Wandering Willows

Is it possible to get cute-poisoning? I'm feeling a little faint. It could be abundance of happy, awesome, adorable-ness-itude-ism of this game I'm playing, or maybe it's just the fact that I've been sitting in one position in front of my computer all through the night. Hmm.

Wandering Willows begins by dropping you on a mysterious island in the middle of nowhere. This initially sounded a bit too much like the plot of Lost for my taste, but luckily there aren't any mysterious "Others" running around trying to kill you. Who would guess that falling out of the sky and crash-landing could be fun, anyway? Most people would be overcome by such trivialities as internal bleeding and broken bones, but not your character. No, you're tough. You pick yourself up, brush yourself off and start exploring the new world around you. Friendly (albeit weird) people, yummy food and cute critters (such as a donkey-triceratops lovechild companion that follows you around and does your bidding) abound.

Before getting into the nitty-gritty of the game experience/controls, I should say this: It's funny. The character interactions and dialogue are extraordinarily cute and occasionally laugh-out-loud hilarious. The writers/designers employ innuendo and silliness to make Wandering Willows a joy to play. My neighbors probably think I'm nuts from all the snorts and chuckles coming from my apartment.

Anyway, this game requires the acquisition of a lot of stuff. You get to gather stuff, grow stuff, make stuff and distribute stuff, all in the name of helping the other people on the island. That sums up your activities pretty neatly, methinks. What, no? Oh fine, I suppose I can elaborate. In order to repair the hot air balloon that you crash-landed on the island, you need to make friends. In order to make friends, you have to do a lot of favors in the form of errands. These errands range from collecting berries to sewing fuzzy bear costumes. One by one, they help you collect the items needed to repair your balloon and get the heck out of dodge.

The controls are straightforward. Point and click to direct your character (and/or your little animal buddy) around the island. You can either move about freely on the main screen or select a faraway part of the island to travel to with the help of a small world map. If you select a person or place on the world map, your character automatically walks from where you are currently to the selected spot, unless you see something or someone you would like to interact with instead.

You get to find and collect a wide variety foods, natural materials, sewing supplies, flowers, recipes, critters and much, much more. You spend your time exploring, gathering, growing, sewing, cooking and even soldering. In order to sew a costume, you first need to find a pattern, gather the required materials (by growing cotton, gathering dye, saving some money and purchasing thread), then you actually get to make the desired item. The process is similar for recipes and floral arrangements. When you are out and about gathering items, you and your little animal companion come across other animals. There are all kinds of creatures that you can charm to drop items. If you are lucky, they drop an egg that you can use to hatch a controllable companion animal. Each animal has different attributes — some are great at climbing trees, while others are better off digging or charming other animals. Luckily you can train any of them to improve their skills and equip them with items that boost their attributes. For those of you who are achievement happy, you can earn medals for things like finding every recipe in the game, or collecting one of each and every animal species.

I have very few complaints about Wandering Willows. Actually, I just have one. It's not even a real complaint, really, depending on how you look at it. I found one of the food items to be visually distracting. The designers of Wandering Willows may want to reconsider the appearance of the maple syrup. If you look at it and don't understand why, well, you're a much better person than I am. Seriously. But you'll just have to get the game to see what I mean.

Overall, it's a really fun experience. The game is cute, quirky and surprisingly long for a casual game. I would even go so far as to call it delightful. If cooing at cute virtual creatures warms your heart and running around doing in-game errand-quests gives you a false sense of accomplishment, then this is the right game for you. It's like someone threw a unicorn that poops rainbows in a blender with an RPG, snuggles and your silly aunt Karen.

Review by  pragmacat