WILDMENDER
What a wonderfully adorable open-world RPG featuring a 4-player online co-op about PLANTS! The bright colors and cute little plants sitting on the booth table were what made me stop at Wildmender — and it only got better from there. Wildmender follows the story of a garden tender who is tasked with restoring the environment of his world. It’s clear that the developers put a lot of time and energy into the details of this game.
There is A LOT to explore in Wildmender. Cameron, one of the developers at Muse Games, explained to me that all the plants in this game grow completely unique to themselves. Wildmender is intended to show how plants actually grow and what it takes to care for them. Not only are the assets of this game in-depth but the lore is extremely well thought out too: gods, goddesses, and spirits lead your way as you restore the world around you. This world is bright and beautiful but not overwhelming. Although I only had a small taste of this up-and-coming indie, I’m thirsty for more of what this vast open-world RPG has to offer.
Puppet: Hi Cameron!
Cameron: Hello!
Puppet: Tell me who you are and what you do.
Cameron: Yes, so I am the lead temple and tutorial designer for this game. So I'm in charge of making sure that players always know what they should be doing and that there's always interesting things in front of them to play with and interact with; because there's a lot of really cool, interesting systems that are in this game and I want to make sure players know what they are and want to check them out and explore them fully.
Puppet: Very cool.So tell me about Wildmender: what is it? How was it born?
Cameron: (laughs) Yes, so Wildmender is a survival gardening game. And the important thing about that is that instead of building a base, and sort of terraforming the land to fit your own needs, instead you work with the land and you grow a garden. And just as you grow and take care of your garden, your garden helps you grow and takes care of you. So the three tenants of the game are sort of explore, grow, survive. So as you go out and explore, you find seeds to bring back to your garden to grow into larger, more nutritious fruits that allow you to survive longer, which allow you to explore further, and then you see how the gameplay loop works.
Puppet: Very cool. So I was told that there's a little garden that everybody's been working on on since the start of the event. Can you tell me more about that?
Cameron: Yes, so when you start the game in Wildmender it is just a small pool of water, a couple of seeds, and your spirit guide friend. But since Thursday morning, over the course of MAGFest we've had players picking up where other players left off. So we're having the game just being persistent at the con. So as each player plays for about 10 minutes, they're adding to the garden that the next person is going to come up with and interact with. So it's now this huge, lush, beautiful garden with all sorts of trees and shrubs and plants. And all of those things have been specifically placed and grown by the people who have come and gone from the booth throughout the week.
Puppet: Very cool. And um, how many people are on your team?
Cameron: We've got about a dozen people working on Wildmender, yeah.
Puppet: Nice. That's awesome. Where can we find Wildmender?
Cameron: Yes, so we are on Discord, we are on Twitter. We are all over social media @WildmenderGame. Most importantly, if you wishlist us on Steam, you will get a very handy notification of “Hey,wow, this game looks cool! I might want to get it.” Anad as soon as it comes out Steam will be like, “Hey, remember that cool game? You can get it now.”
Puppet: (laughs) And it’s free and it helps the devs out. Yes, we love doing that.
Cameron: Yes, yes.
Cameron: We talk about algorithms all the time: wishlisting is how you appease the Steam algorithm.
Puppet: Yes. Yeah. I'm always telling gamers: please wishlist, doesn't cost you a thing. It takes just a second. Even if you're just slightly interested.
Cameron: Yes, absolutely.
Puppet: Yeah, it's awesome. Anything else you want to tell me about the game?
Cameron: So personally — as like a designer/programmer — I think the most interesting things about the game are the realistic water simulation and the fact that the plants naturalistically and dynamically grow. So if you plant four shrubs next to each other, when they're all grown, they're going to look like four unique individual shrubs that grow in a way that real shrubs would actually grow. So it's a very, you know, minor, very small detail, but it took a lot of under the scenes technical work. And I think that that even if players don't notice it directly, I think they really feel it in the game and it makes everything feel more alive.
Puppet: Yeah, more immersive and more unique for sure. Like you're actually in a garden. Because like, all plants are different, right?
Cameron: Yes, absolutely.
Puppet: One last question that I just remembered. It's one of our favorites: if you could go back in time and give yourself advice, what would that be?
Cameron: Be more clear. We've had a lot of issues with the game. Like I said, there's a been a lot of very interesting mechanics that this game has to offer. But communicating those to the player after they're created has been a lot more difficult than instead creating them with the “how do we teach this to players” in mind. You know, it has taken a significant amount of work on my end, and if I may be so bold, I think I've been successful in teaching players those mechanics. But I think I could have saved a lot of work if I had been working with the programmer team from the beginning to make sure everything was clear and transparent.
Puppet: Gotcha. Wow. Well, thank you so much. I'm Puppet and I'm here with Wildmender and Cameron, thank you so much.
Cameron: Yep. Thank you.
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