Wilderings: The Lost Spring Demo Impressions | One of Steam Next Fest's Best Surprises
The Developers of Endling Are Back and Their New Roguelite Is Already Something Special
EDITIORIALS
Caljb03
6/24/20265 min read
Herobeat Studio is shaping up to be a really promising developer. A few years ago, we had Endling: Extinction is Forever. A heartbreaking survival game where you play as a mother fox desperately trying to find your cubs as the world collapses. This is a game I absolutely adored. It broke my heart multiple times and was a genuinely engaging experience through how it plays on your emotions at every moment and constantly throws new obstacles in your way. (Yes, I just wanted an excuse to gush about this game)
Flash forward to today, and they’re hard at work on their next game, Wilderings: The Lost Spring (formerly Rewilders). I’ve been keeping my eye on this for a while, and thanks to Steam Next Fest, I’ve put about an hour into it and can thankfully say that I had an absolute blast and cannot wait for its full launch.
Be the green you want to see in the world
To preempt this impression piece, I should just clarify that I have been playing on my Steam Deck for this. Wilderings isn’t currently verified or even developed for Steam Deck, but thankfully the controller scheme worked perfectly fine for me. I mention this because I did have some performance issues, some frame drops and items taking some time to pop in. I don’t want to spend too much time on this, as I’m not too sure whether this is an issue with my Steam Deck or the game itself. So your experience may vary.
Wilderings is an indie Roguelite game, a very original genre I know. But I love these kinds of games, so I’m there. It is a much more action-focused experience than Endling, where that had story at the forefront; Wilderings wants you to spend time learning various mechanics and getting in the zone with the gameplay it’s offering. A big change from what they’ve done before, and it seems to be done well.
In Wilderings, after you finish the tutorial section, you’re dropped into a large open map. This map is dirty, dark and corrupted. Your goal is to go around and regrow plants to help recover the world. Each time you regrow a plant, you’ll be faced with a wave of enemies to take out, and in return you’re rewarded with a choice of gameplay-enhancing bonuses. You continue to do this until you die again and start from the top. Veterans of the genre will feel right at home with its gameplay loop.
There’s something genuinely satisfying about making it through a few combat encounters, getting to a high ledge and just looking over all the area you’ve managed to heal. It gives me a cosy game vibe like PowerWash Simulator, and how great it feels to see all your hard work pay off.
Gotta catch them all
In Wilderings, I mentioned you can get gameplay-enhancing bonuses. These can range from increased health, to healing, to more ammo to new abilities. But you can also find Hântu. These are essentially companions who will follow you throughout the level and help attack enemies. They give you bonus attacks too, such as a blizzard attack or a fire bomb. These cute allies are incredibly important and can be the difference between life and death in engagements.
Thankfully, they stay with you after death. You’ll be able to find them in your home base, and when you go to take on a new run, you can select which one you want to bring with you. You can even upgrade them. Within a run, I found bonuses that would improve my Hântu’s attacks, making them even more viable in that specific run.
The dark souls of gardening
Moving on from the Hântu, it’s worth discussing the actual combat that they’re assisting with. It’s a fairly simple combat scheme that I can see it getting more complex the more you discover new enemy types and fellow Hântu.
You have a normal attack button, a heavy attack button and can shoot blow darts (I didn’t find any other ammunition type, if there is any). You can roll, and of course you can parry. These are all fairly simple systems, but once in combat, it immediately feels great to pull off an effective dodge or parry straight into a combo. Utilising your Hântu to wipe the floor with anyone who picks on you.
I really did enjoy the gameplay from my time with the demo, and am really looking forward to seeing how that area of the game develops towards launch.
Your eye in the sky
The final thing I wanted to talk about was the Homebase. Between each run, you’re brought back to a flying base for yourself. This is where you can prep for the next run. You have a range of options here, firstly you can use skill points to permanently improve your potential (a roguelite staple), and an even more interesting system is the garden system.
You can grow trees on top of your base; these trees help give temporary bonuses while you’re out on expeditions. You can grow these by finding fruits while on said runs. They have a similar effect to the plants around the levels where you grow a tree, and it will start spreading and making your whole base into a green paradise. It’s gorgeous, and I am a huge fan of seeing visible progression like this. I’m also hoping there’s some way to expand your base, let me plant even more trees around or open up new systems while back at home. But even without that, I really like this inclusion.
One to look forward to
I talked about a lot of Wilderings today, a lot of elements I had a ton of fun engaging with during my playtime. I barely scratched the surface, too. I really hope you give the demo a shot and learn even more about this game and what it has to offer.
As a huge fan of Herobeat’s past release, I really hope they continue going up with Wilderings. I’ll continue to keep an eye on this game and really cannot wait until we find out when it is planned for a full launch.
