Wenjia Review (Nintendo Switch)

Review code provided with many thanks to Indienova

Sunday Afternoon Game

Wenjia is a game I would describe as a Sunday afternoon game. It’s a short experience that’s casual and relaxing. Ideal to enjoy while chilling on the sofa or equivalent comfy chair with a nice drink. So take it easy and lets see what Wenjia has to offer. I also noticed this is the second game where you play as a cat I have reviewed for this site but don’t worry, no cat puns this time.

Switching Between Worlds

Wenjia is a Chinese developed game. A earth quake has caused lava to burst from the ground and its up to you to save the cute little mountain spirits before it’s too late. You play as a spirit cat who has the capability to travel between two worlds at the press of the L button. The realm of Matter and the world of Energy.

The Matter world being green, vibrant and colourful. The Energy realm appearing more dark and mysterious. Shifting between these worlds is essential for progression, solving the games simple puzzles and even finding several secret orbs. Collecting this secret orbs will unlock new cosmetics for your character but it never feels forced on you. The focus and theme of the game is one of relaxation.

The attention to detail in the art work is impressive

Graphics are beautiful and hand drawn. The Matter realm in particular is beautiful and vibrant. The art at times is something to behold and take in. It’s a shame something more creative wasn’t thought up for the platforms: often appearing as just faint white lines on the screen. I understand it’s supposed to appear spiritual but these platforms clash with the lovely environments and feel a bit out of place at times.

Straight line meet beautiful environment

The gameplay is straight forward. You jump between moving platforms. Some of which only appear in one of the two realms you switch between. It becomes a juggling act of timing things just right. If you fall it’s a one hit death but checkpoints are pretty frequent, so you will never be too far away from trying a section again. The pace is quite slow and calm but every now and then you will enter an area which challenges you to complete it within a set time limit. Failing these challenges has no penalty but succeeding will help you unlock more secrets in the extras menu.

There are enemies, mostly spiders, but you can only avoid them. No bosses to defeat just you and the platforms. The game generally controls well but the movement and jumping felt a fraction slow. Since I’m used to fast moving platforms I sometimes anticipated my jumps too quickly. However, when slowing my pace down to the games calm level I coped much better.

Can’t fight the spiders just jump over them

Beautiful Soundtrack

The music is gorgeous and composed in Russia. The relaxing score is well incorporated into the levels as you progress. The game appears to know this as it’s not shy about pausing the action at one point to let you enjoy a vocal piece from the soundtrack. The score is one of the games strongest aspects. The only small issue was sometimes when tension began to build up in the game the music just didn’t feel like it completely matched the situation you were in. Regardless I could see myself listening to this even outside of playing the game. Should you love the soundtrack you can buy it on Steam for a very cheap price (but I believe you need to own the base game to access it).

I finished my first playthrough in under two hours. But felt compelled to replay sections to collect more secrets via a handy chapter skip feature in the main menu. This also informs you how many secrets you still need to find in each chapter if you are keen to 100% the game. I honestly just liked replaying the game to listen to the score.

The Ori in the Room

Of course it would be hard not to point out the elephant in the room. Wenjia looks and sounds very much like a certain Ori franchise that you may well know yourself. Now I absolutely adore this series. It was unclear in my research whether Wenjia took any inspiration from Ori but it’s hard for a fan not to look at both and make the obvious comparisons. What is clear, is that Wenjia was made with a significantly lower budget and I genuinely felt the developers created the best game they could with the resources they had. What would have stood more in their favour though would be going with a graphical style that’s a little more unique to Wenjia rather than appearing so similar to Ori. Maybe a lesson for next time.

Coming to the End

Wenjia is a great relaxing casual game. I’m quite experienced with this genre of game. If however you’re like my co-op partner, who sometimes struggles with platforming, this may become frustrating, but it is very rewarding when you do get through.

With that in mind this is probably not a game for people looking for something difficult or long. The game feels appropriately priced considering its simplicity and short length. I would love to see the developer create another game with a more unique style and killer soundtrack to help them stand out more from the crowd next time. However, I cannot deny I did enjoy this game and if nothing else, it’s given me a nice soundtrack to listen to over and over again.

Final Verdict: I liked it