Playing The Wild at Heart feels familiar but also new. Between the influences of Pikmin, Overlord and Luigi’s Mansion, the game shouldn’t work, but it does. Seamlessly. The main mechanics are incredibly fine-tuned and intuitive. Everything has been carefully thought through to make sure the player has the best experience possible. There is a crafting system that whilst easy to manage seems obsolete until late game, and the game’s overlay and menu system gives you everything you need in a simple and accessible format. However, let’s start with the world. It’s open and vast with mysteries to explore, items to find and puzzles to solve, but paths are blocked until you acquire the necessary tools to move forward. You might need to find a gear to help turn a windmill that will open a gate, which will lead you into a new area with new problems to solve. Like any good puzzle-solving game, the curve in difficulty is fair and when puzzles are difficult, they’re not objectively obtuse.

You control your protagonists Wake and Kirby, each with their own abilities that can be upgraded. Wake uses his modified ‘Gust Buster’ vacuum to suck up items or turn windmills whilst Kirby acquires a magical lantern. Kirby is also smaller than Wake so can get into small spaces. That part comes in handy a lot. It’s not only the two children you control though, you also have your Spritelings. Controlling your Spritelings is very similar to Pikmin and Overlord. You command your little friends to pick up items, break down walls, move giant boulders or attack nasty boys. There are different Spritelings that are used for different tasks as well, effectively blocking paths and areas of the map until you acquire the right Spriteling for the job.  They aren’t invincible though, and you do find yourself getting distressed when many of them suddenly drown or get eaten by a monster. Like in Pikmin, you can find seeds to regrow the forest spirits and resummon them. The controls can feel a little clunky at times. Making sure you are pointed in the exact direction to both release and return Spritelings can be a little frustrating. However, in both aforementioned games, this mechanic seems to always have this sort of control issue, which makes me wonder if it’s deliberately part of the challenge.

You find early on that there is an evil lurking in the dark, the Never, which is why the dark is bad. This is where mechanics reminiscent of Don’t Starve or Minecraft come into play. When the night comes you need to be in the light or in bed otherwise the ‘Never’ spawn and it’s game over. It adds a sense of urgency to the gameplay and requires the player to return to camp to rest and end the day. The extra layer of danger and time limitation made some seemingly easy puzzles more complex. Regardless, I found myself utterly intrigued with the storyline and the storytelling along the way. There is something to be said about games that respect the player enough to let them experience things firsthand before handing explanations on a silver platter. I had many an ‘aha!’ moment which felt like accomplishments along the way.

NPCs that seemed unimportant were also given substance and meaning. Everyone had their place in the story and nobody was thrown into the background. It’s simply charming. The story also is fleshed out in hidden notes found around the world that helps fill in blanks in the narrative. This allows the story to be told without forcing the player to sit through lengthy cutscenes or forced NPC chatter. More often than not it was worth reading the extra lore to understand and gain a greater insight into the world. It was this information that gained me a greater appreciation for the story’s conclusion. It’s easy to forget a game when you walk away. Usually it’s either the people you play it with or the game’s overall experience which sticks with you. Just like how Broken Age has always clung to me as a storytelling masterpiece with so many little twists and turns, The Wild at Heart has also stuck with me. I think it will be a story I remember for years to come.