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Wirewalk()↳

by Danilo Ganzella | get it here
The logo of Wirewalk, stylized at the end with a pair of parentheses and a hard return arrow

If you look at the catalog entry for Wirewalk()↳, the game as billed is an RPG, and I assumed that's what I was getting when I purchased it. If I'd been paying more attention to the gifs on the right side of the page, I would have noticed a re-enactment of the same ping-pong match that takes place between Link and Ganon/Ganondorf in 85% of Zelda games. So I should have been far, far less surprised when I finally came to the realization that this was essentially a Zelda game. I guess they can't just say that on the catalog page, but in retrospect, the signs are clearly there.

A screenshot of a dungeon in Wirewalk; there are two corridors on a corner, with the protagonist in the lower-left, facing a closed door. The outside corridor has stairs and a treasure chest.

Not to say this is necessarily a bad thing. I played Link's Awakening and the Oracle games religiously as a kid, and that is exactly the era of 2D Zelda that this game is trying to emulate. Not Link to the Past, not Minish Cap. Specifically the Game Boy & GB Color era. And I am confident of this fact because I can feel the connection in my soul.

(I wrote that before I discovered this game also released on Steam. You would be entirely justified looking at the Steam page and believing it originally launched on the Game Boy. Only further proves my point.)

A screenshot of Wirewalk; inside a house, the protagonist interacts with a dog. A dialog box reads 'Do you want to pet Lucy?' with the options being Yes and Sure.

A mysterious virus wreaks havoc on connected devices throughout the city. You play as Rada, a programmer and dog person who... I guess has a computer in her room that lets her physically enter these devices and fight the virus. This ability is a secret and Rada is a silent protagonist, so none of this is really explained; but at the end of the day, it's just a framing device to get you into themed dungeons, don't look too far into it. Rather than a sword, Rada wields a baseball bat; but in traditional Zelda fashion, she'll pick up a selection of additional items as she progresses which are used to fight enemies and solve puzzles. Explore the city, find the ID numbers of infected machines, Wirewalk into them, clear the dungeon, defeat the bosses. You know the drill.

A screenshot of a Wirewalk dungeon; Rada squares off against a long-necked vaguely-amphibian creature swimming around an inky black pool.

Of course, now that I know the game was originally a Steam release that was ported to Playdate, a lot of the criticisms I was going to levy here begin to make a lot more sense. One thing you clock early on is that moving from one area to another in any capacity⁠—even entering houses or going up/down stairs⁠—requires you to sit through a loading screen that can last upwards of five seconds each time, which was due to an already unoptimized game designed for much more powerful hardware needing to be ported to a more limited device in a small amount of time. A complaint I had about flashing projectiles thrown by the final boss being visually lost against a similarly-flashing floor was probably fine when the developer had more colors to work with (although the floor probably didn't need to keep that particular effect). Not having enough time to react to things as I'm flying around on my jet-skates is probably an unfortunate side effect of the smaller screen size (even so, the camera could have panned further ahead like it does with some bosses). I have a couple other nitpicks that I don't believe stemmed from the port, but I'm not going to sit here and tear apart a developer's labor of love over some relatively minor quibbles. Especially since overall, I did enjoy the game.

Wirewalk's loading screen, featuring art of Rada. She is a young woman blowing bubblegum, holding an electronic device in one hand and its connector cable in the other. Her light hair is parted in the center and only falls to her neck; she wears a t-shirt over a longer-sleeved shirt.

To inject a heap of praise into this review, I have to say that Ganzella straight-up nailed the item design. I wouldn't go so far as to say they introduce revolutionizing new gameplay, but if you imagine Nintendo taking an existing Zelda item, going "how can we make it different in this game?", and then doing that for all five or six pieces of equipment the game gives you, you'll get the items in Wirewalk()↳. Again, I can speak to this with authority because it's the same kind of thing the Oracle games did with a lot of their items (even though those games were developed by Capcom. Minor details). Look:

A screenshot of a Wirewalk dungeon. Rada is riding a minecart along a track underground. A box in the corner reads 'use the pickaxe to break the cracked wall'.

The Playdate Catalog also praises the game's soundtrack; I will admit that it hadn't stood out to me when I played it, but I also don't tend to keep my game volume very loud. Thankfully, you can go listen over on Bandcamp, and yeah, I'm always here for those electronic chiptune-y vibes. Now that I'm actually paying attention to the music, I love whatever that yappy percussion sound is on Lucy's Song; it's perfectly reminiscent of a dog barking (which... Lucy is a dog. The dungeon is canine-themed. It makes sense. It's a good touch, is what I'm saying). Echoing what has become a central theme of this review, I'm sure the audio quality on the Playdate doesn't quite match that of the Steam version—if that's the sort of thing that's important to you—but I'm also sure we're not buying the Playdate for its sweeping orchestral arrangements.

Wirewalk()↳ doesn't have nearly the same runtime as a typical Zelda entry (I finished my time with it in just a few hours), and dungeons can feel a little on the small side. On the other hand, it also doesn't have an entire corporate production team behind it, so the comparison between the two can only take you so far... and nowadays I find myuself really appreciating games that don't overstay their welcome, anyway. Gotta work through that backlog, y'know.

A screenshot of Wirewalk. Rada sits at a bar; there is another patron and a bartender present. A TV in the corner says 'Breaking news! Stories of a powerful computer virus capable', with the rest cut off.

Now, I haven't played the Steam version of Wirewalk()↳, so I can't make a truly earnest assessment here; but knowing what I know, I have a difficult time recommending the Playdate version unless you are truly just looking for a game to take with you on the go. I think there is something to be said for developing specifically for the device; I'm aware that one of the other games I talked about, Trickle Greenweed, was technically a port of a game designed to be played on the original Game Boy (!!!); but rather than Wirewalk()↳'s method of smashing the game into the box to make it fit, the Playdate port of Trickle Greenweed appears to be so much of a rebuild that it has to be the definitive way to play the title (yes, the original version of Trickle Greenweed was more of Game Jam demo than a salable title, so a bit apples and oranges here, but you see the point I'm getting at). In my opinion at least, half of the fun of Playdate should be "look at these neat little experiences I can't get anywhere else."

So I would say, buy this one on Steam. But do play it. Heck, I might just buy it on Steam to play it a second time.

Wirewalk's post-credits screen, featuring art of Rada. She is blowing bubblegum and sitting against a brick wall; she wears a simple dress and roller blades. The side of the screen says 'Thanks for playing! Play time 3h 5m 55s, Completion 92%, Death count 4, Session count 5'

Verdict: Props to the dev for not only breaking up a boss encounter by adding a puzzle in the middle, but also for not requiring me to do the puzzle again after I had to restart the fight.

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