INTRO:
Indie games with 2D graphics have to do a lot to stand out these days. They are a dime a dozen, and the consumer base has plenty of options.
Wolfstride would look like it is yet another game that is mostly a visual novel with little complex gameplay, but it benefits from something that many indie games of similar production lack.
PREMISE:
Wolfstride takes place in a seemingly familiar world. Much of its history mirrors the real world’s, but its differences make themselves known immediately – namely the presence of mecha and animal-people.
That said, the game mostly takes place in Rain City, a relatively quiet city in the “USSA”. (Presumably, “USSA” is “United States of South America”, considering the number of characters with Southern USA accents.) Specifically, the bulk of the story occurs in the outskirts, where the junkyards are.
There is only a significant change of scenery much later into the playthrough, and even then the player is limited to a few locations. The player should not expect a lot of globe-trotting, despite the presence of mobile mecha.
If Wolfstride’s story is to be compared to typical mecha stories just because it has mecha, its story is that of the “real robot” kind; the mechas need maintenance, fuel and parts. None of them will be of the “super robot” sorts (which are practically superheroes or supervillains), though some of the mecha would exhibit some ridiculous capabilities (if they are not already ludicrous enough).
Even so, most of the story will be built around its characters. That said, a former group of misfits have come together to make use of what has been left by one of their former members, now deceased. This is a mecha of initially unknown provenance, and it is not a great one.
For whatever reason, they have the not-so-bright idea of participating in mecha tournaments, despite their relative lack of funds and preparation. Nevertheless, due to a fluke that can be attributed to convenient events behind the scenes, they managed their first win. This in turn starts a series of events that would have them making new friends and building an actual team to climb up the ranks of a much vaunted tournament.
However, as the story progresses, it becomes clear that there are other things going on. One of the characters is a fourth-wall-breaking narrator of sinister disposition, and there are significant geopolitical happenings that the mecha tournaments are affected by. These other things only get significant exposition much, much later in the game, however.
VISUAL NOVEL:
Wolfstride is essentially a visual novel, despite what the early impressions of the game and its demo would suggest. That said, visual novels depend greatly on the appeal of their characters. Although it is rare for a visual novel to have blandly designed characters, there have been so many of them that any visual novel would struggle to stand out from the rest.
Wolfstride has a few advantages, but it has to be said that it has little else. There are many typos in the text, it is in bland monochrome, and there are more than a few hints of unused content. That said, what advantages it has, they are strong.
VOICE-OVERS:
The first major advantage is that the game has a lot of highly competent voice-overs. This is a significant asset that many indie games tend to lack (mainly because voice-overs cost money).
The first scene in the game alone would show how much voice-acting there is. Multiple distinct voices and different accents are delivered such that they convincingly match with the current situation. For example, the first opponent gets quite peeved over having the signature body part of his mecha being trashed.
Certain characters have versatile voice-actors too. The most notable of these is Dominique Shade, who is the main character of the story and the player character for most of the game outside of the mecha fights. He is taciturn, but in scenes where he talks, his personality can range from suave to seething, depending on his response to the situation.
SOME OVERWROUGHT LINES:
As entertaining as the dialogues, monologues and voice-overs can be at times, there are also many moments when they might cause the player to cringe. Dominique’s frequent self-loathing bouts and one of the narrators’ low opinion of people are especially notable examples of the latter. One example is said narrator’s citation of humans’ small intestines, before equating hugging people to hugging meters of coiled faeces.
OTA IMON’S ART:
Despite “Ota Imon” sounding like a Romanized Japanese name, Ota Imon is actually a Brazilian.
With that out of the way, the indie developer Raw Fury has contracted Ota Imon’s studio for the pixel art and anime art of the game, as well as the animations. Although Ota Imon’s works are not so well-known prior to this game, Wolfstride’s debut in an E3 exhibit and its launch would certainly put them in the spotlight.
Even for a jaded and cynical purveyor (like yours truly), the artwork is notable immediately for certain traits; hard shadows, lots of spiky edges and the pervasive (albeit bland) monochrome. There are also plenty of details in foreground and background layers. Then there are of course the mecha designs, which are reminiscent of the days when the forelimbs of mecha are comically oversized.
MANY DAYS OF THE SAME SCENERY:
Unfortunately, due to the scope of the story, the player would be seeing a lot of the same scenery for two-thirds of the game. The player character would be traipsing through the same places so many times, the player would eventually cease to take note of the details. The last third of the game has even less variety, due to it taking place mostly underground (which is depicted with pitch-black backgrounds anyway).
NOTABLE INCONSISTENCY IN FRAMERATE:
Indie games that rely on 2D layered graphics run mostly well on computers that can run them, but there are some titles with graphics that are not optimized. Wolfstride is unfortunately one of them.
The framerates particularly dip when the game tries to animate both the mechas and any visual effects such as smoke. The dropping frames are at their worst in the in-game UGG video game, where square light grids occur in the background to indicate that the mech battle is occurring in a game.
Fortunately, this is not too much of a problem, especially considering that the mecha battles are turn-based. Furthermore, neither mecha is sharing the same screen for most of the battles.
BUGS WITH V-SYNC:
V-synching features have been problematic in the history of video games. Unfortunately, there have yet to be any well-established solution to prevent glitches due to V-synching in the first place. Wolfstride would be an unpleasant reminder.
In its case, its V-synching can cause the game to be stuck in a location when the player attempts to transit to another location. This bug has since been fixed at this time of writing, but it can happen so early on and ruin a player’s early impression of the game.
TRAIPSING AROUND:
The player has the currently controlled player character (who is not always Dominique Shade) running about the outskirts of Rain City, usually doing errands and/or meeting other people. Indeed, a lot of gameplay time would involve moving the player character about, for better or worse. Meticulous players, in particular, would be doing this a lot more often than they would like. There are no means of fast-travel.
Fortunately, the most that the player character would be doing is moving from right to left or vice versa. Movement along the vertical axis can happen, but is not necessary in most situations. Being in the outskirts of the City, there are not a lot of vehicles on the road either, if at all. Any player character also happens to be indefatigable, regardless of how much distance that they have walked.
Collision boxes of objects are not entirely clear, unfortunately. Fortunately, there are not a lot of obstacles that can frustrate the player, and relatively small objects like rocks on the roads have no hitbox whatsoever.
DAY-BY-DAY LIFE:
The story progression is metered according to days. The player has control over this progression, fortunately. The player character can do a lot of things during the day, including even at different times of the day, but the day only ends when the player has the player character calling it in, usually via a dialogue option with another character. The player is also warned of what this option would do too, and there will be a confirmation query for this matter.
INVENTORY:
Dominique Shade’s errands would include bringing stuff around, which he somehow keeps inside his pockets. The stuff includes parts for multi-ton mecha. More than a few characters will remark on how he is able to carry these. (This is of course a poke at a typical video game trope of player characters not being encumbered by the things on their person.)
That said, only mech parts are examinable; other things like the groceries that Shade would buy from a convenience store are not examinable in any way after they have been acquired. However, they will enable options where they are pertinent.
PINEAPPLES:
There is a silly feature in the gameplay that is not entirely acknowledged in the narrative of the game. This feature involves acquiring whole pineapples and gifting them to people; any player character can do this. Amusingly, there is a small but significant portion of the user interface that is reserved for a counter of pineapples that the player has.
Pineapples can be acquired through purchases (usually at the convenience store), or more commonly, as part of the rewards from money-farming mini-games (more on these later).
FRUITY “RELATIONSHIPS”:
Gifting pineapples to characters raises the player’s “relationship” with these people. These relationships will never be acknowledged outside of the pineapple-gifting shenanigans.
That said, the main reason to pursue these “relationships” is that the characters will gift gameplay-affecting things in return. These can include mech parts and pilot skills.
The player’s progress to receiving these gifts are measured by the number of pineapples that the player has given the characters. Reaching higher “levels” means having to gift exponentially more pineapples.
However, the game is not exactly clear on what the display for this information means. That said, the player is shown the “level” of a “relationship”, as well as the number of pineapples that are still needed to achieve the next level.
MINI-GAMES – OVERVIEW:
Throughout the game, there are mini-games that the player can have Shade perform in order to gain some cash and resources, or to make progress in some side stories.
The mini-games that are meant to be played to gain resources are errands that Shade can perform for characters that happen to have some wealth from shady sources. They correctly deduce that Shade is a willing handyman that would not ask questions about the errands that he would do. These mini-games are repeatable.
There are a few other mini-games that are limited-opportunity occasions; these are meant to progress certain side stories.
The player can quit any mini-game at any time using the menu inputs, but this does not appear to let the player retain any rewards that have been accrued.
REPEATABLE MINI-GAMES:
There are four repeatable mini-games, two for each of the two characters that would have Shade doing the most errands for them.
Firstly, there is Junk Hunt, which would be the most convenient mini-game because it has a failure condition that is completely within the control of the player. Shade is given two shovels, with which he is to dig up valuable junk that happens to be buried underneath a massive junkyard.
They are not strong shovels; they can break if Shade shovels too rapidly. A visual display indicates how close this is to happening. The player can either rest the current shovel, or just break it if the player wishes to end the mini-game earlier; breaking both shovels brings about that, even if the timer is still above zero.
After the player has gotten a few devices that contribute to this mini-game, the player will gain much control over its proceedings, thus making it the most readily exploitable of the lot.
The second mini-game is package delivery via bicycle, cheekily given the acronym of “BDSM”. Every run of “BDSM” has a timer counting down; the mini-game ends when the timer is at zero. The player can extend the timer by making deliveries; the mini-game also ends if all deliveries are made. There is no way to end the mini-game prematurely.
In this mini-game, the player must maintain the speed of the bicycle. Fortunately, the player does not need to continuously make inputs to do that; the player only needs to avoid loss of speed due to collision with things. To avoid collisions, the player can have Shade switch lanes, or jump over things. Alternatively, Shade can have the bicycle bust through obstacles with its dash.
Speaking of which, dashing is the main means of completing the deliveries on time. The dashes have cooldowns, so they cannot be used continuously. Furthermore, dashing requires Shade to stay on a straight path; switching lanes or jumping will cancel the dash.
The things that contribute to this mini-game accelerates the cooldown for the dash and increases the maximum speed of the bicycle, among other things.
The third mini-game is Junk Mining, which is introduced sometime after Junk Hunt has been introduced. Instead of shovelling for junk, Shade has to catch junk that has been tossed into the air after a spot in the junkyard has been bombed. However, vermin has also been tossed into the air too; Shade has to avoid these. If one of them gets onto him, he will not be able to catch junk until he gets them off.
The mini-game ends only after all junk has fallen; this is shown in a meter to the right of the screen. There is no way to accelerate this; in fact, one of the upgrades for this mini-game increases the timer. (This upgrade also has the undesirable effect of having a certain character’s mecha obscure the screen for a moment.)
The fourth mini-game is Cat Bath; as its name suggests, Shade has to bathe cats, who are none too happy about this. For better or worse, this mini-game utilizes quick-time inputs, specifically those for directional inputs. Missing an input inflicts damage on Shade, while stunning him for a while. If Shade takes too much damage, the mini-game ends.
Upgrades for this mini-game increase the timer, while reducing the damage and stun-time that Shade takes from wrong inputs.
BUG CAUSING MINI-GAMES TO BE UNPLAYABLE:
Just after a story-progressing moment, there might be a chance for the repeatable mini-games to be rendered unplayable. The only way to address this issue is to reload a game-save. The bug has been fixed in a hot-fix patch several days after the launch of the game, though it would not allay the impression that the game has not been stress-tested.
STORY-PROGRESSING MINI-GAMES:
There are some mini-games that are one-time-only occasions. These are intended to advance certain side stories. For better or worse, these are quick-time events. In the case of the more serious side stories, making the quick-time inputs can take some levity away from these situations.
MECHA COMBAT – OVERVIEW:
The mecha battles are the part of the gameplay that is more complex than visual novel gameplay. The player character is the pilot of the Cowboy, which is the mecha that the protagonists are using for the mecha tournaments.
MECH PARTS & PILOT SKILLS:
The player’s options during mecha combat depend on what the player has outfitted the mecha and its pilot with prior to the fight. Mech parts and skills for the pilot are earned as the player progresses in the story, though pursuing side activities can yield more. For example, a very useful pilot skill can be obtained if the player builds up the pineapple-based relationship with a certain porcine character.
Of course, the player cannot swap mecha parts during battle; changing pilot skills are also a no-no, due to the narrative excuse of mecha pilots being more effective if they focus on a specific set of moves.
TURN-BASED COMBAT:
Mecha combat is turn-based, and only ever occurs between two opponents. They take turns to do their things.
Both combatants have Action Points (AP) and Movement Points (MP). A combatant can do things as long as it has either, though it can end its turn earlier if it so wishes. Of course, after a combatant has run out of both points, it can do nothing other than to end its turn.
In the case of the player’s mecha, there are means to regain MP or AP, typically through pilot skills. Being able to do more contributes the most to any victory that the player intends to have.
The mecha that happens to have more APs and MPs in total always gets to move first; this important lesson is not told to the player, unfortunately.
SIMPLE ARENA:
The arena that the combatants are fighting in are limited in space, and appears to only occur along a horizontal line. Mecha that are dozens of meters tall do not provide many options in this matter. That said, the combatants either move towards or away from each other, though they will always be bound within the arena.
The arena’s space is represented as a linear sequence of squares; either mecha, regardless of its actual size, occupies one square. The number of squares between the two of them is important, because this determines whether one is in range of the other’s attacks or not.
The player has to be mindful of this, so fortunately the game has some visual aids to help the player know whether the opponent is in range or not. However, the ranges of the opponent’s own attacks are never shown to the player; the new player has to figure these out the hard way.
MOVING AND SHOVING:
A mecha’s MPs determine how much it can move about in the arena. Moving one square in any direction takes one MP. It can expend as many MPs as it has; there is no other limit to the distance that it can move. This means that a mecha that has a lot of MPs has considerable tactical advantage, though the player is better poised to exploit this than the stupid CPU-controlled opponent.
A mecha can push into its opponent if it has 2 MPs for that. Thus, either mecha cannot pin the other to one end of the arena for long. However, these pushes are not affected by either mecha’s size or weight. This in turn means that a mecha with more MPs has more advantage than its opponent in pushing the opponent.
TILES WITH ATTACK BONUSES OR PENALTIES:
In most arenas, there so happen to be tiles that impart bonuses or penalties to the attack power of the mecha that is on it. It is in the player’s interest to keep Cowboy on those that impart bonuses, while keeping the enemy away from them. This is easier said than done, however, because many opponents have attacks that push or pull Cowboy around, or they can simply shove it away.
PINNING:
Either mecha can force the other to the latter’s starting tile, and then occupy the tile in front of the latter. This counts as having pinned the latter, which imparts a substantial attack bonus to the pinning mecha; this stacks with other attack bonuses. Indeed, certain opponents are scripted to attempt this as much as they can.
For better or worse, due to the aforementioned lack of limitation on shoving opponents around, mechas with many MPs can readily do this more than those that do not.
ATTACKING:
Obviously, APs must be spent on attacking the opponent in order to win the fight. Pilot skills that are devoted to offense usually take 2 APs, with the early-game ones taking only 1 AP to account for the Cowboy’s nascent capabilities. More powerful pilot skills take 3 or even 4 APs, so they should be considered carefully for the benefits that they bring. Indeed, it might be more prudent to stay with the less powerful but more cheaply usable ones.
When the player makes an attack, the player gets to choose which body part to strike, as long as the head of Cowboy (which houses its sensors) is still online and if the pilot skill can target any body part. There are pilot skills that only target specific body parts, or randomly hit body parts.
That said, there are no chance-to-hit rolls in the gameplay, fortunately. All attacks will land; there are no misses.
DEFENDING:
There are pilot skills that are dedicated to “defence”. In actuality, these are any pilot skills that do not directly harm the enemy. “Defence” skills include acts of reloading ammo into Cowboy’s magazines and buffs that do not necessarily increase its defensive capabilities.
There is one particular “defence” skill that any wise player would likely take, regardless of their preferred build. This skill fills Cowboy’s Nano Repair gauge while reducing that of the opponent; nano-repairs will be described later.
Defence skills can affect Cowboy – or the opponent in the case of some of them – wherever it is. Therefore, it is in the player’s interest to have at least one skill that can be repeatedly used, just in case Cowboy cannot attack its opponent for whatever reason.
HITPOINTS ON BODY PARTS:
Every body part has hit points (HP). This of course determines how much damage that it can take before it is knocked out. Until then, it is perfectly functional and can be repaired during battle, regardless of how much damage that it has taken and how badly wrecked it looks.
If it has been knocked out, any skills that are associated with that body part becomes unusable; there will be more on this later. Furthermore, that body part cannot be restored with repairs, with the exception of repairs that are specifically meant to restore destroyed parts. There will be more on repairs later.
Of all the body parts, the torso is the most important because it is where the pilot is. Having this knocked out disables the mecha, thus leading to a loss. Therefore, it is in the player’s interest to have pilot skills that divert the enemy’s attention away from the torso. Likewise, there are opponents that happen to do that.
BODY PARTS REQUIRED FOR SKILL USAGE:
Almost every skill requires a specific body part of Cowboy; this body part must be functional in order for the skill to be usable. This also applies to opposing mecha, though there is no immediately clear information on which body part is used for which skill; the player has to learn this through observation.
This limitation works more in the favour of the player than the CPU-controlled opponent, which does not always make good tactical decisions. Incidentally, mechas have move-sets that are associated with their general appearance. For example, the Saint Sailor Sakura series has an oversized left arm that is distinctly different from its right arm. It uses its left arm for its Buster Cannon attack; thus, the player might want to consider breaking the left arm to disable the opponent.
AMMO MAGAZINE:
Cowboy has an ammo magazine somewhere, presumably in its oversized left shoulder; besides, most of the attacks that consume ammo requires its left arm, which happen to be the one holding its mecha-sized rifle (which is stored somewhere on its body).
A pilot skill that needs ammo obviously can only be used if there is enough ammo left in the ammo magazine. The magazine can only be reloaded via the use of specific skills, which must be equipped; there is no readily available default means of doing so. That said, having ammo-based skills is not a requirement, but it is a necessity because these skills are the ones that can reduce the armor of the target.
ARMOR:
Mechas are built to take a beating, and they so happen to have the capacity to mount armor too. That said, their armor is the kind that reduces incoming damage by a flat amount; it is possible for thick armor to completely negate weak attacks.
Many opponents begin with thick armor – thicker than the armor that the Cowboy could ever mount. Indeed, the body parts that are important to their signature attacks tend to have more armor than the others. Some opponents also have considerable armor on their torsos, which can extend the time that the battle would take.
Armor can be destroyed, however. The Cowboy’s gunfire, in particular, is meant for this. However, there are also other attacks that can reduce armor; these are usually used by opposing mecha.
Curiously, Armor can be restored or even added onto during a battle, primarily through pilot skills that are oriented around defence. However, Armor can only reach a certain cap; the cap for Cowboy is shown to the player in its datasheet, but those for other mecha are not clear.
NANO-REPAIRS:
As if giant mechas are not ludicrous enough already, they also happen to have tanks of “nanomachines” that can be used to repair themselves during battle. For whatever reason, these are only usable during combat; they could not be used to effect repairs outside of battle.
Cowboy eventually gains a tank after a certain point in the story. Most opponents would have their own tanks too, though some do not, which gives the player an advantage.
Anyway, the nano-repair tanks partially charge up turn by turn; different mechas can have different rates of charging. In the case of Cowboy, certain mech parts can change its own rate; more is usually better. However, any incoming charge that is beyond the mecha’s capacity is wasted.
The Cowboy can have more than one tank, typically through the use of certain parts for its torso section. It is in the player’s interest to have at least two tanks, in order to retain any charge left after filling the first tank. That said, there is no reason to not use a full tank after it has become available; the player needs any opportunity that arises.
REPAIR SKILLS:
Anyway, after a nano-repair tank has been filled, it can be spent on one of the repair skills that have been assigned to the pilot. These skills generally repair body parts on the mecha, either selected by the pilot or targeting a specific body part. Some skills impart other benefits too, in return for less repairs than the skills that are dedicated to restoring HP. For example, a certain skill repairs one arm of the mecha while increasing the armor on it.
Using a nano-repair skill does not require any AP or MP. This means that the player can do quite a lot with Cowboy in a single turn, especially if the player has equipped a certain repair skill that also restores one AP.
Likewise, it is in the player’s interest to suppress the opponent’s repairs, if possible. Incidentally, there was the aforementioned skill that charges the Cowboy’s tanks, while depleting those of the opponent.
MUSIC:
Raw Fury benefited greatly from its connections with indie composers. Wolfstride so happens to have its music composed by one such person, Isadora Penna. Penna is little-known, but the music has rather considerable variety. This is just as well, because there are many situations in this visual novel game and there is at least one track that fits any occasion.
As for the music, much of it is either bass guitar or synth. There are vocals in some of them, but no legible lyrics. In more than a few portions of the game, the music and background noise would often be the only presentation, other than the voice-overs.
SOUND EFFECTS:
The sound effects in Wolfstride are more of a mixed bag. The sounds of mecha battles would be generally satisfying, at least to people who happen to follow mech/mecha fiction. There are the whirring of servo-motors, clashing of metal against metal and such other noises that these people would expect.
For better or worse (mostly for the worse), there are sound effects that occur during dialogues. Duque the dog-person mechanic often has barks interspersed behind his voice-overs. The sounds of thick hide being walloped also occur very often. There are other examples of sound effects that are presumably meant for slapstick occasions, which would not be mentioned here for the sake of people who do not like such noises.
SUMMARY:
Despite its first impressions, Wolfstride is actually more of a visual novel than a mech game. Indeed, a full playthrough of the game would reinforce this impression. Some misgivings can arise from this, especially considering that the demo for the game mainly focused on the mecha battles, which are not a significant portion of the gameplay.
Still, there is a mostly entertaining story to be had here, aided by very competent voice-overs and detailed (albeit monochromatic) artwork. It is not a waste of time, but if the player is looking for a mecha game, the player might want to look somewhere else.