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Wildermyth - procedural storytelling tactical RPG

mediocrepoet

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Codex 2012 Codex+ Now Streaming! MCA Project: Eternity Divinity: Original Sin 2
It's more of a fairytale storytelling than an actual RPG

I figured that was apparent from the discussion ITT. Anyway, I don't think your criticisms are wrong, I get where you're coming from.

For me, I just happened to think the procedural RNG story telling and relationship building between the characters was a breath of fresh air, even though the underlying mechanics are fairly simple and that if you play enough of it, the "veil" quickly falls and you can basically "see" the tables behind it all. This is definitely not a game you want to visit a wiki for or try to min-max at all.

I guess, ultimately, I see this as a game to satisfy a need for something more relaxing that plays quickly. More of a palette cleanser between bigger games than a main event. I thought it was well worth the asking price.
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
https://www.gamebanshee.com/news/125265-wildermyth-reviews.html

Rock Paper Shotgun Scoreless:

But it was just one story. One of dozens I've had, of hundreds I will have, and one of tens of thousands that people have been having of their own this last week. I cannot possibly express to you how brilliant Wildermyth is nor how fully I recommend you play it and get started on your own. It is one of the best games I have ever played and it will bring you more delight than you thought possible.

COGconnected 85/100:

Overall, Wildermyth is a fantastic addition to the CRPG genre that shows how great procedural generation can be when used smartly. I would highly recommend this game for anyone who is a fan of TTRPGs, maybe even with a couple of friends if your playgroup has been looking for something new to tackle.

Keen Gamer 9/10:

Every aspect of the game is fairly simple. Nothing really drags the game down or carries the game alone, though the character stories are a particular strength. What really makes the game shine is that every aspect of the game complements the others. The developers aimed to create a “myth-making tactical RPG”. I'm not sure I knew what that meant going in, but I do now.

The Indie Game Website 9/10:

On the whole I’m incredibly impressed with Wildermyth. While I was skeptical at first about whether its procedurally-generated narrative events and choices would allow for cohesive character development, its stories are so well-written, funny, and relatable that it’s hard not to be invested in the lives of your motley crew of heroes.

RPG Fan 75/100:

Despite my grievances, this is a competent, tightly developed game. I would argue it’s played even a little too safe. Although a genuinely enjoyable experience, I am shocked at the lack of surprises or variety in storytelling and gameplay. This is a perfect example of a game that needs more time in the oven. I can’t imagine the developers will leave this project behind anytime soon, but I certainly hope updates are free and don’t come in the form of paid DLC — at least for a little while. Wildermyth feels unfinished, but the core is sound.
 

baud

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Don't play if you want a super complex story, with deep characters, the nature of its random generation makes it impossible. But you still get a cast of characters that's evolving, getting into relationships (you can even recruit their children), with a simple turn-based combat system, though I enjoy how the magic work: the mages attune to an object (a tree, a rock, a fire), then cast spell from it, with the spell selection depending on the object.

(or read the last pages, I think the comments are more-or-less on point on the state of the game)
 
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Lhynn

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The C&C is serviceable, there isnt as much RNG as people think though, there are a lot of scripted events of a random nature mixed in with a story that has a beginning a middle and an end, these campaigns range from boring as fuck to fairly interesting and because they play over the course of several decades you see your characters grow, retire and die. Aging, relationships, forming a family and retiring are all mechanics the game presents to you, so the impact is not just narrative.
There is a fair amount of replayability, but once you master the systems and character building it can get stale.
 

baud

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RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I helped put crap in Monomyth
yes, there's a central story for each campaign (though you can play without one, but that's p. boring), but there's not a lot of character development from the story, it's mostly coming from the random events (some which are chains, so an event in chapter 1 may unlock a follow up event in the next chapters). So of course the character development depends on what events you get and if you enjoy this type of development, which is different from what we get in stories with set characters
 

V_K

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So what's the scripted to generated content ratio here? If I, say, play the same campaign twice but with different characters/choices, will it develop into vastly different directions or it'll be the same story with some details changing here and there?
 

Zed Duke of Banville

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So what's the scripted to generated content ratio here? If I, say, play the same campaign twice but with different characters/choices, will it develop into vastly different directions or it'll be the same story with some details changing here and there?
The overarching story in each campaign is predefined, with certain encounters at the end of every chapter (and sometimes to start a chapter). However, not only can your characters differ but you can also receive different events, especially since some of them are connected to particular character traits. Though note that the number of events is only so large, so you might experience repeats simply from playing through several campaigns, much less replaying the same campaign.

hYL7dO5.jpg
 

Zombra

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Make the Codex Great Again! RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
So what's the scripted to generated content ratio here? If I, say, play the same campaign twice but with different characters/choices, will it develop into vastly different directions or it'll be the same story with some details changing here and there?
The strategic game is the only "generated" content, in that the systems dictate monster spawns, territory configurations etc. The meat of the game, the vignettes, are all little prewritten stories. Note prewritten does not mean linear; they all have decision points, skill checks, etc. and can impact character state, inventory and so forth. Also some stories require other stories as prerequisites; example you won't see Return of the Tadpole unless you've already encountered The Frog King Strikes Back.

Note there are hundreds if not thousands of these little stories by now. I don't have exact numbers but even when I played this years ago I saw a ton of different stuff and very few repeats across several campaigns. You will see probably a few dozen randomly selected ones per playthrough, so do the
math_count.png
 

Zombra

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Make the Codex Great Again! RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
It's not really "as usual". On paper these are all elements we've seen before in some form or another, but the way they're put together and the emphasis on character evolution (not just numbers go up, and not just "you learned Cartwheel Strike") is fresh as hell.

Not saying it'll blow your mind; if you're not ready to lean into how it wants you to feel, it's not hard to pick it apart.
 

Raghar

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Looked into that... found character development is lacking, they didn't specify skin color/phenotypes in start settings. And the stuff looks like things were mashed together without thinking. The every location cleared increases difficulty a bit also doesn't make any sense.
 

user

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I really, really want to get into this game, but I just can't get past the art style. I even play ASCII games but this thing... I just can't.... I feel like gauging my eyes out every time I see it.
 

InD_ImaginE

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I've mentioned this before but I love the art precisely because of the webcomic nature of it. I grew up reading those fantasy webcomic so having this as a game is pretty fun
 

user

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I've mentioned this before but I love the art precisely because of the webcomic nature of it. I grew up reading those fantasy webcomic so having this as a game is pretty fun

More than the drawing style, what I don't like is the art style of the combat, with the vertical noodle-y, paper-y things on the 3D plane. Would much prefer if they were flat.
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/th...e-grad-built-the-most-innovative-rpg-in-years

The making of Wildermyth: how two ex-Riot devs and a college grad built the most innovative RPG in years​


A truly dynamic story is a goal game designers have strived toward for decades. Worldwalker Games' Wildermyth gets closer to that goal than most. In this spellbinding RPG, players guide bands of heroes through a lifetime of adventure, embarking on dozens of short, whimsical quests wherein they grow, age, and quite literally evolve, with the potential to transform into walking trees, celestial beings, and anthropomorphised crows.

Wildermyth is an inspired example of narrative design, with some nifty tactical combat to boot. But when Nate Austin, his wife Annie, and his brother Doug began developing the game around eight years ago, the weight of emphasis between storytelling and combat was very much the other way around.
"All three of us had been playing X-COM a lot," says Nate, who co-owns Worldwalker Games with Annie, and is the primary programmer on the project. "And we love the stories that are generated. But we wanted a lot more detail about the soldiers." Nate and Annie were both working for Riot Games at the time, while Doug was finishing college. But the three got together at thanksgiving one year and sketched out the rough idea of what would become Wildermyth. "Part of the inspiration was to just to take some of those ideas, and some improvements that we wanted to make, and put it into a fantasy setting, because we felt like that would fit better."

One of those improvements was to character progression, for which Nate was inspired by his work on League Of Legends. "One of the things that I really love about League Of Legends is the champ roster, and how different all of the League of Legends champs look and feel and play," he says. "That's something I really wanted to bring into our game, where it was about telling origin stories for all these crazy heroes where they start off as farmers but like somewhere along the line something happens… and they're transformed in these really visual ways."

The original pitch for Wildermyth was a turn-based tactics game with League-style heroes at the centre, who evolved into those heroes as a consequence of your actions during battles. For example, characters who fell in battle could end up with permanent injuries like missing limbs, and then go on quests to have those injuries healed, or their bodies augmented into something greater.

But two things happened that began to shift the emphasis of Wildermyth. Firstly, the Austins realised that tying story events to character deaths and injuries had some unintended side effects. "We were incentivising all our players to kill their guys because they wanted that wolf-arm or whatever," Annie points out. Second, the stories being written by Doug Austin, the game's lead writer, were far too elaborate to act as mere filler between missions. "A big thing that I wanted out of a game, if I was going to work on it, was to find a way to take those emergent details and like, bring them into light and flesh them out a without forcing all that effort on the player," he says.

Doug had a particular vision for the kind of stories he wanted Wildermyth to tell. But there were some practical hurdles to him achieving this. At this point, Wildermyth was very much a side project for Nate and Annie, with no real budget or rigorous development plan to speak of. Doug, meanwhile was fresh out of college and figuring out what he wanted to do with his life. "There wasn't a job to give me," he says. "So I was just like, 'what's my actual career going to be?'"

Doug left the project and wouldn’t return to Wildermyth for another two years. But those limitations on both budget and time did help define other areas of the game, like its papercraft art-style. "We knew we were going to do 2D because I'm not a 3D artist at all," says Annie, who creates all Wildermyth's art. "We specifically went real minimal on animations so that we can have all these rigs [static character poses] where the hunters are holding a bow and the warriors are holding a spear. We can't animate a bow drawing with that. And they're all gonna have different outfits."

A screen of a story beat in Wildermyth showing two party members discussing a duckA duck.
Given the sheer number of character permutations Wildermyth has, the decision to go without detailed animations made the art workload more manageable. But it also raised a question over how the developers would represent the game's tactical combat. Since the game was already heavily influenced by papercraft, it made sense to take further inspiration from the physical world. "What do you do when you're a little guy in a boardgame and attack?" Annie says, before miming using one boardgame piece to knock down another.

Annie states that it took a couple of years to properly pin down Wildermyth's visual style, but it had the advantage of being consistently worked on by one person. The writing, however, was much harder to define. "We hired some contract writers, and soon we realised that what we wanted was actually pretty unique, and that we weren't doing a good job of explaining it to the writers," Nate says. "We had to go on a big journey to learn about what that actually was."

A crucial stepping-stone in that journey was Doug's return to the project. "I wanted to bring a certain lyricism into fantasy writing," he says. "And some magical realism to the fantasy genre, where the characters feel very real and very normal." Doug also wanted the characters to have "a casual tone" around the stranger elements of their world. "[If] this is the world I live in, I'm not surprised by the fact that there's magic around me, because it's always been around me."

A character levelling up and getting access to new skills in Wildermyth
Tone was also tricky to pin down. The Austins knew they didn't want to go grimdark like Game Of Thrones, but they also didn't want the game to be too light and quippy and insincere. "We wanted to treat the world with reverence," Doug says. "Not undermining the seriousness of all the life and magic and beauty that we're implying."

The more seriously the Austins took the storytelling side of the game, the more Wildermyth began to come together. For starters, thinking about story and character helped give the tactical side of the game more shape. "One of the major [design principles] was to make you think a lot about teamwork," Nate says. "To have where everybody is standing be important and what everybody's actions are important, so that you wouldn't just have one hero carrying the fight. You really need teamwork, and a lot of that is about positioning."

They also found a way to make all the random stories that players encountered on their journey feel like they mattered. "We had, for a long time, this concept that everything would be procedural and every story would be dynamic. And at one point in 2019, we were like 'Alright, let's try and make a cohesive villain from front to back. That's how the first Gorgon villain came about," Doug says. "The random events started to make sense a lot more because they took place within this plot structure."

A complex battle scene in Wildermyth
By this point, Wildermyth had a compelling blend of procedural storytelling within more hand-crafted arcs, and a solid tactical combat system with a winning papercraft visual style. But connecting the two together was a problem they still hadn't solved, and arguably never did. The system they came up with was an overland map, a kind-of meta-boardgame where the player's party moves between different regions of Wildermyth's world to scout them, doing which triggers a narrative event. It works well enough, but Nate believes it could be better.

"The original stuff was much more simulationist. Instead of having tiles, we had an open map with features on it in different places," Nate says. This map had systems like populations that grew and shrank, and dynamic threats made travelling more risky. But all those systems made it difficult for players to understand where to go and what to do. "We threw away a bunch of work on that in order to get to something that was simple enough and worked well enough. It's still not the part of the game that anybody gets excited about," he adds.

By the time of the game's Early Access launch in 2019, the Austins felt like they'd made something fun and interesting. But they didn't have a read on how other people would react to it. "We were taking it around to conventions for a while," Nate says. "And the thing about it that the magic of the game is in caring about the characters, [which doesn't] really hit until you're like three or four hours in. So if you're going to a convention in Florida, you're like 'Ok, I played a mission for ten minutes and that was fine, nice combat I guess' and then you walk away."

A character in Wildermyth choosing what to trade for from four objects in a merchant's caravan - a skunk tail, a fox tail, a scorpion tail or just money
Nate says that, prior to launch, they were "hopeful" that they'd recoup the money they'd spent on paying contractors. But when the game launched into early access, it far surpassed their expectations. "We were very pleased and happy and surprised by the response. It was awesome." Since that early access launch, Wildermyth has gone from strength to strength. It saw its official 1.0 release in July last year, launching with five bespoke campaigns to rapturous reviews. The last twelve months have been mainly about post-release support, which will continue for the foreseeable future. "We can just keep cramming stuff in," Doug jokes. "The stories are so modular it's just like 'I wrote a new one, put it in'".

Wildermyth may have started out life as a fantasy X-COM with richer characters, but it ultimately became something much more novel and distinctive, one of the most innovative narrative RPGs of recent years. This happened, the Austins believe, because they asked at every step of the project whether new ideas and features were actually interesting, and served the vision for the game. "Make every decision. Don't have hit points because games have hit points," Nate concludes. "Decisions like that, we try to make them very intentionally, and hopefully you end up with something that doesn't feel like it's a copy."
 

Lhynn

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I wouldnt say its that innovative, or even the most innovative in years. Maybe during its own release season?

Its an alright game crippled by the silly setting. The roguelike nature of it and the heavy emphasis on choice and consequence could have done with a darker general aesthetic and I would have liked more options. Game feels a lot like a tech demo.
 

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