What do developers do when they are done work for the day? They play Dungeons & Dragons. What happens when those same AAA developers get it in their mind to create the game they wish existed? You get Wayfinder Studios an independent studio, bootstrapping together what might be one of the most innovative takes in the RPG Rustic Fantasy space in quite sometime. Let me introduce you to Wydheart.
One of the most interesting and inspired decisions the team at Wyldheart has brought to life is that your character is not the chosen one, you don’t have some predetermined destiny, you are honestly just a lowly peasant that finds themselves in a bad situation and you decide what you are going to do about it.
Unlike D&D however, this game will be an action RPG, instead of a traditional turn based style. Those actions are also solidly rooted in physics based combat by a team being led by Dennis Brännvall who was notably the Creative Director on Star Wars Battlefront II at EA DICE, and later was an Executive Producer at Embark on The Finals. Blocking matters. Timing matters. Attacks & blocks drain your stamina. Friendly fire matters, yes you read that correctly, you can hurt your team mates if you are careless. According to Dennis, the developers are from Sweden, thus you deal with friendly fire, in other words, its just how they roll.
Next, you are not choosing a class. Seriously, no barbarian, no rogues, it is a classless system. What does that mean? Total freedom to create the character you want. One example they provided was let’s say you want to be an archer who wears chainmail and focuses on being a healer. Go for it.
You can play solo, but I’ll paraphrase some ancient wisdom; it may be perilous to go alone, but not impossible. Dungeonering is often best done with a party but fear not, there is plenty of things to do in the game on your own that will make those adventures easier. Crafting, gathering, and brewing up concoctions are just some examples of how to help your party of up to four players succeed.
I’m going to date myself a little here but I have to share that I was beyond excited to hear that second edition D&D was a huge influence on Dennis when creating Wyldheart. It also implements a West Marches system which means that your party of up to four players don’t have to always be the exact same four people, thus eliminating scheduling nightmares that can often impact video game and tabletop RPG’s alike. It is a drop in, drop out RPG that saves your own personal progress to the cloud and allows you to pick up where you left off the next time you log in. I mean who am I kidding it is going to be the next day or after the next work shift that you log back on.
Knowing that the players also love to try out new builds and have alternate characters, you can have up to twenty different builds on your account! Going back to old school gaming for a moment, if you are a fan of the point and click, mystery exploration style of gaming, I’m an old King’s Quest fan myself, you will be delighted to hear that they have incorporated that style of gaming into this build. Looking around is going to matter, exploring will be rewarded, adventure is out there.
Here is the clincher, there is no AI in this game at all and there never will be which was made clear by Fia Tjenberg. She is the CEO & co-founder of Wayfinder Studios. Her resume over the past two decades in the games industry includes being a Studio Director at EA DICE on Battlefield 4, I and V, and Game Director at Funcom (Anarchy Online, Age of Conan) and Star Stable. In those roles, she led teams of up to 100 developers and shared that she has loved being part of smaller team and getting to work on the game itself besides just sending emails to make sure the trains keep running.
So adventurer, what do you do next?
First go find Wyldheart on Steam and add it to your wishlist:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3642910/Wyldheart/
Next, go check out their Kickstarter and support it if you feel inclined to as I did:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wayfinderstudios/wyldheart
Follow Wyldheart social media:
https://linktr.ee/wyldheartgame
Give a shout out to PAX East for giving these developers and so many more like them over the years a start point and stage for us to find them on.
Finally, tell a friend about this game and maybe we’ll meet up in a digital tavern in the not too distant future. Roll for initiative.