I Will Love Balan Wonderworld So You Don’t Have To
There is a button that presses itself.
I need to be clear about a couple things. First of all, this is a piece about Love. Balan Wonderworld is simply the sausage casing I’ve chosen to stuff all this nonsense into. It’s darn good casing too, because I Love this game. Second: I am going to capitalize the first letter of “Love” in this piece. It deserves proper noun status. Every kind of Love is unique. My Love for Balan Wonderworld is nothing like any other Love I’ve ever had. It is exactly every Love I’ve ever had.
Here is the third and final thing, which deserves its very own single run-on sentence paragraph: everything is exactly everything else.
Some people would call it Love at first sight. When Balan Wonderworld was first announced, I knew I was going to Love it. I was built to Love it: a new game from Yuji Naka and Naoto Ohshima, two ex-Sonic Team developers who worked on some of my favorite games of all time. I have replayed the Sonic Adventure games at least once every year since I was a child. I have poured countless hours into Phantasy Star Online with friends. I go full-on APE every single time I listen to the Burning Rangers soundtrack. Here are three things these games have in common: they were developed by Sonic Team, they’re imperfect, and I Love all of them.
People criticize the Sonic Adventure games’ dated jank. I live for their jank. I slurp jank like that up with a big fat boba tea straw for God’s sake. Many people feel that Phantasy Star Online gets too repetitive. Listen: I just like pressing buttons. Pressing buttons feels good in PSO. I have devoted countless hours to executing the same rhythmic three-hit combo over and over again. I like pressing buttons so much that I will likely pour another several-hundred hours into pressing those same buttons in the same exact way again and again. It could be said, and it could be true: sometimes I like games that are stupid. When Balan Wonderworld was announced, I knew deep down that I was going to Love it, even if it wasn’t “great.”
Balan Wonderworld’s announcement was, by and large, met with a positive reaction. People were as excited as I was. My Twitter timeline was full of people oo-ing and aah-ing over Ohshima’s character designs, talking about how good NiGHTS was, and so on. I clenched my fist against my thigh. I was ready to Love this game.
Almost all of that changed on the night the demo dropped. People were laughing. People were tweeting “Hey, what the fuck.” Not as a question, but a statement. The game was boring. It only used one, maybe two buttons during gameplay. It lacked the wild and fun movement that many other Yuji Naka games had. Excitement for the game died in an instant.
When I played the demo that night, my attitude toward the game changed as well. I spent the entire evening poking around every level in the demo and finding every collectible I could. I reveled in its stubborn, one-button simplicity. It wasn’t the game I thought it was going to be. I Loved it. Yes, I had always known I was going to Love it, but now I knew I had to Love it. This wasn’t out of mere obligation. I’d call it destiny. I’d call it “duty.” I didn’t yet understand why the Love I possessed felt this way. I clenched my fist against my thigh. I knew in my heart that it would all become clear to me once the full game came out.
The game launched. No one liked it. Hardly anyone played it. No one wanted to play it. Among the people who did decide to play it, you’d see the same sentiment expressed over and over:
“I will play Balan Wonderworld so you don’t have to.”
Everywhere I looked, people were acting as martyrs. They were giving away their time to this game they were certainly going to hate and sharing their experiences online. Supposedly, allegedly, they all did this so no one else would have to. All this sacrifice, however, meant nothing: people everywhere were still disappointed. People didn’t just want to play Balan Wonderworld. They wanted to Love it. People were disappointed because they could not Love it.
I have good news for everyone: it doesn’t have to hurt anymore. It doesn’t have to kill you and it doesn’t have to be a shame and it doesn’t even need to break your heart or disappoint you or leave you longing for something more. Feel free to speak your mind about the game. Feel free to let go. You don’t have to Love the game. You can place your criticisms and reservations on the table and have peace of mind; the Loving-Labor has been taken care of. I will say this, and I will mean it: I will Love Balan Wonderworld so you don’t have to. You will never need to use the phrase “I wanted to love it, but…” when talking about it. Any mention of the game’s title no longer needs to be sandwiched between tired sighs. I will Love it for you. If you think the game is stupid, I have great news: I was built to Love games that are stupid. If you Love the character designs but hate the game, guess what? I am Loving the game for you.
This Love is not Ironic, post-ironic, or shit-eating-grinned triple post-ironic. It is just Love, plain and simple. I am not forcing myself. This Love has come to me as naturally as breathing. This Love, like so many different kinds of Love, defies explanation. I am going to try explaining it anyway.
Balan Wonderworld has four distinct actions: running around, switching costumes, jumping, and not-jumping. That’s it! If this sounds “boring” to you, then no: you will not have a good time with Balan Wonderworld. Do not be fooled by back-of-the-box exclamations such as “over 80 costumes!” There are no tricks up Balan’s sleeve. This is the pure, unembellished distillation of Video Games (proper noun) as God intended: the pressing of a stupid, beautiful button.
The game only really uses two or three buttons, but make no mistake: it is a one-button game. The button that switches costumes can be considered a half-button, or no button, or a secret button. The button that does all the actions besides running is THE button. This is beautiful to me. I could cry. Standard controllers have so, so many buttons, Balan only has four actions, and only one of them is kind of exciting. Press any button you like: it will jump, or it won’t jump. Here is a game with one button, two buttons, and an infinite number of buttons. Look at these options: Press A to jump. Press X or R to jump. On a Sony-type device, press circle, press X (“cross”) to jump, press triangle, square, whatever. Here is a game that says FUCK it: press whatever you want, and sometimes it will jump. Sometimes it will do something other than jumping. NO: jumping can not coexist with other actions.
It is obstinate in its simplicity. For some people, this simplicity is joyless. However, if you can find joy in poking around levels at a glacial pace, looking for rocks to feed to your bird children, here it is: Balan Wonderworld. It may have been made just for you.
For me, the biggest joy-sparker in the game lies outside the levels. The Isle of Tims, often said to be “Chao Garden-esque,” is actually much more aquarium-esque. Feed rocks to your bird children and watch them perform acts of silliness. You can hold them and toss them if this brings you joy. If you give them enough rocks, they get big. Sometimes they wear funky little hats. “Oh, I like you, silly man,” I will say to them. I watch them muck about the isle and occasionally ask one if he is my funny hat buddy. “Are you my funny hat buddy? Just a little eggshell head man?” I can choose to believe that, by some digital magic, he heard me. The tim chirps. I believe it to be an affirmative chirp. “OH… I Love this rotund creature,” I say.
This is it, right here: this is my Love for Balan Wonderworld. That’s what it looks like.
No: none of that is a metaphor. It is not a comparison; there are no comparisons to be made. Everything is exactly everything else, and this is all my Love for Balan Wonderworld distilled and crystal clear. Love (proper noun) wears an eggshell as a hat; Love is rotund and stupid and I can feed it rocks; I can watch Love roll around in the grass and play around in a tower. Love has one button: it is THE button. It does only what you need, when you need it. The pressing of this button warms the heart. The pressing of this button is joyful, joyless; it is work, it is “play,” and like it or lump it, it will get you where you need to go. Love is no subject of deep study. It is no neurologist’s jigsaw puzzle locked behind sterile plexiglass. Love is a primal, dirty, un-understandable action and YES: it has only one button.
Phrases like “I wanted to love it, but…” get chucked around all the time. Well, here is the good news and the terrible news: Love is often automatic. The pressing of its only button will happen by itself. What do you want to Love? Give it a long look or a quick glance. If it’s there for you and you are there for it, it will find you, and the button will press itself.
