Why is Balan Wonderworld SO BAD?
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VOICE OVER: Ty Richardson
WRITTEN BY: Ty Richardson
In case you didn't know, “Balan Wonderworld” was supposed to be the biggest 3D platformer of the year, a new IP made by the creator of “Sonic the Hedgehog”, Yuji Naka, and published by Square Enix. When it was revealed in 2020, “Balan Wonderworld” presented a colorful and creative world themed around musical theater with a wacky-looking, top-hatted mascot. It had the potential to capture our imaginations.
Script written by Ty Richardson
Welcome to MojoPlays, and today, we’re here to answer one of the year’s biggest mysteries - Why is “Balan Wonderworld” SO BAD??
In case you didn’t know, “Balan Wonderworld” was supposed to be the biggest 3D platformer of the year, a new IP made by the creator of “Sonic the Hedgehog”, Yuji Naka, and published by Square Enix. When it was revealed in 2020, “Balan Wonderworld” presented a colorful and creative world themed around musical theater with a wacky-looking, top-hatted mascot. It had the potential to capture our imaginations. So, where exactly did it go wrong? What about it makes it so painful to play?
The story of “Balan Wonderworld” centers on one of two kids (it all depends on who you choose to play). You’re a kid who’s facing some inner demons, whether it’s because of a bad fallout with a friend or because you fear what other kids are saying about you. You discover a magical theater run by a mysterious dude named Balan, and the two of you set out to help others feel good about themselves and overcome their negative feelings. Sounds like a story that could resonate with people going through their own problems, and admittedly, the animation in the cutscenes is fantastic.
Unfortunately, one can see the issues with this game upon entering the first level. First off, characters are mocapped rather than animated, making everything feel stiff and lacking any real expression. (Isn’t musical theater supposed to NOT be those things?) To make things even more lazy, just about every NPC is given the same exact dances and motions regardless of the beat of the music. Why go for a method of animation that stiffens your characters when they’re so expressive in the cinematics? This just doesn’t bring the same level of excitement and energy, and it makes your game look like “Foodfight”. Yeah, remember that disaster of a movie?
To make matters worse, “Balan Wonderworld” features some of the most annoying music in recent years. Many of the songs you’ll hear are repetitive, bland, and lacking any real impact. What’s worse is that the game has been accused of plagiarism. While one track sounds eerily similar to a track from “Super Mario Odyssey” (as pointed out by videogamedunkey), one track in a later world sounds exactly like one piece from “Ghostbusters”. Could this be a sign of rushed development, or was this simply accidental? We’re more inclined to believe the former due to one damning flaw that dismantles any ounce of potential this game has.
The most glaring design choice is the control scheme, and it’s the primary reason why “Balan Wonderworld” has received scathing reviews. For your reference, the Xbox and DualSense controllers have fourteen buttons, not including the touch pad nor the options, home, and share buttons. Nearly half of them do the exact same thing - jump or use a costume’s ability! And yes, we said OR because both jump and costume abilities are tethered as one action! Some costumes activate their abilities through jumping while others just remove jumping entirely.
Surprisingly, there is a reason as to why “Balan Wonderworld” employs such an infantile control scheme, but it’s a rather baffling one that sort of defines everything wrong with the game. When speaking to Tech Radar, producer Noriyoshi Fujimoto said, “From the very beginning, one of our goals for development was to create a game with every kind of action - to put in over eighty different kinds of action. But even if you include a huge variety of actions in a game, it’s difficult to map all of those to the buttons, it’s difficult for the player to remember them all, and it’s difficult to create the opportunity to use them all.” Fujimoto admits in the same interview that the team got “carried away” with adding things during development. But this statement alone defines what makes this game so poorly designed.
Let’s break this down. First off, one of “Balan Wonderworld’s” goals was to create a game with every kind of action, or one that featured over eighty different actions? That doesn’t make much sense given that the only action you can do is jump or use a costume’s ability. Even then, some of the costumes recycle abilities or mechanics from others. We can compare apples to oranges all day with the costumes. Point is that why did a 3D platformer need EIGHTY actions only for them to be tied to the same mechanic over the spread of six buttons? This only shows just how bloated “Balan Wonderworld” is in terms of content. It’s not necessarily because of too many levels (you have twelve worlds, each last two levels and a boss fight), but because of the sheer amount of costumes there are to collect. Only a handful of costumes are admittedly fun to use, but most of them seem to be there for fluff, to tack on a number and say, “Look at all these things we have!” Why couldn’t that number be halved? Or cut down to, say, twenty so that more resources could be put into the weak level design?
Second problem with the statement is that Fujimoto acknowledges the difficulty in implementing all eighty of these ideas. He mentions how hard it would be to map the buttons in a way that makes things intuitive. Yes, it would be difficult, but again, why not cut down the number of costumes, then? Another contradiction to this is that several games have implemented a single button for general interactions, games going as far back as Nintendo 64 and PlayStation 1. These were games telling you to “press the action button to interact with the world”, when various actions were already tied to one button yet still allowed you to do simple actions...like JUMPING. Cross or A is to jump, Circle or B is to interact, Y and Triangle open your inventory, and maybe X or Square does some basic attack. Several games have followed a format similar to this, and “Balan Wonderworld” could have easily done the same thing and STILL incorporate its eighty costumes.
Face buttons are there to help make controls more intuitive no matter how complex your mechanics may seem. They aren’t decorated in symbols and color-coded just to look pretty - they’re there to help players remember which buttons do what. This is what makes the second part of Fujimoto’s statement so befuddling as he cites that implementing all eighty actions would be hard for the player to remember which costume does what. Once again, cut down the number of costumes - that’s a really easy solution! Again, controls could have been made easier had costume abilities been tied to a button of their own, separated from the jump mechanic. Doing this and perhaps fleshing out costume abilities some more could have made for some interesting gameplay.
While honest and a bit transparent, Fujimoto’s statement is a bit alarming as it shows just how negligent development was. Corners were cut, too much time was spent on dumbing down mechanics as much as possible, and in the end, it turned into “Jurassic Park” - everyone spent so much time wondering if they COULD do it, but no one asked if they SHOULD do it. Now, the game is out, tanking in critic review scores across all platforms on Metacritic, and is under fire for potentially plagiarizing some of its music. That last part probably would have happened no matter how good the game could have turned out, but it’s clear that “Balan Wonderworld” suffered greatly from this lack of focus and care. And it’s a real shame because how many games do we see taking on a musical approach, much less the aesthetic of the world of theater? What’s worse is that it doesn’t look like Balan Company will get another shot as the game has bombed substantially in sales, having sold under 2,100 copies in Japan alone. Even sadder is that Naka has said this was the one chance publisher Square Enix was going to give him and his team. With excellent character design, lively animation (in its cutscenes), and an excellent concept in visuals and artstyle, “Balan Wonderworld” deserved better. And yet, this is probably the end. Goodbye, Balan! You died too soon.
Why is Balan Wonderworld SO BAD?
Welcome to MojoPlays, and today, we’re here to answer one of the year’s biggest mysteries - Why is “Balan Wonderworld” SO BAD??
In case you didn’t know, “Balan Wonderworld” was supposed to be the biggest 3D platformer of the year, a new IP made by the creator of “Sonic the Hedgehog”, Yuji Naka, and published by Square Enix. When it was revealed in 2020, “Balan Wonderworld” presented a colorful and creative world themed around musical theater with a wacky-looking, top-hatted mascot. It had the potential to capture our imaginations. So, where exactly did it go wrong? What about it makes it so painful to play?
The story of “Balan Wonderworld” centers on one of two kids (it all depends on who you choose to play). You’re a kid who’s facing some inner demons, whether it’s because of a bad fallout with a friend or because you fear what other kids are saying about you. You discover a magical theater run by a mysterious dude named Balan, and the two of you set out to help others feel good about themselves and overcome their negative feelings. Sounds like a story that could resonate with people going through their own problems, and admittedly, the animation in the cutscenes is fantastic.
Unfortunately, one can see the issues with this game upon entering the first level. First off, characters are mocapped rather than animated, making everything feel stiff and lacking any real expression. (Isn’t musical theater supposed to NOT be those things?) To make things even more lazy, just about every NPC is given the same exact dances and motions regardless of the beat of the music. Why go for a method of animation that stiffens your characters when they’re so expressive in the cinematics? This just doesn’t bring the same level of excitement and energy, and it makes your game look like “Foodfight”. Yeah, remember that disaster of a movie?
To make matters worse, “Balan Wonderworld” features some of the most annoying music in recent years. Many of the songs you’ll hear are repetitive, bland, and lacking any real impact. What’s worse is that the game has been accused of plagiarism. While one track sounds eerily similar to a track from “Super Mario Odyssey” (as pointed out by videogamedunkey), one track in a later world sounds exactly like one piece from “Ghostbusters”. Could this be a sign of rushed development, or was this simply accidental? We’re more inclined to believe the former due to one damning flaw that dismantles any ounce of potential this game has.
The most glaring design choice is the control scheme, and it’s the primary reason why “Balan Wonderworld” has received scathing reviews. For your reference, the Xbox and DualSense controllers have fourteen buttons, not including the touch pad nor the options, home, and share buttons. Nearly half of them do the exact same thing - jump or use a costume’s ability! And yes, we said OR because both jump and costume abilities are tethered as one action! Some costumes activate their abilities through jumping while others just remove jumping entirely.
Surprisingly, there is a reason as to why “Balan Wonderworld” employs such an infantile control scheme, but it’s a rather baffling one that sort of defines everything wrong with the game. When speaking to Tech Radar, producer Noriyoshi Fujimoto said, “From the very beginning, one of our goals for development was to create a game with every kind of action - to put in over eighty different kinds of action. But even if you include a huge variety of actions in a game, it’s difficult to map all of those to the buttons, it’s difficult for the player to remember them all, and it’s difficult to create the opportunity to use them all.” Fujimoto admits in the same interview that the team got “carried away” with adding things during development. But this statement alone defines what makes this game so poorly designed.
Let’s break this down. First off, one of “Balan Wonderworld’s” goals was to create a game with every kind of action, or one that featured over eighty different actions? That doesn’t make much sense given that the only action you can do is jump or use a costume’s ability. Even then, some of the costumes recycle abilities or mechanics from others. We can compare apples to oranges all day with the costumes. Point is that why did a 3D platformer need EIGHTY actions only for them to be tied to the same mechanic over the spread of six buttons? This only shows just how bloated “Balan Wonderworld” is in terms of content. It’s not necessarily because of too many levels (you have twelve worlds, each last two levels and a boss fight), but because of the sheer amount of costumes there are to collect. Only a handful of costumes are admittedly fun to use, but most of them seem to be there for fluff, to tack on a number and say, “Look at all these things we have!” Why couldn’t that number be halved? Or cut down to, say, twenty so that more resources could be put into the weak level design?
Second problem with the statement is that Fujimoto acknowledges the difficulty in implementing all eighty of these ideas. He mentions how hard it would be to map the buttons in a way that makes things intuitive. Yes, it would be difficult, but again, why not cut down the number of costumes, then? Another contradiction to this is that several games have implemented a single button for general interactions, games going as far back as Nintendo 64 and PlayStation 1. These were games telling you to “press the action button to interact with the world”, when various actions were already tied to one button yet still allowed you to do simple actions...like JUMPING. Cross or A is to jump, Circle or B is to interact, Y and Triangle open your inventory, and maybe X or Square does some basic attack. Several games have followed a format similar to this, and “Balan Wonderworld” could have easily done the same thing and STILL incorporate its eighty costumes.
Face buttons are there to help make controls more intuitive no matter how complex your mechanics may seem. They aren’t decorated in symbols and color-coded just to look pretty - they’re there to help players remember which buttons do what. This is what makes the second part of Fujimoto’s statement so befuddling as he cites that implementing all eighty actions would be hard for the player to remember which costume does what. Once again, cut down the number of costumes - that’s a really easy solution! Again, controls could have been made easier had costume abilities been tied to a button of their own, separated from the jump mechanic. Doing this and perhaps fleshing out costume abilities some more could have made for some interesting gameplay.
While honest and a bit transparent, Fujimoto’s statement is a bit alarming as it shows just how negligent development was. Corners were cut, too much time was spent on dumbing down mechanics as much as possible, and in the end, it turned into “Jurassic Park” - everyone spent so much time wondering if they COULD do it, but no one asked if they SHOULD do it. Now, the game is out, tanking in critic review scores across all platforms on Metacritic, and is under fire for potentially plagiarizing some of its music. That last part probably would have happened no matter how good the game could have turned out, but it’s clear that “Balan Wonderworld” suffered greatly from this lack of focus and care. And it’s a real shame because how many games do we see taking on a musical approach, much less the aesthetic of the world of theater? What’s worse is that it doesn’t look like Balan Company will get another shot as the game has bombed substantially in sales, having sold under 2,100 copies in Japan alone. Even sadder is that Naka has said this was the one chance publisher Square Enix was going to give him and his team. With excellent character design, lively animation (in its cutscenes), and an excellent concept in visuals and artstyle, “Balan Wonderworld” deserved better. And yet, this is probably the end. Goodbye, Balan! You died too soon.
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