Perhaps as some kind of bet or self-imposed challenge all gameplay is based around only using one button. The gameplay gimmick is that each world has a handful of different costumes to find with different abilities, or rather, ability. He’s clearly gotten way overdressed for the occasion and every time he shows up in gameplay he gets his dark and brooding bumcheeks handed to him in two minutes flat. What the fuck’s going on? Who’s the dude who looks like if Robert Smith from the Cure turned into a Pokemon, is he supposed to be the Satan-like villain who’s causing everyone’s problems in an attempt to sow discord in the world of men? ‘Cos the problems are so mundane I kinda feel bad for the guy. You need to sit down and answer a few fucking questions. Possibly as an attempt at purely visual storytelling or to cheap out on the translation budget, but listen here, Yuji Naka – a three panel comic strip about Snoopy wanting his dinner can get by without dialogue. Then we fight an elaborate symbolic boss, then we watch a cutscene of the person overcoming their difficulty, then they and the protagonist meet up and launch into a choreographed dance number. From there we embark upon a series of abstract platforming levels apparently based upon the psyche of a random person in the real world, who is shown in a cutscene experiencing some extremely banal difficulty in life, like “chess player doesn’t win at chess” or “bug collector’s school friends think bug collecting is a bit weird,” We are then dumped into a hub world where we get followed around a meadow by several pastel-coloured Tribbles. You play as either big-eyed girl with personal issues or big-eyed boy with personal issues, who stumbles into some kind of mysterious funhouse run by the titular Balan, who looks like what you’d get if Willy Wonka turned into a Pokemon. I suppose the best approach at this point would be to try to describe exactly what happens in Barren Thunderthighs, like I’m some futuristic explorer reporting back from a mysterious alien ruin in the brief period before I get impregnated by something hideous. I said to myself “I’ve never seen Nights into Dreams, I wonder what the fuck it’s about.” So I sat through a longplay of the game on Youtube, and when it was finished I said “I have now seen Nights into Dreams, I wonder what the fuck it’s about.” And that rather sets the tone for this review.
The game is more a successor to Nights into Dreams, Yuji Naka’s IP from the Sega Saturn days. But while Balan Chunderlungs bears a lot of the Sonic the Hedgehog art style in that everyone has giant heads and stringy limbs and animate like theme park mascots going through the final stages of opioid withdrawal, View Full Transcript To which I might ask, have you fucking played any Sonic the Hedgehog games in the last twenty years? Expecting more at this point is like going bobbing for apples in a veterinary surgeon’s sink trap. I suspect the negativity towards the game has a lot to do with it being directed by Yuji Naka, creator of Sonic the Hedgehog, and everyone was expecting more. Just a mixture of confusion and embarrassment, like what I felt when my dad announced he’d gotten a job as a Playboy bunny. But you know, bloody-minded contrarian that I am I feel inclined to be charitable towards something everyone already says is a great big bag of salt n vinegar shit crisps, and I can honestly say, badly designed and incomprehensible though it is, I don’t feel much hate or anger towards Balan Thunderpants. Look at you all asking me to play Balan Wonderworld and getting your phone cameras ready like you’ve just put a smash cake in front of a tiny baby. We have a merch store as well! Visit the store for brand new ZP merch. Want to watch Zero Punctuation ad-free? Sign-up for The Escapist + today and support your favorite content creators! This week on Zero Punctuation, Yahtzee reviews Balan Wonderworld.