Developer: Leafy Games
Publisher: Leafy Games
Platform: PC
Tested on: PC
Wyrmhall: Brush and Banter – Review
Sinking your teeth into sprawling open-world games like Xenoblade Chronicles X or Assassin’s Creed Shadows is great, but sometimes you just want to unwind with something different after a busy day. We’ve been spending increasingly more of our sparse gaming time on so-called cozy games, like Tiny Garden and Mail Time. These are usually laid-back, low-commitment experiences that can be completed in a single evening. According to its Steam store page, Leafy Games’ Wyrmhall: Brush and Banter is a cozy game, but it also adds comedy into the mix. That sounds like a match made in heaven to us, so we were more than happy to give this one a go.
Story
The titular Wyrmhall is a bustling hub that connects different magical worlds. It is filled with all sorts of shops that offer goods and services to travellers. One of those shops is an unassuming kiosk where visitors can get their magical artifacts cleaned. This kiosk is usually attended by mild-mannered bat Bimbly, but after years of non-stop work, he’s in dire need of a vacation. That is where you come in. Stepping into the shoes of a young goblin girl, you’re tasked with running the cleaning kiosk for one week. Seems easy enough, right? Unbeknownst to you, however, shadowy figures have set their sights on the kiosk. At the end of the week, the Borkmund parade is being held in Wyrmhall, and the sinister evildoers intend to seize power during this joyous event. The cleaning kiosk is at the center of their nefarious plan. Can our unwitting goblin heroine stop things from happening? More importantly, will she earn enough money for snacks?
Graphics
The simple, low-poly character models give a storybook-like quality to Wyrmhall’s visuals. Aesthetically, this is a decent-looking game, with great character designs across the board. We did feel that character animations were a bit oversimplified. Most of your customers will just slide into view, for example, rather than having an actual walking animation. The game is also lacking in environmental variety, with the vast majority of it taking place on a single screen representing the kiosk. On the upside, Wyrmhall’s visual performance was buttery smooth, and we experienced no issues with frame drops or stutter whatsoever, likely owing to the game’s graphical simplicity.
Sound
Simplicity seems to be not just the keyword for Wyrmhall’s visuals but to its audio as well. The majority of the game’s soundscape consists of a pleasant, relaxing soundtrack. The tone does shift during some of the more dramatic scenes, but overall, the music comes across as cosy and pleasant. Ambient sound effects bring the hustle and bustle of Wyrmhall to life, which is necessary as the game lacks voice acting.
Gameplay
There are quite a few similarities between Wyrmhall and Lil’ Guardsman, one of our favorite games from last year. Both games feature young girls taking on seemingly menial jobs in a fantasy world. The games follow a similar structure as well, with magical creatures walking up to this place of work, and the player having to use different tools to complete a task. There are quite a few similarities in how the choice-driven story can play out, and even the humor is of a similar vibe. That said, we wouldn’t go as far as to say that Wyrmhall is an outright rip-off of Lil’ Guardsman, as there are some major gameplay differences as well. However, if you’re a fan of Hilltop Studios’ parody of Papers, Please!, chances are that you’ll enjoy Wyrmhall as well.
The standout gameplay difference comes in the form of artifact cleaning. Each of your customers will present you with an object that requires cleaning. In practice, artifact cleaning plays out like a puzzle. It’s a simple matter of rotating the object around and looking for dirt and grime. You have different tools at your disposal, like a brush, a cloth, and pincers. Each of your tools can remove a specific type of crud. Once you’re done cleaning an object, you ring the kiosk bell. The customer will then pay you based on how well of a job you did. If you can remove all pieces of dirt, then the object will sparkle. In most cases, this is a straightforward affair, and there technically isn’t a time limit, so you can thoroughly look over an artifact before returning it to your clientele. There are exceptions though. Some objects will start to break apart if you handle them too much, and others may even explode, killing you in the process. Some have moving parts, and others will change shape as you rotate them. Wyrmhall may seem like a very easy game at first glance, but we were caught off guard by trickier items a couple of times and kicked the bucket unexpectedly. Fortunately, you can always ring the bell and return an item before you’re done cleaning, although you won’t get paid as much.
Now, payment doesn’t have any practical use in-game, at least not as far as we could tell. You won’t be buying new tools or upgrading existing ones. The point of earning as much cash as possible seemingly translates to how the ending of your playthrough plays out. There are multiple possible endings, with some of them being choice-driven or based on just how well you managed to clean the artifacts. This helps with mitigating just how short Wyrmhall is. A single playthrough will only set you back two to three hours or so, but the idea of seeing different endings play out does motivate us to return to the cleaning kiosk. With a relatively low RRP of €9.75, Wyrmhall definitely seems fairly priced for how short and sweet of an experience it is overall.
Conclusion
While Wyrmhall’s simple puzzle gameplay fits the bill of a cozy game, it is an outlier with its darker story and focus on humor. The game succeeds in ticking both the cozy box and the comedy box, rather than delivering a half-baked version of either. The relatively short length of a single playthrough allows you to play through it over the course of a single evening, while the branching endings provide plenty of replay value. The different puzzles are varied enough to keep things interesting without becoming frustratingly difficult. Our only gripe is that the character animations are too simplistic. Even so, if you’re a fan of either the cozy genre or comedy games, chances are you’ll adore what Wyrmhall has to offer.
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[…] undoubtedly have noticed that we’ve been playing quite a few cozy games lately, ranging from Wyrmhall to Artis Impact. Cozy games are a relatively new genre, but over the last few years, there has been […]