• Price: $24.99 (Digital); $29.99 (Physical)
• Developer: Moonlight Kids
• Publisher: Humble Games
• Release Date: November 16, 2021

A review code was kindly provided by the developer, Moonlight Kids. We thank them for being able to cover something they’ve worked so hard on.

We mentioned The Wild At Heart in our last post about upcoming games for Nintendo Switch. The game’s art caught my eye with the vibrant colors and wholesome vibes. Watching the trailer, the music sounds very calm and relaxing. It looks like a game with low stress, and I’ve got a good feeling about the game before I have even started. (Perhaps I’m getting some messages from the supernatural forces in the game? 🤔 😉 😂)

Before getting started, you have to choose between “Wanderer” mode, where it’s more story focused and enemies are not quite as difficult – or you can choose “Adventurer” mode, where it’s a little tougher. You’re able to switch modes whenever you want, which is nice because you won’t have to start a new file to change the difficulty. The developers took some feedback into account and made the game more accessible. I always appreciate the effort put into accessibility. I usually prefer easier modes, but I’m curious as to how Adventurer mode will challenge me, so I’ll start out with that. The game offers a variety of customization options in terms of settings. You’re able to turn off screen shake and vibration if you’d like, turn off motion based text effects, and change some motion sensitivity settings as well.

The Wild At Heart opens with a child name Wake…waking up to the sound of his alarm. As Wake, you gather items you’ll need to enact your plan. Walking around the room, you will pick up the required items, but can also interact with the TV or fish tank. I always enjoy games with more opportunities to interact with the environment, and it feels more immersive to me. Wake comments on these interactions, with a voice reminiscent of Animal Crossing characters.

Wake’s plan, evidently, is to run away. There’s a clear sense of neglect in the household, with trash covering the kitchen and living room floors. Leaving a note on the kitchen table on the off chance his dad will read it, Wake gathers his prepared rations and walks out the back door into the woods.

Wake meant to meet up with his friend Kirby in the woods, but ended up getting lost. To make matters worse, he’s lost in the woods in the rain. He sees a strange little creature, and decides he might as well follow it. It goes inside a tree, and Wake continues to follow it. Upon waking, Wake discovers that he’s not in Kansas anymore where he was before. Grey Coat, one of the many oddly-named residents of the Deep Woods, is an old man who happens to be the first person Wake meets through the tree. Grey Coat indicates that they are in the Deep Woods, which seems to be a separate world.

We discover that the creature Wake followed is called a Spriteling – they help you acquire resources, create (or destroy!) paths, attack enemies, and more! The way they work is that you simply throw them at whatever you need done. See resources you can’t physically get to yourself? Throw a Spriteling over there. Boulder in your way? Throw a Spriteling! Are enemies in your way? That’s right, throw those Spritelings. Keep Wake’s hands pristine as your new friends do the dirty work! 😈 😂

Sometimes the Spritelings have a hard time getting back to you. Fortunately, one of Wake’s handy items includes the “Gustbuster,” a vacuum of sorts that Wake invented. If your Spritelings are being a bit stubborn and not returning, who you gonna call? Gustbusters! vacuum them back to you. WindWAKER? You can also use what’s called a Recall Waystone, but it’ll cost you.

The Spritelings can take the damage that Wake shouldn’t. If a Spriteling is defeated, you’ll be able to “hatch” them back into their Spriteling forms. One issue I had with the Spritelings was that whenever you return to a campsite to rest, you have to withdraw them again in order to bring them with you. I wish that we could take them with us automatically without having to remember to go get them. (Eventually I got used to doing it, but it’s just a minor quality of life feature that would be nice.)

I did really like that there are several kinds of Spritelings; the Twigling, which you start with, is immune to poison and is capable of growing plants. The second type of Spriteling, the Emberling, is immune to heat and can burn certain obstacles that block your path. Different Spritelings serve different purposes, and you’ll need to mix and match the types you bring with you in order to traverse the Deep Woods. It almost reminded me of the HM function in Pokémon games a little bit. You need to bring specific amounts of each type of Spriteling for each puzzle you need to solve, so it will be necessary to return to a campsite to change the composition of your group of Spritelings.

I felt that the initial amount of inventory space was somewhat limited compared to the amount of items I ended up acquiring. However, Wake can drop items and throw a Spriteling at whatever was dropped, which makes them go and pick it up to take it with them, and therefore with you. I thought that was a creative way of getting around limited inventory space until you are able to increase it at the main hub.

Now, going back to Wake’s Gustbuster vacuum invention, if you see a pile of leaves you can vacuum them up and you’ll usually receive the game’s equivalent of currency. (Beware of any enemies lurking in leaf piles, though!) You can use it to recall Spritelings, as previously mentioned, and also to interact with the environment to create pathways. It has a variety of uses. Not bad for a twelve year old’s invention! Wake also has the opportunity to invent more items by crafting with ingredients found around the woods. You don’t have recipes from the beginning, but the game doesn’t seem to let you combine incompatible ingredients and fail.

As you travel around, you’ll discover more paths and need to figure out how to create additional pathways to get past a variety of obstacles in the woods. You’ll have to craft explosives to destroy boulders, for example. Eventually, Wake reunites with his friend Kirby, who he had planned to meet at the beginning of the story. She’s able to crawl through logs to get to places Wake previously couldn’t get to himself. While Wake and Kirby work together as a pair, if one of them runs out of hearts, you end up blacking out and returning to camp. I do wish we could remain where we were, with only one of the pair incapacitated and capable of being revived there and then. When you rest at a campfire, it also doesn’t fully restore your hearts. It’s easier to use items to heal instead of resting again and again. Therefore it may be more efficient to use the campfire just for changing the time of day.

While you use the Spritelings to perform most of the tasks required to get around, you still need to use Wake’s Gustbuster and Kirby’s ability as well to solve puzzles. There were some puzzles that took me a while to solve. Some of those puzzles required you to have Wake use his Gustbuster on windmills to open a gate for Kirby to go through. I eventually figured out that you seem to have to switch over to Kirby while Wake is still in the process of using the Gustbuster? The only other issues I had involved not understanding where my characters would land after they jumping down from a ledge, and some confusion regarding the usage of the final type of Spriteling. Overall, I’d say that the puzzles are not too easy or too difficult. I had to think about what to do sometimes, and when I struggled it was usually due to me missing something and not due to the game’s mechanics. The Wispwagon area was the toughest area for me in terms of figuring out what to do.

You’ll frequently return to rest areas in order to offload your gathered items and regain inventory space, craft, rest, and talk to the others taking refuge there. There’s a reason that the residents of the Deep Woods say “the dark is bad” – terrifying creatures called the Never will emerge and attack you at night, so the kids must return to a campfire area in order to get to safety. While it was slightly nerve wracking for me to keep looking at the day/night indicator on the bottom right of the screen, it was still not too difficult to get to safety before nightfall. The game gives you the convenient ability to warp around the woods, which helps you get to safety sooner. Loading seems to take about 30 seconds, which did get a bit tedious, but it was tolerable.

It could also be something of a grind to bring back defeated Spritelings, as I had to gather the ingredients used to restore them. While the ingredients regenerate in the surrounding environments fairly quickly, it still was time consuming. In order to get the specific ingredients for each type of Spriteling, you’ll need to have that kind of Spriteling attack the plants that drop the ingredients. Depending on whether or not you mess up and lose the majority of your Spritelings in one go (after thoughtlessly walking through toxic goo with them like I did), it may take a while to replenish your group of Spritelings.

Besides gathering ingredients and the equivalent of currency from the environment in the Deep Woods, you can also acquire items and currency by completing tasks for other residents in the main living area, the Grove. Help the crazy cat lady named Litterbox find all of her cats that are scattered throughout the Deep Woods – she’ll reward you for your trouble, and you can pet the cat!!! Help the aptly named Scrap Heap gather relics from various sites in the woods in order to fill his “Grove Trove” museum, and he’ll give you rewards as well. You can also complete bounties by defeating specific monsters. At first, you’ll have to find the cats and relics by looking around on your own, but eventually you’ll meet a character who will sell maps to you. There are maps for treasure chests, cat locations, and relic locations as well. Each cost 1,000 if I remember correctly, with general area maps costing around 250. They’re worth the investment if you’re a completionist!

The Wild At Heart gave me slight Where the Wild Things Are vibes (and perhaps The Chronicles or Narnia?). I love the art style, and the Spritelings reminded me a little bit of Pikmin. The music always felt appropriate for the environment and situation I was in; as it grew closer to nightfall, the ticking of a clock and the ominous music made me so nervous! 😱 😂 Other times, during the day, the music was nice and relaxing. I think that occasionally some of the mechanics could have been explained further. I wish that there was more in terms of character interaction with the other inhabitants of the Deep Woods, because the writing that’s there is clever and whimsical.

The ending seemed somewhat anticlimactic and I wanted to know more about what happened next. While the plot could have been expanded on more, I think the overall story was well-written, creative, and interesting. It’s a game of exploration that actually makes you think about what you are doing in order to continue exploring the Deep Woods. I’d love to see a sequel that picks up where The Wild At Heart finished so I could see what Wake, Kirby, and the friends they made in the woods are up to now.

Switch it ON or Switch it OFF? I’d Switch it on and give it a try! If you like cute, quirky games that make you think, The Wild At Heart may be the game for you! I’d give it a 7/10, and return to the Deep Woods once again. 🌲