Balan Wonderworld
is a 2021 platform game developed by Arzest and Balan Company and published by Square Enix. Assuming the role of two children guided by a magical being called Balan, the player explores twelve worlds themed after the hearts of troubled individuals. They explore levels, collecting items to progress to further areas, and using a variety of powers unlocked using themed costumes.
Balan Wonderworld is the debut project of Balan Company, a subsidiary brand of Square Enix led by Yuji Naka, co-creator of the Sonic the Hedgehog and Nights into Dreams series during his tenure at Sega's Sonic Team. Development began in 2018; it was Naka's first collaboration with artist Naoto Ohshima since Sonic Adventure. The aesthetic was based on musical theater, and Naka studied the hero's journey when creating the story draft. The scenario was written by novelist Soushi Kawasaki. The music, composed by Ryo Yamazaki and Hironori Anazawa, emulates musical scores and includes vocals from West End performers such as Laura Pitt-Pulford. The cutscenes were created by Visual Works. There were subsequent claims from Naka and other employees regarding internal conflict around the game's quality and marketing.
Balan Wonderworld was released worldwide for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S on March 26, 2021. Square Enix also published a novelization by Kawasaki. The game received generally negative reviews and underperformed commercially. Critics panned its gameplay and level design, although some praised its graphics and music.
Gameplay
Balan Wonderworld is a platformer video game where players take on the role of either Leo Craig or Emma Cole, two children drawn into the magical realm of Wonderworld by a being called Balan. The game plays out across twelve multi-level areas called Chapters. In the beginning, only the first chapter is available, collecting items called Balan Statues in each area will unlock Chapters. Within each chapter, Leo and Emma must navigate through a sandbox environment, searching areas for collectables and solving puzzles to progress to the end of the level. Collectables include Balan Statues and crystalline objects called Drops. A simple control scheme is used, with two buttons used to change between costumes, and other actions aside from character and camera movement mapped to all other buttons. During exploration, enemies called Negati will appear and attack the player character. Each chapter ends with a boss battle themed after the Chapter's environment and narrative. The game uses adaptive difficulty, adjusting the number and types of enemies based on player performance both on the initial playthrough and return playthroughs of stages.While exploring, Leo and Emma find costumes from the cast of each chapter; these are unlocked using collectible keys. Costumes grant abilities such as hovering, navigating particular hazards and paths, or fighting enemies. When not wearing a costume, Leo and Emma's only available actions are jumping and basic movement. 80 costumes are spread throughout the stages, some of them in secret locations. Only three costumes can be held at a time; when a fourth costume is acquired, the costume it replaces is sent into a costume bank which can be accessed at checkpoints. Receiving damage, or falling off the edge of the environment, causes the equipped costume to disappear. If the player character is hit without a costume, they are ejected from the Chapter.
Minigames can be unlocked and played within each chapter using special costumes, such as a football-themed challenge. A recurring minigame activated by finding a top hat in levels is Balan's Bout. Taking on the role of Balan, players engage in a series of quick time events, matching Balan's poses with button presses. Performance is ranked, with the best performance rewarding a Balan Statue upon first completion, and multiplying the current Drop total. Chapters can also be played in two-player local co-op multiplayer. Taking on the roles of Leo and Emma respectively, the players can combine costume abilities to simplify puzzles and open potential new pathways through levels.
Chapters are accessed through the hub world, the Isle of Tims—a floating island inhabited by the titular birdlike creatures. In the hub, players can feed Tims with Drops collected in levels, changing their color and consequently their abilities; for example, red Tims aid in fights, while pink Tims recover hidden items. Tim eggs can be found in Chapters, growing the number of Tims in the hub. By picking up a Tim, the player can take it onto a stage. A special construction is the Tower of Tims, which is grown using mechanisms powered by the Tims. After completing the game, a new third stage is unlocked for each chapter, featuring more difficult environments and new costumes.
Synopsis
Balan Wonderworld mostly takes place in the Balan Theater, a magical realm overseen by a mysterious being called Balan. The Balan Theater appears when one's heart loses its balance, and connects to Wonderworld, a realm merging reality and fantasy created from memories and hearts. The protagonists are two troubled children called Leo and Emma. Leo isolates himself from social contact due to an argument with a friend years before, while Emma suffers from anxiety about what others might be saying behind her back. Both are drawn into the Balan Theater, and travel through twelve worlds born from the hearts of troubled adults and children alike. Leo and Emma are opposed by Lance, a counterpart to Balan who commands the Negati, monsters born from the darkness of Wonderworld's visitors.After completing all twelve worlds and freeing their inhabitants of their burdens, Balan opens a portal for the chosen character to fight Lance. Upon his defeat, Lance is briefly shown in his true less menacing form before the Negati drag him into their realm. Balan then bids farewell to all of Wonderworld's visitors, though Leo and Emma's farewell is touching enough that he sheds a tear and shows them his real form; a human-like being similar to Lance in appearance. Leo and Emma are returned to the real world and face their problems; Leo connects with a dancing group he had previously shunned, while Emma learns of a birthday party thrown for her that her servants were keeping secret. The ending credits show stills of Wonderworld's visitors reuniting in the real world watched over by Balan.
Development
Balan Wonderworld is the debut project from Balan Company, a Square Enix subsidiary brand founded in 2018 by Sonic the Hedgehog and Nights into Dreams creator Yuji Naka to bring together internal and external production staff. Naka described Balan Company as a collective of designers and artists focusing on genres outside the norms of Square Enix. It was developed by Arzest, a company which had previously co-developed multiple projects for Nintendo and Mistwalker. A key staff member at Arzest was Naoto Ohshima, known for his work as a Sega artist who created the designs for Sonic the Hedgehog and Doctor Eggman. When Naka joined Square Enix in January 2018, he considered making social mobile games but was encouraged by Shinji Hashimoto to make action games for the new market, which was seeing a resurgence in classic action and platform games. Naka approached Ohshima and Arzest about a collaboration. It was the first collaboration between Naka and Ohshima since Sonic Adventure in 1998.Naka was given the go-ahead for the project by Square Enix due to his experience with platforming and action games but was told it was his "one chance" at the genre with them. The game was described as a fusion of multiple popular styles of platform games aimed at as wide an audience as possible. Describing their approach to production, Ohshima compared it to an earlier less structured style, where features and adjustments continued past the halfway point of production. Development began in July 2018. The game was co-produced by Ohshima and Square Enix's Noriyoshi Fujimoto. Late in development, the team shifted to working remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Naka said that he was removed as director six months before the game's release after complaining over its state, and that Arzest had submitted it with unaddressed bugs. He said the decision to remove him was made by the producer and other senior product staff. Naka felt Balan Wonderworld was released in an unfinished state. In a report following Naka's 2022 arrest for insider trading, an anonymous employee said Naka made unreasonable work demands, wanted Arzest to work an additional two months for free to address his problems, and treated staff abusively during the conflicts prior to his removal.
Design
Balan Wonderworld was produced for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. Fujimoto said the team was "carried away" by the power of next-generation consoles, wanting to add more features as production advanced. It was made available on a wide range of platforms, allowing for the largest possible audience. It also notably targeted a wide audience including children when other producers for next-generation hardware were mostly aimed at an adult audience. The design proposal included the 80 costume count as a hook, and Naka was sure he would need to halve the number as production went on. In the end and to his surprise, he was able to create all 80. During the concept stages, Ohshima created 120 concept costumes, narrowing it down to 80. He later commented that as the 80 costumes were a core pillar of the game, reducing the number would have shifted its design. The team tied a single action to each costume to give them relevance, with only one button command so the younger players the team was targeting as part of their audience would not get confused. Later in development, the team incorporated the DualSense controller's haptic feedback.The process of creating the different costume's single actions was difficult for the team, especially as they wanted to leave players the freedom of challenging themselves to complete levels with a particular costume or set of costumes. The character models of each level's "cast" vanished when approached so players would not mistake them for enemies, while also playing into the themes of each world. The penalty for taking damage was made minimal so players would not be discouraged from experimentation. Balancing the different costumes and fitting them into each stage to preserve challenge was one of the hardest aspects of development. In the middle of development, the co-op mode was suggested as an entertaining addition, further complicating production. The difficulty scaling, which adjusted both combat difficulty and item placement based on player actions, was handled by a meta AI designed by Yoichiro Miyake, a Square Enix employee specialising in game AI. Bug testing caused trouble as it was unclear whether the game code, the engine development kit, or the platform-specific version was the one in need of attention. Ohshima attributed their successes with finding bugs to Square Enix's resources.
The game was built using Unreal Engine 4, chosen due to its wide multiplatform support, with a dedicated version of the game being created for each platform. The game's technical director Koichi Watanabe made adjustments to the engine, replacing most of its original Blueprint Visual Scripting with C++ to speed up processing, though this caused problems getting the reworked engine working across its platforms. They also needed to cope with updates to the engine software, with Watanabe collaborating with Epic Games to incorporate his customization alongside the updates. The Steam version caused its own issues due to needing a keyboard option, and the wider variety of graphical options compared to home consoles. After transitioning to remote working during 2020, the team cooperated with Epic Games to have access to the Unreal development environment, having separate environments for the Windows and next-generation console versions.
The cinematics were created by Square Enix's CGI subsidiary Visual Works, directed by Kazuyuki Ikumori. Ohshima revealed the original plan did not include CGI scenes, but Visual Works wanted to be part of the project, and Ohshima created rough storyboards from which the studio designed the cinematics. When creating the cinematics, they combined the "cool" style of Final Fantasy with more cartoonish Dragon Quest aesthetics. This allowed for both emotional depth in expressions and an aesthetic that would appeal to younger audiences. Due to its musical elements, special attention was paid to synchronizing the movements and lighting with the musical score. Due to the ability to choose the ethnicity of Leo and Emma, which were reflected in all cutscenes, Square Enix partnered with CRI Middleware to provide graphical software. CRI Middleware customized one of their software tools to adjust each character's hair and skin tones based on choice within both real-time and CGI scenes without taking up space with tailored cutscenes for each choice.