Wandersong

This is in my opinion one of the most underrated games I've ever played and is definitely a hidden gem that deserves more media attention. The story is absolute perfect and hit me right in the feelings. The music also is an absolute masterpiece and has many catchy tunes and song.
Months, even years after my playthrough, the story and it's characters made a strong impact on me and my life and I still find myself often humming or whistling to melodies from the game. Rarely did a game have such a strong impact on me!
The fact that I didn't give this game a positive review much earlier is an insult to it's absolute genius design. I would recommend this game in a heatbeat and suggest that you, dear reader, do not spoil yourself by looking at videos of the game beforehand.

Its one of those games that you wish you could remove your memories off and play it for the first time again.

Review The Game
Cry At The End
Ultimate Music Appreciator
Ultimate Character Lover
{Achievement Unlocked] Miriam Best Girl

Synopsis:
Wandersong is an incredible game with a deceptively simple story.
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The story:
(Spoiler free discussion)
I was intrigued by the initial concept of a game about the world ending, and having to stop it even when you probably can't.
It sounded like a good baseline premise for the story, a good motivation for the events of the story to unfold.
What I did NOT see coming however, was this premise essentially BEING the story.
The world is ending, and there's nothing you can do about it, and yet you have to try.
The game's world is incredibly nihilistic, and the characters get more and more pescimistic as the game goes on, except for the main character, the bard. I did NOT expect to love the Bard as much as I did. They're an adorable ball of pure positivity, he's very naïve and very optimistic and a complete pacifist. He just wants to make the world a better place with song, and this mindset of his gets challenged over and over again as the game goes on, and yet he perseveres.
It's an incredible game about not letting your pescimism shape you. About fighting for that light at the end of the tunnel no matter how hopeless it may seem.
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The story:
(Spoiler discussion)
All of what I've said above is just a basic spoiler free overview of the story, I haven't gotten into any of the minutia, and the MANY twists and turns and surprises that the game throws at you. I would reccomend you to NOT unspoiler any spoilered text until you've finished the game yourself. Now, onto the spoilers!
I ADORED Audrey Redheart (The Chosen Hero) !!
Her entire existance is left a complete mystery to the player until the very end of act three, and she completely shakes up the rest of the story, and adds some MUCH needed conflict.
In a game where seemingly everyone wants to work with you, a character like her who straight up takes advantage of the main character's positive worldview, goes a long way. Up until the 5th act, everything goes your way, you just sing your problems away. But she throws a massive wrench into this. She's the only thing in the game that can't be overcame with just song.
I also love the fact that she's clearly not actually evil. She's a hero, chosen hero at that. She's just doing the task she was intended to fufil, but seeing this dorky little bard succeeding where she fails breaks her down. She'd rather fufil her duty and end the world than give up the title of the chosen hero and help actually save the world, out of no reason but her inflated ego. I like to believe that she died at the end of the game. Stuck in the old world while everyone else moved on to the new one.
Speaking of the world, the other characters are all delightful, alongside the locations they inhabit! I love how the locations the bard visits are almost like a reflection of his curent mental state. For example, Chismest being the bard at his absolute lowest.
Miriam is an incredible supporting character, and at first acts as the straight man to the bard's optimistic shenanigans, but she soon grows into a very layered character who got a lot more development than I initially expected. The scene with her at the crater being not just the best scene with her, but one of the all-around highlights of the game.
The other side-characters are great too! I especially loved the pirates in Chapter 3, and the gang you cobble up in chapter 4. Not all of them are incredibly memorable, but the memorable outweigh the forgettable!
The very end of the story made me shed a tear too. And I fucking LOVED the final boss. The role reversal is incredible, YOU'RE the final boss that the hero has to defeat, you, Miriam and the Dream King. And the fact that it doesn't even work, and the Hero slays the dream king anyways, leaving the entire world in Limbo until you harmonize it all together with one last song, genuinely incredible, and it shows Audrey's insistance on being the chosen hero to her literal grave.
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The gameplay:
(Spoiler free discussion)
The gameplay is where wandersong slightly falters a bit more, although that's not saying it's bad at all. I'd say it's "slightly annoying" at it's worst, and "incredible" at it's best.
Most of the gameplay consists of using your 8 directional singing wheel to sing songs and solve puzzles. The game gets a lot of mileage out of the singing wheel to be honest. Though I wish that the wheel was used for more than JUST singing. Such as the intro segment where it's used to hold a sword. More segments where what you use the wheel for was changed, would've been great.
The singing mechanics themselves are great though! They took some getting used to, but by the end of the game I was singing entire sonatas no problem. I love the way you can freestyle with it too. I'd often just break out into song for no reason other than that I was feeling like it! It helped immerse me into the world, and made me feel like a true bard!
On an unrelated note, the game is pretty buggy. Nothing game breaking at all, I never got softlocked and the game never crashed. But there were tons of moments where the game was clearly doing things it was NOT supposed to be doing. Chapter 3 seemed to be the glitchiest one by far, everything afterwards was mostly fine though.
//
The gameplay:
(Spoiler discussion)
From the very moment you start the game, the singing is already fairly interesting! Using it to defeat ghosts, and sing the overseer song are very pleasant. And I love the way it's incorporated into the platforming of the first chapter, with the birds and the plant platforms that move with your singing.
Every chapter has unique gimmicks that utilize the singing in creative ways. My favourite area by far is the Moonscape, not just for it's banging music, but also for the way the singing is implemented into it's platforming. Side note, love that entire area. Easily the best area in the game, it just has to be experienced to be understood.
After the Moonscape, my LEAST favourite area does come though, the sunscape. It's not bad by any means, most of it is really great and atmospheric, it's just the final chase. It was scary the firts 3 times, but after that it just became annoying, as I had to fight against the game's controls that were clearly NOT designed for fast paced platforming like that. But once I got a hang of the controls it wasn't that bad, just kinda annoying.
The game does also feature a couple boss battles! And they're all really good! The ghosts, the monsters in act 3, the Queen of Winds in the Act 4 intermission, all incredible stuff. Nothing mindblowing, but the bosses are all consistenly high quality, and were all fun to fight!
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The music and graphics:
(Vague spoilers, but nothing to worry about)
The music was generally really good! While I personally did not actually find most of the soundtrack all that memorable, I will admit that it's all very quality stuff. The songs get better as the game gets on though! Every song past act 3 ranges from really good to incredible in my oppinion, and the game's final song is deserving of it's title (you'll see it when you get there).
Graphically, the game is quite good aswell! It has a VERY "Night In The Woods" esque style to it, with lineless 2D characters in a lineless world. I don't think the style is as stunning in Wandersong as it is in Night In The Woods, but the game DOES have a lot of stunning areas and setpieces, you're sure to remember at least one by the end of your journey!
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Finishing thoughts:
Wandersong is an insanely underrated game that has NOT garnered the media attention it deserves. Our world often feels hopeless and trapped, but Wandersong reminds us that no matter what, we need to keep fighting. Give this game a shot, and stick with it!
Highly reccomended.

This is my first ever review and this game absolutely deserves it. Created with a lot of love and care, an absolute hidden gem.
Take your time when playing it and enjoy the music, the dialogues and the art.

This game is beautiful, and I think everyone should experience this.

Wandersong is a game developed by Greg Lobanov and co-developed by Wishes Unlimited Games and A Shell In The Pit, who also directed the game’s soundtrack as they had previously done for Cellar Door Games’ 2013 Roguelite mega-hit “Rogue Legacy” and their 2018 foray into 2.5D Brawlers “Full Metal Furies”, as well as being the co-developers on another experimental Greg Lobanov production in 2021, titled “Chicory: A Colorful Tale”. Wandersong itself, follows an optimistic bard, with a four letter name of the player’s (limited) choosing, and his groggy witch friend, Miriam, who embark on a journey across the real world and the spirit world to recover pieces of the ancient, mysterious and divided Earthsong. The world stands at a razor’s edge, ready to end soon, as it has done in countless cosmological cycles prior, and only the world’s full harmony in singing the cosmic song, which has never been sung in any of the world’s prior iterations, can save it from its seemingly inevitable collapse.
CONs
- Jankiness in practically all areas of the game, but especially gameplay
- Some characters receive less characterization than they perhaps should
- The first half of the game suffers from inconsistent writing, a slight, but tangible lack of direction and major pacing issues
- Many small bugs throughout
- Monitors with higher refresh rates than 60Hz need to be capped at 60Hz in order to run the game smoothly
- Some major plot events and character reflections are hidden deep within very optional dialogue trees
- The sound mixing can be quite poor and the main singing mechanics need some adjusting to, especially with the uncountable layers of ambience, soundtrack and the main bard’s singing.
- A fairly lackluster soundtrack, which often ends up drowned out by everything else
- Pointless collectible dances and fake openness (many, empty ways, to get to one, linear goalpost)
- Simplistic puzzles
- Time-wasting mechanics and sequences that drag out for too long (See pacing comment)
- At times the story delves into the territory of somewhat naive (though often course-corrects in the end)
- Finicky default controls (rebinding suggested: particularly for the game’s singing)
PROs
+ A heartwarming, special and unique story
+ A colorful cast of characters, some of whom I would’ve loved to know more about
+ An incredibly clever use of the trope-y heroes’ journey, as well as Steam achievements
+ Some great humor throughout (especially the farther you get into the game)
+ A fantastic balance and juxtaposition of bleak motifs and colorful, happy-go-lucky ones, both in narrative and color
+ Great subversions of expected tropes inside of the game’s many sub-narratives
+ Some very interesting and (at times) great implementations of the game’s main singing mechanics into various world interactions
+ Fantastic visuals!
+ An incredible amount of heart poured into every janky pore of this game.
Review
Wandersong is a clever game, it’s a beautiful game and a colorful game. It is very clearly a product of an amateur, but also a stellar showcase of the word’s true meaning, that is lost on many people. Amateur has its roots in the Latin “amare” meaning “to love”, and Wandersong is doubtlessly a product of much hard work, careful deliberation and, indeed, love. The developers come up with clever ideas and humorous narratives and interactions in spades. Every NPC feels alive in their own, odd little way. Every town feels markedly different and undeniably its own. Although the game’s gameplay feels, at times, like a distraction rather than anything bearing much meaning (and at times lacking in the enjoyment department, though certainly helped by its lack of difficulty), the sound design is subpar in places and the story’s pacing is spotty throughout, and shoddy at best during its first few acts, I cannot help but love Wandersong for its color and imagination. It’s like a game a child scrawled in his notebooks with crayon, brought to life by an inexperienced, yet impassioned developer to tell an incredible and, in its own way, unforgettable story, and I find that incredibly commendable.
Massive Thanks To Greg Lobanov, Wishes Unlimited Games and A Shell In The Pit For This Incredible Experience!