It’s very early days for the “2D, low-res Sci-fi cinematic platformer/adventure” known as Wander (like, really early) but it’s already showing a lot of promise. For that reason, it seems worth keeping an eye on it – and also to gawp at its fantastic art work.
It has you playing as a convict called Rook who awakens inside an orbital prison facility that has crash landed on the ruins of Earth. The rest of humanity left the planet years ago, so Rook teams up with another survivor, a hacker named Jin in order to escape the facility.
Together the pair have to battle through rioting prisoners and the extra-dimensional beasts that haunt Earth. “Core gameplay merges pseudo-turn based combat, puzzle solving, dialogue choice/decision making, and non-linear exploration into a story driven, immersive experience,” writes Wander’s project lead in its development log.
Wander has been the passion project of one artist for about a year now. But, as the idea evolved and they produced more and more concept art for it, the temptation to turn it into an actual game became too much. So, in February 2015, they decided to look for a programmer and musician to help them do that, and now it’s in full development.
You can track its progress over on TIGSource. More conceptual art work can be seen below.