Wildmender Reviews

This game has a great mix of unique post-apocalyptic vibes, with plenty of improvements that make life easier but harder things accessible. There are improvements to tools, to bases, to watering, to eating, to fighting, to locomotion, to recipes, to making resources last longer. And you really feel like you are helping take back and restore the land from those who caused the disaster in the first place. There are so many little game mechanics all mixed together that under normal circumstances, they would be jarring, but the game authors have managed to make them work together. You start out with so little and try to hunker down close to water and out of the blazing sun, making more forays at night and hoping you make it back before the sun rises too high. I won't spoil how the world opens up for you over time, and how much the game makes it feel like you earned every last bit of it. I got a bit too tired by the end to do all the plant challenges, and there's something wrong with the spirit darter invitations where they don't seem to get the message, and I really wish there was a way to cleanse more of the world, but this was a really satisfying game experience. Top notch.

If you need precise, exact layouts, this might not be for you. But with time, patience and creativity, you can make some really beautiful gardens. For a cozier experience, change the settings. Slow down hunger and thirst, turn negative things like enemies down, destruction off and so on. It doesn't affect trophies.

Game feels unpolished/beta stage. Inventory management is horrendous ( small inventory space, items not stacking, or merging and downgrading quality of existing items, having 3 different variety of same seeds during exploration...).And the world feels Way too big for what it has to offer. Sense of progression is bad and base oasis doesn't seem to have any "base building" aspect to it at all. Most quests are really confusing to complete, and the game doesn't really give guidance. For such a beautiful game, it really dropped the ball. And developers don't seem to be working to improve it anymore, so i can't recommend it.

Beautiful game, shame about the bugs. I spent 7.5 hours battling the issues and gave up. Requested a refund, it was refused. Can't recommend unless you get it for 5 bucks!

This is a uniquely beautiful foraging game. Once you get the hang of the world and growing plants, I found this game to be both cozy enough for a weeknight but engaging enough for a full Saturday. I'd recommend this game to anyone who enjoys forage-y, cozy, sandbox-y games - there's no time limits or anything and you can build your own garden. "Garden" is an understatement; more of a stunning oasis with a very simple planting strategy (i.e. not like a complex farming sim). the story itself is well done too, but honestly I was just obsessed with all of the plants, seeds, landscapes, etc.

It has a wonderful concept, and the way farming/landscaping developed was a lot of fun. However, it was a real downer to not be able to get a lot of great tool functions until nearly the end of the game plot. It almost makes it worthless to do a lot of the planting and side quests during game progression because it turns out you're missing some fantastic functionality that could have been incorporated with plot progression through regions. I also wouldn't call the game "lore rich". The lore you get introduced to in the beginning associated with the PC's background got dropped. I do hope the devs make a sequel with these mechanics in an even bigger, richer, heavier plotted world, but without waiting until the end to give you full functionality.

Helping restore an environment, terraforming, maintaining a garden, talking to ghosts, upgrading magic and tools to advance the storyline. It's all amazing! The best part is the Co-Op, so I'm going to need all my mutuals to get this game, asap!

I find it wild, how this game doesn't have perfect reviews, because for me, Wildmender is a perfect game. The graphics are gorgeous, the world can be generated randomly, if you like, you can set your own difficulty, down to giving it in percentage how much damage enemies should deal, or how frequent they should attack. You explore, collect, build and renew a world that has been destroyed. The story pacing is good, as there are a lot to do in the meantime. (You will not want to rush through the story in this anyways) There's multiplayer, both on LAN and online with friends, so it's not a solo survival, if you don't want it to be. For me the terraforming was awesome, the tools were great, loved collecting and exploring. THE TEAM and the DISCORD are both AMAZING. If you encounter a bug, or have trouble with features, they jump right on the case, and help out whenever and wherever they can. I can NOT recommend this game ENOUGH. Wildmender for everyone! :)

This is a beautiful game, you can sense the love that went into it with every new music score, the small details in the plants and the subtle worldbuilding in the ruins of the world. I reminds me of playing breath of the wild years ago but... freeer? Everywhere you go in the game you can leave your own mark on the world and that leaves me bit sentimental.

You might be wondering, why the negative review after almost 40 hours playtime? It comes down to a catastrophic lack of polish in several key systems. It's clear the game was released in an unfinished state, and just left there. Terraforming is HORRIBLY implemented. You have three upgrades to the spade, and the improvements are 1 underwhelming, and 2 irreversible. So once you get a bigger spade you cant dig a small hole anymore. And the chisel you get pretty far into the story is pretty much useless for anything other than wholesale destruction. There really isn't a way to sculpt the land in any sort of detail without excruciating frustration. The water mechanics are just... bad. That wouldn't be a problem, but irrigation is a massive part of growing your garden. There are almost no base building options. You sleep in a lean-to on the ground, and store your stuff in four varieties of baskets. There's two types of square path that doesn't really fit into any build other than a square one, and some meh looking walls. There are some nifty lamps tho. It's clear the construction system was an afterthought. Now, the reasons I stuck with the game for so long before giving up in sheer frustration- the concept is great, the exploration is fun, so is the flying once you get the cloak of winds, and the gardens you cultivate really can look incredible. If only managing them wasn't such an absolute pain in the rear. But most of all, the devs managed to create a great ambience between the graphics, the scale of the world, the music and the lore. All in all, this game needed a lot more development, either before or after launch. But it seems like there's no chance of further updates. Which is a damned shame, as the bones of a cult classic are there. All that was needed was more polish, fleshing out of the mechanics, some quality of life improvements to the terraforming. I could even deal with the annoying water mechanics, if I just had a way to play around with the terrain without wanting to alt-tab every couple minutes. I can only speculate why this was left the way it is. Underwhelming sales figures? Maybe the itch this game scratches is simply too niche. A damned shame, if you ask me.