An unfinished script for a video review of wanderhome

Originally published July 18th 2022

This was written months ago in a single day it is unfinished and messy and needed to be revised but it was such a release of emotion that I left me satisfied emotionally but not intellectually. I haven't worked on it in a long while so have fun reading this unfinished script.

Introduction

It is early May 2022, the State of Texas has passed a law classifying parents who let their transgender children transition as child abusers, and requiring the forceful outing of all transgender children to their parents. Soon a game bundle to raise money for transgender advocacy groups in texas is put together on itch. After supporting the bundle I looked through it to see what was included and saw wanderhome. A game I had been recommended in the past but have never picked up.

Wanderhome is a game published by Possum Creek Games in April of 2021. It was written by Jay Dragon, illustrated by Letty Wilson, and Sylvia Bi, and layout out by Ruby Lavin. Editing was done by Ruby Lavin, Luke Jordan, and Kazumi Chin. Chin was also taken on as part of general consultation along with J Tyler, Jamila Nedjadi, Jeeyon Shim, Riley Rethal, and Wes Chaplin, and at the time of writing this script was recently announced as a finalist for a nova award by Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.

Wanderhome is a game about many different things. Throughout its 241 page length, it touches on topics of violence, nature, trauma, queerness, and healing. It has a unique writing voice, and layout utterly dissimilar to anything I have seen before. It has received near-universal praise. It is a game that has so much to talk about that digging into one aspect of it could be an essay onto itself.

Wanderhome is one of the worst games I have seen in recent memory.

Violence

Wanderhome is a game about violence. A pull quote on the back by Avery Alder reads “I grew up reading Redwall. The opening pages were full of lavish descriptions of playful merriment. I loved those pages. But they always gave way to chapters about war, pillaging, and slaughter. Wanderhome asks: what if the meadow gets to stay safe and happy this time? What if those opening pages last forever?”

The world of Hæth however is not a land where the merriment lasts and war never comes. Hæth is a world just reborn from a devastating war, a war so horrific it genuinely was a war to end all wars. Now large parts of the population wander the countryside in hopes of finding a new home, relying on the generosity of others to survive. However despite this narrative explanation for why there are travelers on the road wanderhome is not a story of refugees, every trip taken is a pleasant road trip around an idealized seemingly nonindustrialized countryside.

As anyone familiar with early May 2022 will know that Russia is currently invading Ukraine. A country ruled by an imperialist oligarch who kills political dissidents has an army made up of young men ranging from 18 to 27 who are legally required to be part of the military is spreading bloodshed amongst the steppe. This invasion has emboldened the various neonazis of the Ukrainian military, as all wars tend to do. The national guard is now sharing videos of soldiers coating their bullets in pig fat to specifically shoot at Muslims, calling them Orcs. Young men, some hardly even men are being sent into a meat grinder to satisfy the bloodlust and ego of a man who has decided to relive the glory days of Russian supremacy. Already the journalist class of America clamors for us to enact ethnic justice, punishing the working class of Russia for a war they have no control over. An act that will only help to stir up bloodlust against Slavic people generally as the person who figures it is time to take things into their own hands will not be able to tell the difference between a Russian and a Ukrainian.

We as Americans are shown images of great refugee marchest attempting to get safely to a country where they will not be torn apart by industrial warfare, we see videos of anyone black being turned away at borders due to the virulent racism that perpetuates European states.

So maybe refugees are on the mind.

And yet war defines the world of Wanderhome. Weapons of war litter farms, the holiday of Bloody Night mourns those lost to way, one of the playbooks is a veteran of the war struggling to reintegrate into society, a trait of NPCs is heroic someone who sees themselves as a hero because of their violent struggles.

Every single thing points to a world hardly holding together, where desperation permeates every facet of society, but it just doesn’t. It is a world where people struck with wanderlust can simply road trip for a while before settling down.

From the rooftops, this game shouts at us violence is bad, a very simple and agreeable thing, and yet it never reckons with what violence means and why it is enacted, the game asks us to imagine a truly post violence world, for no other fact that the writer sees it is icky and bad no ifs and or buts.

Those deemed Heroic are said to have a cruel fate befall them, they are delusional people who see themselves as the arbiter of what is right and what is wrong, they are dragon slayers, those who are arrogant enough to seek power, and leaders of rebellions. They are quick to judge someone as fundamentally good or irredeemably evil.

They are leaders of the rebellion

They are leaders of the rebellion

What the rebellion is, is left intentionally vague in Wanderhome, we know very little about it other than it happened. A rebellion is indeed a violent thing, it can result in death and sorrow for all of those involved, a rebellion however is never for no reason, a rebellion is what happens the those crushed in the cogs of state violence stand up and push back against their oppressors. Rebels must shed blood, not due to the inherent righteousness of bloodshed, but because they have been denied the decency of nonviolence.

Going back to an earlier point we also have the veteran playbook, someone who had the misfortune of fighting in a war, and they grapple with that experience. A grand part of the playbook is that after experiencing a war they are a massive ticking timebomb that is going to kill someone at any second and once they do they must be shunned from society. Remember that bit earlier about how the book thinks only delusional people will make snap judgments about the core nature of good and evil about someone?

The playbook is full of sentiments like violence ripples outward from not only the person you kill but their family as well as the loss of a loved one is equivalent to death itself, or that once you kill you will become blood drunk and start killing as many people as you can, that you are worthy of disgust for using violence.

I will not sugarcoat this this philosophy is genuinely disgusting to me, this type of condemnation is the sort of attitude that enables tyrants to have a monopoly on violence, I am saying this as someone who will never willingly engage in violence. We live in a world where violence rules, a condemnation of all forms of violence no matter what the cause is nothing more than a liberal screed in praise of the status quo.

Violence is nothing more than a tool. There is no virtue in abstaining from violence in the face of tyranny. For the rule of a tyrant, the rule of someone who would garner rebels is a violent rule and doing nothing to stop it is more violent than any punch thrown by a rebel.

Writing

Wanderhome is a game that wants to be your friend, that much is clear. A large amount of this book is to my surprise written in the first and second person, often referring directly to the reader or calling the author and the reader a group. In the introduction of all the things “we” will do, before ending with the question “will you join me?” Every so often the rules are interrupted by segments telling a story of the first time someone played Wanderhome with a group, a personal story, talking in-depth about details about the cookies Socks baked, or how Mel struggled to pick a name, or the bells that Charlie’s character wore. The end of the rules even ends with reassurance that even though that one day “there will come a day when I’m not the person you fall asleep next to, and that’s okay”, and an apology over how hard it is to say goodbye.

Jay Dragon is not your friend, Jay Dragon is not my friend, this comes not out of malice on Jay’s part but on a simple reality of the world. The people who read this book will statistically speak never meet Jay Dragon, although considering how much time Jay Dragon spends on Twitter I think I will just say Hello there Jay, I’m sure you're not an evil person but this game disgusts me, if you have any rebuttals please keep them in the youtube comments and not in front of your thousands of Twitter followers.

While there is of course nothing wrong with kindness towards strangers, it is indeed a virtuous thing. But there is a large difference between helping a stranger on the street and giving reassuring words to someone you will never meet. When you reckon with someone in person you are coming to an understanding no matter how limited of who they are in that moment. When giving reassurances to a hypothetical person that might eventually read this you can only provide kindness equivalent to that of a hang in there poster, or a commercial that says “we know times are tough”. This book is in fact not actually providing kindness, it is providing platitudes under the guise of being your friend.

Keep in mind that while someone pretending to be your friend is normally kinda weird but not something to turn your nose up at, this is not a person, this is a book. This is a product that the people who worked on charge money for. While I understand that generic white women like me have ruined the term parasocial by overusing it. I think it is safe to say this is the sort of writing preys upon people’s parasocial tendencies regardless of whether it was an intentional delicious to do so or not. I just consider this weird and somewhat unethical, to say the least.

While weird closeness is its own can of worms to discuss that only would be to not speak of the many other problems the writing has.

It’s just not good writing. It is the kind of writing that seems to portray a distinct lack of respect for the intelligence of the readers. It includes gems such as explanations that “a tower is a place that reaches so high up to the sky that it feels like it scrapes against the clouds” and an explanation that cheerful people are “happy and positive” Every sentence describes the world would have left me feeling talked down to when I was still in 3rd grade, let alone as an adult. Even if I concede that this is a game for children and not a game for adults I am still offended on behalf of the children, children are in fact smart people who think and try and understand the world the best they can, to speak to them like this personally offends my sensibilities as someone who is studying to become a teacher.

On top of that, the book just generally has so much unnecessary fluff added to it. I think one of the prime examples is a section at the end of the book entitled “A note on type” that I will now read to you verbatim.

“This book is set in Arno Pro, with headers in Luminari and initials in Ruritania.

Arno (Robert Slimbach, 2007, Adobe) is an old-style serif based on 15th and 16th century Humanist calligraphy, named for the Arno river that runs through Florence, and designed to have a "tangible style" while maintaining legibility. A combination of the Aldine and Venetian styles, it includes a multitude of fleurons, glyphs, and alternates as a nod to early printing, used heavily throughout this text. Italics are based on the print work of Ludovico degli Arrighi.

Luminari (Philip Bouwsma, 2010, Canada Type) also references the calligraphy of the Italian Renaissance, with lowercase letters specifically based on the work of fifteenth century Humanist Poggio Bracciolini. Capitals take influence from varied Medieval sources including the Momouth psalters and twelfth century work from Ramsey Abbey.

Ruritania (Paul Lloyd, 1997, Greater Albion Typefounders), used here for decorative initials, is a Medieval-inspired typeface named for Anthony Hope's novels and the following Ruritanian tradition of quaint and nonspecific fantasy kingdoms. It was designed, like much of Lloyd's work, to be beautiful, impractical, and free to use.”

Obviously, this is a bit at the end of the book where we have gotten all the important stuff out of the way but, it still it is indicative of the general philosophy of this writing, one must write as much as one can about a topic without adding anything meaningful to it all. Page after page I thought to myself that this is a bloated book that mistakes being verbose for being well-spoken.

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America are nominating this game for some of the best writing in games in 2021. What you conclude from that is up to you but I will say that it is either proof that the award is nothing more than a popularity contest or maybe some of the most danming praise game writing has ever received.

Setting

Wanderhome is a game about the land of Hæth. However, what that means is not entirely defined. As Jay Dragon says “It is not my place to describe the entire history of the land of Hæth. After all, it wouldn’t make for a good journey if I were to tell you such a thing, before we even put on our shoes”, while it may be confusing that the person who invented the setting that it isn’t their place to tell you about the setting I understand it.

The anti-canonical setting is a powerful tool, two of my three favorite games use the anti-canonical setting to great effect. In the case of troika, the most anti-canonical of said game this is incredibly well used. It isn’t that the humpbacked skies are a sparsely defined place, but rather that it doesn’t matter, the humpbacked skies are everything you would ever want it to be because it is everything, no matter how odd.

However the world of Hæth is not everything, the world of Hæth is specific and exact, we have 15 described festivals, we know the names of the months, we know of a great and terrible war if Jay Dragon is to be believed that this game is a game deep with themes and powerful moments what we end up being left with is deeply different than the hump backed skies.

Instead of a canvas that begs and demands to fill it with whatever you want and need we are instead left with a blank space that really only makes sense filled in in very specific ways.

The few times it does give us specific details it is often meaningless adding to nothing more than visual detail. In the caretaker playbook, a playbook all about being the shrine keeper for the various gods of the world we get details of the types of small gods in the world. We have the god of an empty stomach is lost and or starving, or that the god of a mossy boulder is resolute and or mighty. Any good description of a god invites interpretation and imagination, it makes you wonder what sort of world would have these gods. What we have here is the most basic first associations of what a god could be. Instead of taking the chance to make the world drip with potential, we get the most phoned-in stuff I have seen for the divine in a while.

The feeling I have been left with is not that this is an invitation but instead a vague shoulder shrug of a setting, showing a lack of creativity beyond the most basic concepts.

Nature

Wanderhome is a game about nature and traveling through it. Every bit of lavishly detailed art focuses on the natural world. Nature is so important that there are essentially playbooks for each type of nature that you can encounter, that is how integral the natural world and environment are to this game.

The art specifically focuses on people thriving in a small agrarian society, has been described by many people including the author as cottagecore. Even as you travel around the lands you will find the many different biomes of the temperate latitudes, described lovingly, and treated with respect.

Hill after hill in Hæth you will find ideal locals directly out of a Pinterest cottagecore collection. However, when you approach the desert in wanderhome the playbook is only about desolation and suffering, as opposed to the way all other natures are described. While this is far from uncommon to see deserts as inhospitable places it is odd to see a place that does indeed bustle with beautiful, intricate, and delicate life described only in terms of the lack of life, in a game that supposedly is concerned with the beauty of nature.

It became clear to me reading through this all that the game is not truly infatuated with nature but instead infatuated with one specific landscape. Even when the whole point of the game is travel there is nothing in the yearly calendar about seasons on how seasons change from place to place.

Instead what we have is a game not truly concerned with nature how it is and the beauty inherent to it, but instead an idealized American countryside, somewhere on the northeastern seaboard that has been mythologized in the works of American transcendentalists, or other agrarians of American history.

Wanderhome like much of cottagecore media falls victim to this trap. Instead of truly falling in love with nature and its beauty it sees a past sold to white Americans, a precursor to the modern American dream we all know died long ago, it latches onto the manifest destiny used to justify slaughter and displacement. It relies upon this imagery to reassure us all of the inherent goodness of rural American life, making it as similarly vapid as fallout 76 or farcry 5.

Layout

Wanderhome is a game layed out by Ruby Lavin and it just is really done poorly. The square six-inch pages have one-inch margins leaving every page feeling empty, there are tones of useless blank pages, there are cases of spread after spread using identical pieces of art in a way that makes them indistinguishable from one another, paragraphs continue between spreads, a good chunk of pages are colored yellow but not the same shade of yellow on each page with green text. It just is ugly and I think that getting someone way better at layout could have easily reduced this book to three-quarters of its currently bloated size. I don’t really have any moral grandstanding about this really I think it just looks really bad. Like if it was all the default shit it would be fine honestly like it wouldn’t look great but it wouldn’t have a whole bunch of bad choices intentionally made.