Wildmender Review

Muse Games and Kwalee’s Wildmender is a survival game about restoring the land for resources rather than destroying it. The concept sounds intriguing, but how does it perform in practice? Check out our review and find out.

Wildmender Review

The world of Wildmender is a lonely one. Civilization is gone, and what is left to roam the deserts are spirits and specters. You, however, have been lucky enough to stumble upon an oasis in this barren desert. After getting some water, you meet a creature named Vidyas, who teaches you how to survive and gives you different side quests. The tutorial is quick, and most of the learning in Wildmender comes from being out in the world.

Your first task is to help Vidyas find the rest of its parts out in the wasteland. Some negative energy crystals and wraiths protect the pieces you seek. After getting all four, you return to Vidyas and meet up with Naia. She wants your help to restore the desert back to its former glory. This is one of those games where you might get 20 hours out of or 50, depending on how much you want to farm.

Combat is split between magic and melee and it gets the job done. One of the items you craft lets you shoot a magic blast and use a magic shield. The shield works great and reflects enemy attacks back at them. The blast attack was very hit-and-miss for me, which is unfortunate as it did more damage. When all else failed, I could rely on my trusty sickle to help me defeat my does. Melee is also pretty basic, but you attack very fast. I liken it to Dragon Quest Builders; it gets the job done, but is not a selling point.

Most of your time in Wildmender will be spent exploring the desert for resources and secrets. Being as the world is mostly sand, you use a shovel to dig up almost everything. While roaming, you will restore new water springs, explore ruins for treasure chests, help lost spirits, and even get a few friends to return to your base. The only downside is that you quickly lose track of time and fresh water, which is a death sentence most of the time.

While you are near your base, you get plenty of water, but it is a rare resource in the desert. The game tells you early on that going out in the sun will drain your water quickly, but I underestimated how quickly. My first death was pretty far from my camp, and it was a slow lesson and one I quickly learned from. From there on most of my exploring would be at night, where you can move around without losing as much water. You also gain essence at night, so you want to be awake for that anyways.

You get essence for restoring the oasis and planting grass, trees, shrubs, and other things around. Basically, you are rewarded for bringing more life to the desert. With this essence, you can return to the desert, restore fast travel points, make plants grow quicker, or chat with spirits. The spirits are one thing I applaud the game for. You don’t gain EXP by fighting; you earn it by going out and finding friendly spirits who give you knowledge. Just be sure you have enough essence to chat with them.

To top it off, they give you a lot of options when it comes to traversal. You do get sand surfing, which lets you glide through the desert much more quickly. Then, they give you this artifact that enables you to grow vines and bridges so any other obstacle is easily overcome. You can also climb nearly everything, and there is no stamina bar to boot. Wildmender understands what kind of game it is and lets you enjoy the exploration as much as possible.

Back at your oasis, you can build up a garden to keep yourself fed for when you are out adventuring. There is a base building system, but I mostly just made the essentials. I had my crafting station, bed, storage, spirit detector, loom, and a couple of others. Even though I didn’t spend much time on my base, I was still satisfied with it. My point is that building enthusiasts will be pleased.

I did have a weird bug that kept saying I was picking up 0 of every item. The game said 0, but I still got them, so it was just a minor annoyance. Other than that, I didn’t have any crashes or glitches. I should also mention I didn’t get to try co-op, but I think it’d be very fun.

Wildmender is one of those cozy farm games that you can lose yourself in for hours; just don’t forget to keep yourself hydrated.

This review of Wildmender was done on the PC. A code was provided by the publisher.