wander 彷徨う

Wander

The game's seal: WANDER in two columns, WAN and DER, stamped in rough ink.

Wander is a walking game. You guide an old man and his llama, Kumo, through the coast redwoods. Each time you play is one day: out in the morning mist, into the tent by lantern light.

Nothing on the screen tells you what to do. There's no score and nothing to win. The game is whatever you stop to look at.

Tell me when it's out

They stop on the path. Kumo grazes, a mushroom comes up, the old man sits down and then lies back with his hat over his eyes, and a slug crosses the path.

It's a game about stopping

Keep walking and you'll see the path, and not much else. Stop, and the wood gets on with its day around you. A mushroom pushes up where there wasn't one. A slug sets out across the path.

Stay put long enough and the old man sits down. A while after that he lies back and tips his hat over his eyes. The daylight hardly moves while you rest, so there's never a reason to hurry.

Kumo stops and tugs the lead. The old man looks back, walks back to it, brushes a fern aside and picks the chanterelles underneath.

Kumo knows where the mushrooms are

Kumo walks behind him on a lead and can't be hurried. Mostly it grazes. But keep an eye on its ears: they swing toward things you haven't noticed yet.

Now and then Kumo stops and tugs the lead. The old man turns and walks back, and there's something under the fern Kumo is looking at.

At an old ring of stones he kneels, strikes a light with flint and steel and blows it into a fire. He puts the kettle on, pours a cup, and sits drinking tea, Kumo lying beside him.

A basket, a fire, a cup of tea

The basket only holds so much. Once it's heaped, you leave the rest, and what you leave keeps growing for another day.

Five mushrooms on the forest floor, as the game draws them: chanterelle, bolete, fly agaric, morel and button.

Now and then you'll come across an old ring of stones. Hold your thumb on it and he kneels, strikes a light with flint and steel, and blows it into a fire. Hold your thumb on the fire and the kettle goes on. After that there's nothing to do but drink the tea.

A great blue heron standing in the creek's shallows. It looks about, stalks forward, strikes, comes up with a fish, and preens.

Who lives here

This is the redwood forest of the northern California coast, and everything living in it belongs here. A heron fishes the creek. A dipper bobs on its stone. Ravens talk somewhere overhead, and after dark there are glowworms.

Nothing here is fought or hunted. You watch, and then you leave them be.

The seasons follow your own calendar, turned around if you live south of the equator. If you use Sky, today's weather turns up in the wood as well.

Recorded from the game: supper by the fire at nightfall, the dark wood all around, a cup of tea, Kumo lying beside him.

One walk a day

A day is about twelve minutes of walking, and as much sitting as you like. When the light goes he unhooks the lantern, and the two of them walk on inside its small circle until it's time to pitch the tent.

That's the day. Open the game again that night and they're asleep, and the notebook is there to read, with everything you met drawn in it. The next walk starts tomorrow morning.

How to play

  • Tap the path ahead to walk on.
  • Hold near a thing, and he does what it is for.
  • Press and hold till it buzzes, then drag to look around.
  • The notebook is at camp: at night, tap to open it.
  • Walk with someone: at the night camp, hold your two phones back to back.
  • Nothing is lost by going slowly.

That's the whole manual. It also comes as one page for the phone, or larger, to print. Walking with someone needs NFC on in both phones, Wander open on both, and the notebook shut.

A frame of the game itself: the old man and Kumo on the path in morning mist, under pale trunks, a young conifer and sword ferns beside them.

On your phone

Wander runs on any Android phone from version 12 up, held upright. It was drawn for the Mudita Kompakt's E Ink screen, in sixteen grays.

It never goes online: no account, nothing collected. It asks for two permissions. One is vibration, for the small buzz when you press and hold. The other is NFC, which is only used to walk with someone.

Play it with the sound on. His boots sound different on roots, stone, mud, snow and water. There are no words in the game, so there's nothing to translate.

Your notebook is kept in your phone's backup, and the game saves a copy to Documents/Wander every night. While he's sitting, the screen stays awake for up to fifteen minutes, so a long rest isn't cut short.

Who made it

wander wildwood, as the game would draw him: head and shoulders among pale trunks, in a tall pointed hat with a wide tilted brim, oval glasses and a bushy beard.

Wander the game is made by wander the dev, who also makes a shelf of small apps.

It owes a great deal to Fumito Ueda's ICO, to Book of Travels by Might and Delight, to Superbrothers' Sword & Sworcery, and to Jason Rohrer, whose games let the rules do the talking.

If you have a question, or you found something in the wood and want to tell someone, write to email@wanderthe.dev.

Coming soon

Wander isn't out yet. Send an email and you'll get one short note the day it is, and now and then a little more about the game before that.

Tell me when it's out or follow the releases feed

It will be free. If you'd like to pay something for it, feed the llamas instead: every bit goes to Hot Springs Llamas.

Feed the llamas

Shared under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0: pass it on as it is, with credit, and not for money.