources you can spend on crafting new pieces of gear. And as we've established, the game's itemization isn't deep enough to justify all the busy work.

So my advice there is to keep the overworld difficulty fairly low, not bother about it much, and just focus on the story events and the turn-based battles. You know, the good stuff.

Finally, once you manage to complete a campaign, you'll get a chance to promote some of your characters to legendary heroes and add them to your Legacy pool. This will let you preserve their gear and some of their skills, and later recruit an alternate-world version of those heroes for your subsequent campaigns.

Technical Information

The game works and runs well, and I've not encountered anything resembling a bug during my time with it. With how text-driven the whole thing is, there were some typos here and there, but they were few and far between.

The "papercraft" visuals are unique and fit the game well, while its soundtrack at times reminded me of Arcanum, which as far as I'm concerned, is a great thing.

The options menu is a bit weird in that the first thing you check, resolution options, is very limited, but then apart from that, you have a lot of possible customization, including resizing the UI and adjusting animation speed for your characters, enemies, and even purely for ability animations.

The game also has built-in mod support and a multiplayer mode where you can assign certain characters to different players and play the game that way.

There's also no voice acting of any sort, which I found refreshing in this age where even indie developers often feel compelled to fully voice their projects, thus limiting their creativity when it comes to elaborate conversations and branching dialogues.

And if there's one thing to complain about, it's the fact that the game's combat log is very vague, and as a result, it can be hard to know exactly how or why you're hitting or missing. You just get shown the chance for an attack to land, and then the log marks the damage it dealt if it hits without detailing why it did or didn't.

Conclusion

After spending quite a bit of time with Wildermyth, I can safely say that as an experiment in the realm of procedural storytelling, the game is a resounding success. When picking it up, I didn't expect much but ended up being pleasantly surprised.

You add an enjoyable combat system with very unique spellcasting on top of that, and you've got yourself a game. With how well that stuff works, the stuff that doesn't, namely itemization and overworld exploration, fails to sour the overall experience.

If you'd like to play a unique RPG in this age where it feels like everything that could be done has already been done, you can't go wrong with Wildermyth.

 

[Poseidon00]

This game is good. It's not great. But it's absolutely worth a few tries. Load up on mods. Take a few characters through several adventures and build them up. Best to go into it without looking at what the possibilities are, because there are a lot, and some of them are quite cool.

 

[eXalted]

Load up on mods.

Recommendations?

 

[Poseidon00]

Load up on mods.

Recommendations?

Expanded off hand options because who doesn't like dual wielding or other such things, anything that adds more story events or ways to customize your character, there is a mod that adds multiple races to the game but its in beta and I would only recommend it if they can fix the issues. Its jarring when the offspring of two of your adventurers is a random cyclops lol

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Load up on mods.

Recommendations?

I played Wildermyth without any mods, but the one thing that irked me was being unable to freely select from all available abilities on level up; instead the game randomly selects four options (typically one upgrade to an existing ability and three new abilities) from all the ones available to that character, of which you choose one. There is a button for rerolling the options, but it requires expenditure of legacy points for each reroll. There are interesting synergies between certain abilities, but you'll need luck to obtain them for any character due to this randomness. It seems that someone created a Free Ability Rerolls mod on the Steam workshop in September of last year, conveniently after I'd finished with Wildermyth after completing three campaigns.

 

[Poseidon00]

Load up on mods.

Recommendations?

I played Wildermyth without any mods, but the one thing that irked me was being unable to freely select from all available abilities on level up; instead the game randomly selects four options (typically one upgrade to an existing ability and three new abilities) from all the ones available to that character, of which you choose one. There is a button for rerolling the options, but it requires expenditure of legacy points for each reroll. There are interesting synergies between certain abilities, but you'll need luck to obtain them for any character due to this randomness. It seems that someone created a Free Ability Rerolls mod on the Steam workshop in September of last year, conveniently after I'd finished with Wildermyth after completing three campaigns.

I should have mentioned the free rerolls mod. There is one that adds extra powers as well iirc.

Build tinkering in Wildermyth is actually kind of fun. You can make your mage into a perfectly respectable front-liner by making use of the powers that adds extra damage to your physical attacks for each interfusion you have, the Earthscribe ability, the one that adds armor for each interfusion, and the one that does damage whenever someone gets in melee range.

 

[Infinitron]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/763890/view/3385044600575502569

1.10 Suna Lo Haster
We're Steam Deck Verified! +New Comics, Pets, and Portuguese Translation

We're Steam Deck Verified!
It's official! Wildermyth is now Steam Deck Verified so you can play on the go with ease.
Here's a look at Wildermyth in action on the Steam Deck:

Our Portuguese Translation is Live!
After over a year of hard work, we're so pleased to announce that our Brazilian-Portuguese translation is live! (Translation by Edson Belo de Oliveira Júnior - @mundonasher)

German and Spanish are right on its heels- they're currently going through localization quality assurance. Russian and French are both getting close, but aren't quite at the quality assurance step yet.

Merch Sale!
From 11/25 until 12/09, everything in our merch store will be 20% off. Order soon to make sure everything arrives in time for the holidays! Click here to shop the sale.

More Treats
Our writers have been busy; we've added a new event, rewritten another, and added 10 new tidings. We've also added 3 new pets! You can find sneak peeks of them on our socials if you do some creeping around.

Additionally, you'll notice new VFX for some theme skins and abilities. We hope these will add some extra flavor to your heroes in combat.

In Multiplayer, everyone can now recruit from their legacies, not just the host. Now you can show off your hard earned Mythwalkers and take on Walking Lunch together. And, of course, we've squashed a lot of bugs and added some QoL Tools for us and modders.


1.10+453 Suna Lo Haster
Added official support for Brazilian Portuguese!
Steam Deck Verified!
New Event: Shadow and Sly
Rewritten Events:
* Mooringlight (from: Star Dance)
Revised Events:
* Finders Keepers
3 New Pets!
10 New tidings/credits comics!
Multiplayer clients can now recruit from their legacies
Melee and Range accuracy stats merged into one "Accuracy" stat
(Upbringing stats should be properly merged for existing heroes)
Reduced critter and crow amulet accuracy buffs from 15 to 12
Credits comics can now be manually navigated, automatic time is
longer for comics with more text, and fewer snapshots are shown
Years of peace and Credits comics now have reduced chance of
showing ones you've seen in previous campaigns (like regular
comics) and have better weighting
Some armors now have Silver and Gold variations (in customize tab)
New VFX for Wolf Howl, Shard Skin, and some theme skins
New ability icons
Crystal Chrysalis now explodes and deals damage on hero's next turn
Comics will vertically scroll if too big to fit on screen
Overland job start events show the actual ability name as the title
Adjusted ability bar positioning for Jumpjolt and Witherbolt
Opening the Editor on Steam sets the controller to act like a mouse
Fix a bug where using Larger comics in Chinese would crash the game
Fix a bug where Sharpshooter could cause incorrect Ambush max range
Fix a bug where Temple of Silence attack was invisible + multi-hit
Fix a bug where Chinese difficulty settings in Options > This Game
could show up in English
Fix a bug with viewing the patch notes in the main menu
Fix a bug where hero level up dialog didn't show the upgraded stats
Fix a bug where Proud quest main and secondary heroes were swapped
Fix a bug with temp armor and warding being removed in wrong order
Fix a bug where Steam Workshop mod campaigns wouldn't load at start
Fix a bug where kill tracking would cause lag with large legacies
Fix a bug where Mythweaver ability text didn't fit on the button
Fix a bug with invisible tutorial tooltips in controller mode
Fix a bug where on kill effects wouldn't happen for hero who
killed Ecthis zombie mentor.
Fix a bug where Shieldshear plays wrong sfx if holding a crossbow
Fix a bug where Enduring War sacrificed hero was immediately put
into the legacy without promotion
Fix a bug where No Time for Clawmonsters achievement couldn't be
achieved by a reaction strike
Fix a bug where Passing Shadow achievement could carry over
between missions
Fix a bug where in The Offering, rat tail would show up too soon
Fix a bug with loading name data if some locales didn't exist
Fix a bug where Jumpjaw didn't apply the correct amount of poison
Fix a bug where gorgons wouldn't spawn in Temple of Silence
Fix a bug with jobs with long names that would go off the tooltip
Fix a bug where using Burning Arrow with Ambush prepared would
give the burning arrow +2 damage
Fix a bug where waterling history line could use wrong gender for
waterling if the hero is attracted to anyone
Fix a (mod?) crash if a promotion ability not in a pool is shown
Fix a bug with artifact weapon hero death choice "attack" option
Fix a bug where Ambush and Vost could hit multiple times
Fix a bug where frog tongue could pull some immovable enemies
Fix a bug where bow range would read as 1-8 instead of 2-8
Fix a bug where backend comic text could show for missing aspects
Fix a bug with Enter and Escape functionality in content editor
Fix some typos
Tools: Added CustomizeHero Outcome for customization of a hero's
head, face, hair, colors, and extra parts, or randomizing a slot
Tools: Added requireAspects field for HumanSkin Parts, for
customizations that only show up for heroes with certain aspects
Tools: Comic editor hovered objects now show a box around them
Tools: Comic editor Clickthrough view now jumps to selected panel
Tools: Comic editor now shows effect in side panel (also added
simple view, so it's easy to adjust event weights and scores)
Tools: Added TIDING_MISC_GENERAL and TIDING_WRAPUP_GENERAL types
(So they don't need to focus on a specific hero)
Tools: Improved Pick Events feedback for tidings and credits
Tools: Added several keyboard shortcuts for selected hero cheats:
(Bindings also viewable in Combat Lab) Ctrl+Shift+H/A/D/S/R:
Add Temp Health/Actions/Bonus Damage/Speed/Refresh Abilities
Tools: In editor, with Multi-paste enabled:
* Can now append multiple entries without closing window
* Can append entries after existing entries in lists via Paste
* Copied values now show more human-readable summary
Tools: Name generation files (like human.names.json) now merge
Tools: Added abilityForbidAspects field for ability aspects
Tools: Added toDegrees and toRadians expressions
Tools: Added between(x, min, max) expression
Tools: Added if(x, pass, fail) expression
Tools: Editor particle and audio fields now show suggestions
Tools: Added better logging for Test failures
Tools: Added scoreTiesTrueRandom option to BY_SCORE targets
Tools: Can now use Animate Outcome to spawn overland particles
Tools: Ability, Theme, and Gear cheats now execute immediately

 

[toiletwino]

I see some folks emptying both barrels into their credibility, tripping over themselves to recommend a game with a hard upper limit of 'mediocre.'

Not a good look.

 

[Alex]

So this is good?

Wildermyth is an interesting experiment in procedural storytelling based on character traits, which you have some control over at character creation, and the choices made by players in the scripted events; C&C enthusiasts should have flocked to this game, although seemingly did not. The majority of the game is spent in combat, which is turn-based and tactical but overly simplistic, while exploration is minimal.

It is possible to obtain interesting chains of unrelated events over the course of a campaign:

Spoiler

It is nice they are bringing it back, but I liked the graphics of the old Comic Chat better.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Zombra]

They deserve more $ for their contributions to genre innovation. This may even spur another playthrough for me.

 

[Infinitron]

The Wildermyth Armors and Skins DLC just launched, and as a way to celebrate, we decided to answer a bunch of questions from players!

 

[Trans-Financial-Man]

I've been dipping into this game every once in a while, I actually do like it. But there are some niggling issues for me.

1. The artstyle is hideous. I get that good art is expensive for games. But the vast majority of art in this game is still images or very lightly animated ones. That drastically reduces the cost. I'd settle for generic indie platformer pixel art style over the current artstyle. Ideally this game is suited quite well to Frank Franzetta style still images but I doubt the people who made this game even know who that is.
2. Power creep. Every player gets these super special events that give them super special powers that then aren't special because everyone has a super special power. One of my characters turning into a Raven furry thing is less shocking when it came after my other party members turned into a tree man and a crystal man respectively. And their super special powers make the game way too easy. Stop giving out the super special events so easily. Have more mundane events and character drama events. Leave the super special events to actually be super special.
3. More classes. I want Paladins. That is all.

 

[Kev Inkline]

 

[OSK]

I picked this game up during the Steam sale and I've played through the tutorial campaign and the Enduring War campaign. I wouldn't go as far as to say the game is good, but it's interesting.

The combat and overland stuff is shallow, there's only three classes, and the abilities you get on level up have you choosing from a small selection of randomly chosen skills. I ended up with some powerhouse characters and some near worthless ones thanks to RNG.

I like how the campaigns span decades, so you might end up fighting alongside your children and grandchildren. In the five-chapter Enduring War campaign, only one of my original 3 characters didn't retire before the final chapter, and he was old. Age makes your characters stats decrease, like movement and healing rate, but they kind of make up for it with more abilities and stronger gear. My elderly mystic had trouble keeping up with the rest of the party on large maps and had to sit out some battles to recover health, but he still hit hard and even landed the killing blow at the end of the campaign. The procedural generation is kind of a mixed bag. I like how all the decisions can result in big changes for one of your characters or just have a small impact on the next battle. But I already saw some duplicates between the first two campaigns, and I imagine it will only get worse the more you play. Oh, and the magic has a neat twist. You can't just cast a fireball whenever you want, there needs to be an open flame somewhere within your vicinity. Your surroundings dictate what magic you can use.

There's a lot of stuff to like in this game, but ultimately it's lacking in depth. I feel like you'll want to take a break between campaigns so you don't get sick of seeing duplicate events.

Power creep. Every player gets these super special events that give them super special powers that then aren't special because everyone has a super special power. One of my characters turning into a Raven furry thing is less shocking when it came after my other party members turned into a tree man and a crystal man respectively. And their super special powers make the game way too easy. Stop giving out the super special events so easily. Have more mundane events and character drama events. Leave the super special events to actually be super special.

I experienced that during the tutorial campaign, but I only had a single character get those powers in the 5-chapter campaign I played. Instead it felt like everyone got pets. I think it's just the RNG.

 

[Lhynn]

It really lacks content, the pool of random events is too small and more effects are needed. As for depth, yeah, more would be appreciated, but Colony ship has less depth than this and I see people praising that slop.