There are lots of sounds and nights in Balan Wonderworld’s Trippy demo

Fancy spending about an hour wandering through colorful cartoon dreamy landscapes designed by the creators of Sonic the hedgehog? Do you like the feeling of being pleasantly puzzled? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you’ll want to play the demo for Balan Wonderworld. This is another thing.

That Something Else is a dreamlike platformer game in which a pair of your heroes, Leo Craig and Emma Cole, are sent by the mysterious Maestro Balan on a journey through make-believe worlds created from other people’s dreams. . In the demo, which will be released tomorrow for PlayStations, Xbox, Switches, and Steam, we explore the dreams of a farmer who had trouble harvesting, a boy who dreams of flying, and a girl who met a kitten. .

The demo opens with your chosen protagonist in a location called Tim’s Island, a leafy field with portals to the levels available. This is where we interact with the Tims, little fluffy creatures who follow Leo and Emma on their adventures. By feeding these creatures with crystal drops collected in the different stages of the game, we can change their colors, which affects the usefulness of Tims when exploring. Red Tims attack. Pink Tims will search for hidden objects. They are certainly not Chao de Sonic the hedgehog, but they kind of are.

The Sonic similarities make perfect sense, given Balan Wonderworldpedigree. The new game is directed by Yuji Naka, director of the original Sonic the hedgehog, with the artistic direction of Naoto Ohshima, the designer of Sonic and director of timeless classics Nights in dreams and Blinx: the time sweeper. Echoes of each of these games can be found in Balan Wonderworld.

The demo’s play stages are vast expanses of twisted wonders full of dancing creatures in whimsical costumes, golden statues to collect, challenges to overcome, and puzzles to solve. The colorful landscapes are inspired by the dreamers who dream them. Farmers’ levels, for example, are strewn with giant vegetables and haystacks. The “The Boy Who Would Be One With The Wind” level in the demo features the real boy, giant in size, lying in the air, supposedly dreaming of flying. The designs are wacky and imaginative, as you would expect from art director Naoto Ohshima of Sonic and Nights in dreams celebrity.

The basic mechanism of Balan Wonderworld is the costume change. Leo and Emma unlock costumes during their adventure. Each has a unique ability. The Soaring Sheep costume allows heroes to transform into puffballs, which can ride the wind created by rotating fans. The Elastiplant costume allows the pair to extend their upper body in order to access crystals and switches placed slightly higher than other crystals or switches.

Other costumes mimic the moves you might find in a Mario or Sonic game. The Aero Acrobat outfit gives Leo and Emma the ability to lock onto enemies and objects in flight, rushing towards them to launch an attack. It’s Sonic’s comeback attack. The Pounding Pig costume is Mario’s pound in the shape of an adorable pig.

Instead of just giving the characters all of these abilities and letting them go to town on dreamy landscapes, Balan Wonderworld has them juggle up to three costumes at a time. This gives the player something to think about as they cycle through the levels for crystal drops and hidden secrets. Checkpoints in levels can be used to swap player costume lineups, so don’t worry if you come across a path inaccessible to your current wardrobe.

I can’t honestly say I have a clear idea of ​​what exactly is going on The wonderful world of Balan to play the demo. Much of my playing time was spent pointing at the screen and asking my wife what was going on. Why are they dancing? Why is this fan here? Why is that giant boy floating there? Our characters seem like a couple of well-meaning kids who go for a walk around solving people’s problems, which is good. We can hallucinate too, which can be fun. I can’t wait to uncover this trippy mystery when the full game releases on March 26.