Game: Wildmender
Genre: Desert Gardening, Survival, Adventure, Simulation
System: Steam, Windows (also available on Xbox Series X|S, & PS5)
Developers | Publishers: Muse Games | Kwalee
Controller Support: Partial Controller
Price: US $24,99 | UK £19.99 | EU € 24,99
Release Date: September 28th, 2023
Review code used, with many thanks to Muse Games.
If you are a frequent visitor to LadiesGamers, you may remember that Yvonne was at Gamescom. While at Gamescom, Yvonne had the opportunity to interview Cameron Bajus, developer of Wildmender; you can find that interview here.
Since then, I’ve had the pleasure of playing Wildmender for this review. Wildmender is a survival simulation game that emphasises crafting your own oasis in the desert. Additionally, Wildmender is procedurally generated, meaning each time you start a new game, the world changes. So your world and your adventure will be unique to only you.
A Desert Oasis
Initially, you awaken above a tree surrounded by a small pool of water. There are ruins of a once glorious and mystical age all around. Alone in the desolate desert, you hear a voice calling for help. Upon further investigation, you discover Vidyas, a guide spirit, asking you to find its missing pieces. So begins the story of how the land became a desert and how you can help by restoring it to its former glory, fighting the corruption and restoring the altars of the five Gods.
Before exploring the barren desert, you must have food and water for your journey. Luckily, there are seeds buried in the sand around the tree. You begin making the desert flourish using Dune grass. Dune grass binds and restores the soil, giving you a base to build your oasis. You’ll also craft rudimentary tools to begin with and plant the seeds you find around the base of the tree.
Altar of Naia
As the story unfolds, you’ll discover the Altar of Naia and that you must rescue lost spirits. You’ll collect memory seeds, restore springs and help the Gods, who will reveal what exactly has happened to the land. Furthermore, you’ll also fight Wrath’s plaguing the lands with your magic copper mirror and gather essence from the plants you grow. And using the essence, you can sing to help the plants grow in the desert environment.
I don’t want to go into too much detail about the story, as that would spoil it for players. Suffice it to say the storyline has held my attention and given me the urge to discover how it progressed.
Water is in Short Supply
Wildmender certainly gets the point across to the player when exploring the desert that you are alone in a barren, empty, dry place. A feeling of isolation sets in while running through the desert. While there are seeds to find, wood, stone and ore, there isn’t much else apart from sand, and lots of it. Naturally, water is in short supply at the beginning of the game until you learn how to adapt as you progress through the storyline.
Furthermore, as you explore the desert, you must be prepared. The sun will dehydrate your character in the open desert unless they are in the shade. They will collapse if they don’t have sufficient water. So you must fill your water container and eat foods that rehydrate you.
Sand Surf and Float with an Umbrella Mushroom
Exploring the desert is enjoyable, and you have the tools to make the journey easier. I loved that you can surf sand to move quickly across the sands and float down from high using an umbrella mushroom. You are also given a Seed of Memory that allows you to make plant bridges; you can use them to climb across areas, making exploration enjoyable. Fast travel portals (Sigia Gates) are dotted around the desert, allowing you to return to your oasis quickly.
Return To the Oasis
Initially, I was progressing quite well for the first few hours of my playtime, or so I thought. Then, as I explored further, things worsened as my character became poisoned, and I couldn’t heal as I didn’t have the right ingredients for a potion. However, when you collapse in Wildmender, you are returned to the tree where you build your base. You lose anything you have gathered, but a handy mark on the map will show you where you can find your lost resources.
Tailor the Settings to How You Want to Play
Wildmender can be tailored to all players’ skill sets. You will find many diverse difficulty settings in the game settings menu. From peaceful, easy, medium, hard and expert, difficult settings, you can tailor the game to how you want your experience.
Additionally, you can change the settings of how much health the enemies have, how much damage they do and so on. All of the extensive difficulty settings in Wildmender can be tailored for those players who want a significantly more difficult experience and a hefty challenge.
However, for players who want to chill, develop a garden, and don’t want to engage in combat, it is possible to turn the combat interaction down to just those moments that involve the storyline. I love the many choices that the developers have given to the player to change so many settings and be able to play the game how they want.
If you feel the desert is too lonely, you can invite up to 3 friends to join you in your desert oasis. Unfortunately, I couldn’t try out the multiplayer during my playthrough, but Wildmender does have emotes and a chat box, so you can communicate with your friends while playing together.
Visual and Controls
Visually, Wildmender is bleak, barren and empty when the game begins, emphasising the desert environment. However, the colours come to life once you start growing plants and building your oasis. I like how the game looks, and a beautiful soundtrack and appropriate sound effects accompany it.
Controls are keyboard and mouse, or you can use a controller, though Wildmender only has partial controls at the moment. I found that Wildmender is initially slow to load. While the game save is loading up, the music cuts out and then comes back in again. There have also been a few occasions when I’ve loaded my save up, and the framerate was terrible, and I couldn’t play the game. But reloading the save game again seemed to sort that out, and it ran fine.
Also, another niggle I have is with some of the menus overlapping, meaning I could not read what it said. This is most noticeable if you pick a scroll up and open it to read it. The backpack menu where the scroll is stored covers the reveal of what the scroll contains.
Conclusion about Wildmender
Wildmender is an engaging and thoughtful simulation about freeing the Gods and breathing new life into a barren desert environment. What begins as a game about the dry, barren land and as you delve into the mystery behind the fallen civilisation, it soon becomes a story about harmonious relationships. The story engages you and urges you to play on to discover its secrets. If survival simulation games are your go-to genre, then Wildmender is waiting for you to solve its mystery.
Final Verdict: I Like it a Lot 
Note: Wildmender has partnered with the Rainforest Alliance to help gamers play harmoniously with nature. The Rainforest Alliance will benefit from the relationship with Wildmender, its developer Muse Games and publisher Kwalee via fundraising and increased exposure to a young gaming audience in numerous media, including unique Downloadable Content DLC, a Rainforest Alliance Frog Hat, available on Steam.