The Wild at Heart asks a lot of players, especially in the opening hours. If this sounds like a lot to handle, that’s because it is. Next to Spritelings, money is your most important resource you can spend it to improve the central base of the Greenshields and unlock new upgrades for Wake and Kirby. Not only will you come across nuts and bolts that serve as currency-à la Ratchet and Clank-but you’ll discover materials you can sell to vendors or craft into items and tonics. The latter is especially important, as junk items play a key role in The Wild at Heart. Your vacuum also lets you rotate pinwheels, open locked gates, and clear piles of junk strewn throughout the world. With the help of your trusty vacuum, the Gustbuster, you can suck up Spritelings in the field (the equivalent of Captain Olimar’s whistle). You can swap between different types with a selection wheel and toss the selected choice with a button tap. By contrast, Shiverlings craft ice bridges and are relatively brittle in fights.Ĭontrolling these Spritelings is simple enough. Emberlings, for instance, are fiery creatures that burn patches of bramble and pack a wallop in combat. Over the course of a 12-15 hour campaign, you’ll meet five different types of Spritelings, each of which you can recruit in numbers to help you progress. The game borrows heavily from the Zelda framework, sending Wake to various biomes-dark caves, icy mountains, etc.-in search of items that grant access to new areas of the map. Thankfully, the bulk of your time in The Wild at Heart is spent exploring its sizable overworld. But all the lore in the world can’t make up for weak characters and an uninspired plot. The game takes care to explore the history, inhabitants, and locales of the Deep Woods, complete with a detailed lore book.

To its credit, The Wild at Heart’s story woes aren’t due to lack of effort. But their trials are held back by forgettable dialogue and sporadic pacing. The central story fares slightly better, as Wake and Kirby wrangle with painful memories about their parents. The game’s NPCs, though quirky, come across more as side attractions than compelling characters. While an intriguing setup, The Wild at Heart’s narrative never gains momentum. Grey Coat tasks Wake with exploring the various ends of the Deep Woods, tracking down various Greenshields members, and ultimately restoring peace to the forest. With the Greenshields losing their hold over the Deep Woods, the Never threaten to engulf the world. The Woods also house various flora and fauna-most notably, helpful critters known as Spritelings, and dangerous creatures called Never that stalk the night. As Wake learns, this land-termed the Deep Woods-is home to an order of magical beings known as the Greenshields. Before long, he encounters a mysterious man, Grey Coat, who presides over the forest. Unfortunately for Wake, he gets lost wandering into the depths of the woods. One day, with his father away, Wake gathers his things and runs away into the surrounding forest, in search of his friend. The Wild at Heart stars Wake and Kirby, a pair of childhood friends who each come from a broken home. The result is a serviceable homage to some of gaming’s finest, but a title that falls short of its own ambition. And it offers a sizable gameworld, but one that suffers from bloat and repetition. It builds a web of systems-from resource gathering to crafting-but struggles to find chemistry between them. It provides pages of worldbuilding and lore, but fails to capture the imagination. Yet while The Wild at Heart brings plenty of ingredients to the table, it never manages to add its own spice. Take Pikmin’s gameplay, Zelda’s structure, and a dash of Luigi’s Mansion weaponry, and the game makes for an unusual concoction of Nintendo’s greatest hits. The Wild at Heart, a 2D adventure developed by Moonlight Kids and published by Humble Games, wears its zeal for Nintendo with pride.

From Metroidvanias to platform fighters, Nintendo continually proves its ability to go where few games have gone before. The gaming giant has contributed to nearly every genre under the sun-and even birthed several of its own. When it comes to influence, few video game makers rival the might and magic of Nintendo.

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