These elements make for a truly engaging and immersive world to play in with little to no break in the illusion that you aren’t actively involved in the game’s storytelling. The music both lulls you into a sense of hope and determination whilst also scaring you out of your pants when night dawns and the Never monsters appear. The sound and music design complements the artwork amazingly. Nothing is out of place and everything is designed specifically to live within this world. Everything from the character design, the world-building, interactable items and monsters are all beautifully unique to the game. Moonlight Kids was able to capture the innocence and whimsy needed to create an immersive world to play in. I didn’t care what the game was about, I just knew I needed to experience it. I was instantly drawn in by the unique art style. It is undeniable that the design of The Wild at Heart is extraordinarily beautiful. “Moonlight Kids was able to capture the innocence and whimsy needed to create an immersive world to play in.” However, in both aforementioned games, this mechanic seems to always have this sort of control issue, which makes me wonder if it’s deliberately part of the challenge. Making sure you are pointed in the exact direction to both release and return Spritelings can be a little frustrating. The controls can feel a little clunky at times. Like in Pikmin, you can find seeds to regrow the forest spirits and resummon them.
It’s a touching and sharp game absolutely worth the dive into. There are a few nitpicks I can make about sound design and the Spriteling well menu having more tabs than it should need to, but they’re just nitpicks. Its story and characters are just as charming as the gameplay is fun. They aren’t invincible though, and you do find yourself getting distressed when many of them suddenly drown or get eaten by a monster. The Wild at Heart is a lovely game altogether. There are different Spritelings that are used for different tasks as well, effectively blocking paths and areas of the map until you acquire the right Spriteling for the job. You command your little friends to pick up items, break down walls, move giant boulders or attack nasty boys. Controlling your Spritelings is very similar to Pikmin and Overlord.
It’s not only the two children you control though, you also have your Spritelings. Kirby is also smaller than Wake so can get into small spaces. Wake uses his modified ‘Gust Buster’ vacuum to suck up items or turn windmills whilst Kirby acquires a magical lantern. Finally, a few of the games like The First Tree and Sunlight invite you to make a connection to other players, once you have come to terms with a journey on your own.You control your protagonists Wake and Kirby, each with their own abilities that can be upgraded. Then there are games we included like Shadow of the Colossus that let you get lost in the vastness of its landscape. Other games in the list, like Thomas Was Alone and Bird Alone offer you the chance to reflect on friendship and the need to nurture relationships. Some of the games, like Never Alone, Journey and The Long Dark place you in a harsh environment that emphasises your diminutive size when faced with the expanse of nature. These games offer us insight into the benefits of appreciating time alone, such as opportunities for self-reflection, self-discovery, and the chance to curate enriching experiences or environments for ourselves. The other games offer their own lens on loneliness and solitary seasons of life. In it, you spend 400 elapsed days waiting for the King to wake up and living at a slow pace. This list was inspired by the experience of playing the unusually solitary (and long) game The Longing and the Twitter thread that followed. “With mindfulness, there are even more benefits to gain from intentional consumption of media,” she says, “games can be tools we use to recover or grow, psychologically, and our time with them isn't wasted if they provide us insights or rest we need.” Garcia’s Screen Therapy project employs Positive Media Psychology research to highlight and interpret meaningful experiences with games and movies. We teamed up with Courtney Garcia’s Screen Therapy channel to curate a list of games that give us a chance to experience being alone in different ways. In a culture that often assumes that the route to happiness is with another person, it can benefit us to acknowledge that being alone is not always a bad thing.
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