Wildermyth
Review

Wildermyth (2021) is a medieval role-playing game about diverse heroes and themes. You take on evil in a number of stories, each with different heroes and settings. The focus is on the characters as much as their adventures, who are believable, diverse and fully fleshed out. Themes of friendship, family and acceptance are established as these adventures play out over the decades of our hero's lives.

Play involves selecting three characters, and then taking on tasks and missions. Between the action, you can spend time fortifying territories and building bridges across rivers. As you progress there are key decisions to make for your characters that affect the outcome of each story and the development of their relationship and personality. There are also randomly generated side-quests that can be attempted, that offer advantages and disadvantages to your abilities.

When you enter a battle, play switches to a turn-based grid system. Heroes are represented in paper cut-out style and take turns to move or attack. Along with the usual weapons and abilities, you can "interfuse" with objects to cause them to catch fire, throw out shrapnel or entwine enemies.

Wildermyth is most unusual for its character development. As you play you pick up different positive and negative traits as well as develop specific relationships with other characters. As you complete missions and progress, your heroes grow older. This not only affects their appearance and statistics but means they go through life changes.

Our examiner, Andy Robertson, first checked Wildermyth 2 years ago. It was re-examined by Jo Robertson and updated 4 months ago.