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There’s a new way to play Wildermyth, provided people are willing to pay to pick up the $9.99 Omenroad DLC. The new add-on brings with it an additional storyline with a new mode that changes how you proceed through strategic battles with your party. From what I experienced, it can streamline and speed things up. Even so, it doesn’t change what makes Wildermythwhat it is in the process.
Typically in a Wildermyth campaign, you move around a map to recruit characters, free areas, get resources, and prepare for boss fights at the end of certain events. Along the way, you head into turn-based, strategic battle with your custom heroes. These people can grow and develop based on choices you make in story segments.
When you pick up Omenroad, you can go through the new A Walk in the Unlight campaign or take on a Challenge (standard with new heroes or Legacy with existing ones). Regardless of which one you choose, the world map in the original mode is absent. Instead, you see a grid of branching nodes. Picking one sets you down paths, which can in turn allow you to face battles and get the specific rewards present there. While A Walk in the Unlight still retains the story-based events within, both Challenge and Legacy Challenge sacrifice those elements for a more straightforward gauntlet run to the end. Rather than “chapters,” you’ll also go through “pages” that mark different eras.
Essentially, the Omenroad DLC blends optional roguelike elements into Wildermyth, and it works far better than I ever expected it to. The new pages with their paths lend themselves well to the sort of structure we experience in the original game. Should you go with one of the Challenge options, I found it can feel like a much shorter experience as you go immediately from one fight to the next until you reach the bosses at the ends of pages. That some rewards have timers and can disappear after a certain number of turns and each node notes its difficulty can allow you the option to make things more difficult for itself. Also, I appreciated that even in both the Challenge options your characters can develop relationships like they would in the main game or A Walk in the Unlight campaign.
It can feel like an Worldwalker Games consolidated and distilled Wildermyth down to what makes the game unique for Omenroad. It adjusted the structure in such a way that it feels like a roguelike too. However, it never loses its identity in the process. The storytelling isn’t sacrificed in A Walk in the Unlight. The difficulty isn’t put aside in a Challenge.
The thing is that Wildermyth is and remains a fantastic game, and Omenroad is this exceptional complement that helps tweak the way someone might play it. Traditionally, I tended to play it as a social strategy game. When I went into the add-on, I was doing so solo. It still is a complex, meaningful experience. The structure just changes a bit to make things work a bit differently. When it does, it could mean you go through a different paced adventure that prioritizes challenges over stories.
Wildermyth and its Omenroad DLC are available for the PC now.
