Historically, when individuals speak about wayfinding as a observe, they’re referring to how individuals discover themselves of their bodily house and navigate from place to put. This contains utilizing instruments reminiscent of a map and compass, astrolabe, and even GPS. Nonetheless, builders Airship Syndicate and publishers Digital Extremes determined to show that on its head for his or her upcoming sport, Wayfinder, and introduce the Gloom Dagger to the wayfinding fold. Whereas at PAX East 2023, I had the chance to verify this sport out and check out the Wayfinder preview for myself.
Proper off the bat, I jumped into Wayfinder enjoying with two different media individuals who have been visiting the house, as the sport is an motion MMO that may be performed solo or in co-op mode. Co-op appears to be the inspired approach to go, and I’m undecided I might have fared in addition to I did within the stage if I used to be enjoying solo. Because it was, we nonetheless confronted many challenges enjoying as a staff, although we had a surprisingly related thought on which weapon appeared the best (the Epitaph clearly. A large purple scythe with creepy glowing eyes? Hell sure!)
We had 5 totally different characters to select from, every with totally different playstyles and attributes, and I went with Senja. A warrior with some tank-ish attributes, Senja is all about melee fight and dealing huge quantities of bodily injury. Whereas I didn’t use too most of the customizing choices on her seems, I ended up making an attempt out a couple of totally different weapons, like a scythe, big hammer, and sword and protect, to see how each felt. The scythe admittedly was the best-looking weapon, however the sword and protect match my playstyle finest, with the protect’s injury blocking throughout the boss battle being extraordinarily helpful.
Our staff used the Gloom Dagger and headed into the Mines dungeons to see what we might discover, and the dungeons have been surprisingly customizable. Utilizing one thing known as Imbuements that you simply purchase within the sport, the dungeons may be given totally different attributes, that means you’ll see totally different rewards, challenges, and enemies relying on what Imbuements are geared up. For our get together, we quite, sadly, received hit with some nasty monsters that set every part on hearth, together with our characters, however we did additionally get to battle a Phoenix enemy which got here with some fairly candy rewards.
The boss battle was a quite nasty affair, with not one of the three of us in the end making it to the top alive, although we put up a good displaying. It positively felt like a raid boss and I might not have needed to sort out one thing like that on my own, though it will be attainable with the proper weapons and a better stage. And, to not sound like a PBS particular, however it was nonetheless numerous enjoyable though we didn’t win, and likewise confirmed the necessity for techniques and teamwork within the sport, extra so than within the dungeon stage. Randomly attacking the boss from all angles wasn’t doing the job. We wanted to be on the identical web page with a coordinated strategy to have an opportunity of taking it down.
Two features I want we might have seen extra of have been the crafting and customization techniques. Along with the Imbuements customizing the dungeons you enter, Echoes can customise your character and weapons’ powers, and bodily appearances are additionally customizable. The crafting system we didn’t see, however it permits additional customization of weapons and tools.
Wayfinder has numerous buzz round it proper now, and for good purpose. The fight was clean and enjoyable, the characters have been fascinating, and the customization of dungeons and stats offers you numerous to mess around with. Positively aimed extra at co-op play than solo, Wayfinder delivered a terrific expertise within the demo, and I’m trying ahead to trying out extra of it when the time comes.
Wayfinder was previewed on an early construct at PAX East 2023.
