wandersong

[wandersong]

We posted this before but the link was borked at first. ICYMI, we have an official discord now :)

[wandersong]

After 5 years we've finally created an official Wandersong discord community! This will be a space for fans of Wandersong and our other projects to hang out and chat, and it's where we'll be sharing news about future projects too.

Be seeing you there!

[wandersong]

Very good game. Thank you for making it. Also Miriam is very important to me. Thank you for making her.

Thank you!

[wandersong]

Hi! I absolutely LOVE the use of color in this game, it’s so pretty and the little touches it adds are super cool. I was wondering how you came up with the different palettes for the Bard? There are so many and they’re so different and wonderful, and I’ve been meaning to do something like that myself

Thank you! I took a lot of inspiration from Cucumber Quest and the works of Gigidigi; she does amazing dramatic stuff with color in her work that was new to me and that definitely emboldened me to try getting crazy with varied color palettes in Wandersong.

Technically the bard only has one animation set, and they're tinted using something called a LUT (look up texture). They're a super easy and efficient way to create refined color adjustments, and you can manipulate color to look however you want in art software eg. photoshop and then import that result into gameneignes or film editing software. very powerful stuff!!!

[wandersong]

Hi!! Big fan, played through twice and watched many other playthroughs, I’ve recently been getting my mom to play video games (she hasn’t been an avid gamer since the GameCube) and she’s been enjoying wandersong more than any other game I’ve got her to play. She’s recently started chapter 5 and when talking to a character named “Tyrone” in Rulle, she got a kick out of the fact that almost all of his dialogue were Lyrics straight out of a Sheryl Crow song called “soak up the sun”, I was amazed and had to look up the song to confirm, as I thought I knew about almost all the secrets and Easter eggs in this game. If you don’t mind I have a few questions

Has anyone pointed this Easter egg out before that you’ve seen?

Who on the Dev team is a big Sheryl Crow fan

are there any other characters who’s dialogue is slightly obscure song lyrics?

Are there any other Easter eggs you haven’t heard anyone talk about yet? I understand if you don’t want to spoil what they are, I’m just curious if they exist Thank you so much for your time, Wandersong will always be a top 10 for me, I hope you all keep making amazing games!

We'd be surprised if nobody noticed this before... but, we don't actually know if anyone has, haha! Your mom can claim being the first!

I (Greg) was obsessed with this song when I was living on my bicycle and it got me through some tough days so I wanted to honor it somewhere.

I "called back" to this "joke" during the credits with a much more recognized lyrical reference in the same area, that one to All Star by Smash Mouth.

[wandersong]

The bard plush is available RIGHT NOW! For 2 weeks only! Thank you and have a happy holiday :)

[wandersong]

an important announcement: the bard is real. we made them into a plush. they will be born on the bard’s birthday, december 18th. we hope you like them!

[wandersong]

hey!! i have a question, but rq i really love your game!! i used to be so obsessed with it and recently i played it again and im literally so in love(^o^) my question though was where do the sound effects come from? like miriams grumble, captain lucas’s yells, audreys exclaims, the bards snores, etc etc, where do they all come from? were they all sounds from people on the team or was it something else? thank you so much!!

All of the character’s voices were performed by us and our friends. I cherish the times we spent recording them. Miriam’s vocals were all Em, Captain Lucas was all Gord, and I (Greg) did all of the bard’s non-singing vocals (so the snore, the gasps and oohs, etc.) Audrey was voiced by my then-roommate Jaymee Mak, she was getting into TV acting at the time although now she works at Brace Yourself Games (!)

If you’re really curious, you might enjoy this video of us recording some of the voices. we used to livestream working on the game... I don’t understand twitch very well, but somehow for some reason this video fragment is the only record that’s persisted from those days https://www.twitch.tv/videos/81454527

[wandersong]

Are monsters besides the ones resulting from the world's end common in the Wandersong universe? If so, does that mean there's more mean critters like the crab monster out there? How common are they?

well, there's monsters like the trolls too! so it kinda depends on your definition. we'd say there are lots of cool creatures out in the world of the game that never had a reason to appear onscreen.

[wandersong]

Are there more locales in the world than what we got to see in the game? I'd like to imagine there's plenty of vibrant places to go that weren't visited simply because of the urgency of the bard's journey! Also, could someone make a cohesive world map if they wanted to, with what we know about the regions we saw?

we definitely imagined there were many many other places and people you never got to see. an entire planet's worth! we tried to lay out the "globe" shown at the end of the game to meaningfully represent the places you'd visited, but there's really no strict way to interpret it from the information in the game.

[wandersong]

I find it odd that the world was already coming to an end when Chismest, the most technologically-advanced town in the world (not counting the progress made with magic and companions in the Act 5 towns), wasn't even out of the equivalent to the industrial revolution. Was the time to the end of this universe far shorter or something?

you could say that! given how short human history is in relation to the lifespan of a universe, it's totally arbitrary that they weren't extinct, or where in their history they happened to be when the apocalypse happened.

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i know audrey was worried about the sword being melted by the lava in act 6, but since it was a godly object could the sword even be destroyed? if it could be, would eya just give her another one? or would audrey have failed as the hero for letting the sword be gooped?

the sword is (probably?) indestructible, but if it's buried in lava then there'd be no way for audrey to retrieve it!

what happens from there is totally up to the circumstances. "typically," the angel/Eyala might simply retrieve it for her. but given what was going on in the story at the time, maybe she wouldn't, so as to buy the bard and miriam time to save the world properly. and maybe audrey calculated that and realized that was at stake if she lost her sword at that moment.

i'm not sure if this is an answer to the question you're asking, but, in general, it's totally possible for the hero to fail at their quest, through a variety of circumstances, up to and including losing their sword, or more commonly death at the hands of an overseer.

[wandersong]

Hi! I've got a question about Miriam's grandma, Sapphire! So, I'm not sure if I'm remembering correctly, but I remember Sapphy saying something about her sister... By chance would her sister happen to be Ruby, the grumpy lady in Langtree? Or is it just a coincidence that their names are Ruby and Sapphire? I've actually been wondering about that for the longest time-

yep, that's her! they are twin sisters!

[wandersong]

hey!! i finished playing this game recently and it's quickly become one of my favorites. so, first off, thank you for making such a wonderful game! anyway, you've mentioned before how all the symbols have meanings behind them (eg. the wind gust being freedom/independence), but i can't find anywhere where all the symbols' meanings are explicitly said. could you list out what they all mean?

i recognize this could be a valuable resource to some, so i will give a general rundown here. but i want to emphasize that there's no strict canon interpretation of them and that other readings of them are perfectly acceptable and valid. part of what makes the symbols fun and work they way they do is that they can be subjectively interpreted, like tarot cards.

green = wind/gust. freedom, independence, controlling your own direction without being bound by others. breathing.

pink = hearts. love, connection, bonds. being responsible to and honoring your bonds with others. blood.

red = order/triangle. rules, laws, logic and reason. organization, predictability. schedule. rhythm.

cyan = chaos/drop. disorder, anarchy, randomness, unpredictability. fun and adventurousness and the exotic. but also being lost or confused.

orange = sun. information, knowledge, the truth. history and facts. honesty. the day; light.

blue = moon. mystery. deceit and misinformation, but also fiction and fantasy and magic. the night; darkness.

yellow = dreams/star. hope, belief, faith, wishes. creativity, the power to will things into reality which don't yet exist.

purple = ??? (black hole? vortex? nightmares?). fear, futility, death, destruction. resignation. inevitability, and giving in to it.

[wandersong]

I just finished the game (really enjoyed it and I tried to uncover everything I possibly could). I have many questions, but I’ll start with something that wasn’t vital to the story but is always on my mind…: ALIENS.

Are aliens a thing in the wandersong universe, both the new universe and the old?

AND IF YES, I have so many other questions:

When the universe was recreated around Earth, was life rebeginning, or are there intelligent creatures living on those new planets? When the old universe was ending, did other planets have their own Rainbow Angels, Heroes, their own Songs, maybe even their own Bards and Overseers? Could the stars blinking out be other planets going the process of their Overseers dying?

ty taking the time to answer and have a good one!

thank you for this question! it weighed heavy on us while working on the game.

YES, there are aliens and alien worlds out there, with intelligent life, also going through the same apocalypse with heroes, swords, angels and overseers, and blinking out of existence one by one over the course of the game.

it wouldnt be accurate to say the new universe was recreated around earth. but the earth was uniquely allowed to continue from the old universe into the new one, re-woven perfectly into it as one tiny element in its grand tapestry, thanks to their successful "earthsong."

in this fiction, the beginning of a new universe is more or less exactly like the event we call the big bang in reality. but as part of the bargain for their successful earthsong/universal transplant, the earth would be somehow spared/shielded from the initial molten insanity that a big bang entails. there's a couple ways that could work, but one way might be for the new big bang to be magically arranged in such a way that, among everything else, the earth happens to pop out of it fully formed exactly the way it was when it entered, and the consciousness of the planet is magically allowed to "skip ahead" through that formation, such that time would seem continuous when in fact a couple billion years just passed in the blink of an eye and the planet beneath their feet, and all the atoms composing the people on it, are completely different ones. (hence so much credits dialogue about how things "feel different" now). or maybe an impossibly unlikely quantum event is allowed to happen where all the heat just "misses" them. in any case, the earth would be uniquely old and advanced as a civilization in this new universe. intelligent life would be forming/would eventually form on other planets but probably not until billions of years after humans have gone extinct on earth in the new universe.

this might be too much information but it's fun to think about!

[wandersong]

I wanted to just say that I recently finished playing Wandersong and it's been life-changing. I was afraid to go to look at any game-related platforms, but then found this blog and i have to say, you're one of the chillest nicest devs i've seen interact with a fandom, ever. I really appreciate what you did in this game, writing characters' feelings and how they express them, and writing representation that's just. There. That's it. Thank you from my lil nonbinary heart!

After reading your response to mermaid ask i was curious, what would that act be about if you were to rewrite it? And would it still include pirates? It that's okay to ask, of course

Also did the Bard get so attached to Captain Lucas because they think pirates are cool or because he's like a subconscious father figure to them? Or both?

We love pirates and having a pirate act was an absolute must when deciding to make this game. if we were to think of an alternate act 3 story off the cuff... since the theme was "chaos," and there would be pirates, maybe there'd be a story with a navy imposing laws/order and you'd have to help the pirates sow some kind of chaos/anarchy into the seas. but maybe it goes too far, and confuses things. like at first the bard is excited about it because it seems like their mission is to make the world more fun. but then they accidentally overthrow an international government? and while they're wondering if that was the right thing to do, they'd wind up in the spirit world, and find out they aren't even the hero they thought they were?

We never seriously considered the subconscious father figure thing but it sounds super plausible. So let's say both!

[wandersong]

i've been playing wandersong with my boyfriend over the past week and the mermaids remind me of some people really important to me (including him) with pcos (polycystic ovary syndrome) which makes me feel really good to see representation for a disease that isn't talked about much at all! so thank you very much for making the mermaids hairy women we love to see it

that makes us glad to hear! we think they're beautiful.