Wildermyth - where did those hours get off to, anyways?

 So, again, Ukraine and Gaza are still ongoing things, but no major changes of late, so we'll leave that there.

Meanwhile, here I am, just two weeks after praising Liberté, supplanting it on my "games that have my attention" list with Wildermyth (Compatibility: Verified), a tactical RPG more in line with games like Disgaea 2 (which I also, reluctantly, dropped from the list for now).  Am I just that fickle, or is Wildermyth just that good?  Arguably, both explanations are valid, but let's focus on how good the game is.  At a glance, it doesn't look like much, due to its "papercraft" style.  Watch or play a bit of it, however, and the good (maybe even unique) bits come to the fore fairly quickly.

Let's start with the more mechanical aspects of the game first.  Your party in any given encounter consists of up to 5 characters, each representing one of three classes.  There's warriors, your standard hit-things-with-big-weapons sorts.  There's hunters, your "good with a bow, but also able to sneak in close" sorts.  Finally there's mystics, who are not your standard fireball-slinging magicians - rather, they're "environmental" magicians, able to "interfuse" with different parts of the environment to produce a range of effects, centered or originating from the pieces they've interfused with.  Just to give one go-to example from my playtime, interfusing with stone things always gives you an option to use an action to chuck a stone discus from that item as a direct attack... however, depending on the skills your mystic has learned, you might also get a passive bonus just for having that interfusion, or be able to create stone walls, or help protect your other characters actively or passively, that sort of thing.

Combine that with a simple grid-based tactical system, where characters lining up next to each other provides a small defensive bonus, while attacking an enemy from multiple directions improves your chances of hitting them, and you end up with a lovely little tactical puzzle for each combat encounter.  Compared to something like Disgaea 2, it's a lot simpler to keep track of your options with a limited number of characters, while the customization of each character still lets them feel like more than "standard third-level fighter".  If this were the whole of the game, it might get easy to get bored after an hour or two, but that's just the start.

You see, each game of Wildermyth is a story of sorts, with a chapter-based setup, and an overworld where non-combat things usually dominate.  Traveling from one region to the next takes time, as does things like patrolling, building defenses against incursions of monsters, establishing outposts for crafting resources, and, especially importantly, recruiting.  After all, people die, or they grow old and need to retire from an adventuring life.  Plus, while the most you can have in a party is 5 characters, that's not to say that you can only have one party - and sometimes, for various reasons, you might only want (or be able to support) three or fewer characters on a particular task - maybe you don't want a full group bogged down while getting your newest recruit up to speed, so they're not just a farmer with a pitchfork out in the wide world facing horrible beasties.  Or maybe a bridge needs built or a mountain pass needs work.  Or maybe, there's a side story that's popped up that's tied to one of your characters.

And there is the real thing that elevates this game above most similar things, the stories.  Usually, there's an overarching story to attend to, but it's not the story.  Things come up during gameplay, and it's not in the form of a quest-giver with a question mark over their head.  Rather, sometimes, things just come up, depending in part on where your group is and what they're doing, and how you react to those events can have a big influence on how your game goes from there.  Just as an example, one event that came up on two games I've played has your group stumbling across a hill that's been shaped to resemble the head of a wolf.  You climb up and don't find anything, but then there's a bit of godly rumblings followed by a voice talking to your hunter about a pact their ancestors made, which you kind of have to acknowledge when the god's name comes unbidden to their lips.  In my first game, my options were to basically either have the hunter offer themselves up to receive the change the god offered, or for the warrior accompanying them to object strongly and loudly.  I went with the flow, and my hunter transformed into a wolf-man, gaining the ability to bite opponents on top of their usual attacks.  The second game, I had a mystic along for the ride, who condescendingly spoke of the "Woof-god" that he had tried to bargain with before, but admitted their faithful made some nice things, which resulted in the hunter getting a wolf-head amulet with some bonuses.

All in all, it's an amazing little bundle of a game.  If anything, the only thing I could point to as dragging it down a bit is that I'm pretty sure it's not an English-first game, and some of the translations are a bit clumsy.  Even with that, what I intended to be a quick "let's fire this game up and see what it's about" session turned into 10-12 hours of straight playtime (excluding the time needed midway to install it on my Steam Deck so I could play it on my couch more readily).  As long as you aren't scared off by anything turn-based, I heartily recommend giving this game a try.