LifeisXbox’s The Wild Case review | I love playing a good point-and-click adventure. One might argue that The Wild Case is part point-and-click but also part Hidden Object Puzzle Adventure (HOPA) game. Either way, this new 2D first-person game by Specialbit Studio follows the story of a man investigating strange occurrences: strange creatures are terrorizing a village tucked deep in the wilds of the forest. These animals have red and eyes and seem to be quite terrifying, so our paranormal detective sets out on a new story-driven adventure.
This is a short review, our usual the good, mixed and the bad was difficult because of the nature of this game. We played The Wild Case for 3 hours on PC. This game is exclusively available on Steam.
The gameplay is pretty straightforward: you talk to people, negotiate, find objects, and put them to good use. Thanks to your notebook, you can keep track of your current objectives, and your map helps you find your way. I barely used my map, though, because you only had a handful of scenes, and navigating around wasn’t difficult at all. Along the way, you meet a bunch of unique characters. As the game promises, this is a cast of colorful characters, and it’s very fun to meet each and every one of them. Dialogues happen through text, as there is no voice acting. I did miss this at times since I would have loved to hear the voices that came with the characters. A soundtrack was also absent, but sound effects were present. The humming of birds, a cat meowing, and other nature sounds were perfectly executed, but when those sounds faded out or disappeared, you were left with a whole lot of nothingness, unfortunately. Besides the music, the art style was quite beautiful and I very much enjoyed my journey through the various scenes.
The mystery and puzzle-solving were quite easy, to be honest. I’m not the best puzzler, and I didn’t have a lot of trouble getting to the end. I think this is an easy and relaxed game for a lot of people, but experienced players will definitely miss a challenge. Where The Wild Case lacks in difficulty, it makes up for story-wise. It was interesting to see how the story managed to grab my attention from the start, making me want to reach the end no matter what. Without giving away any spoilers; the ending is pretty good!
The Wild Case offers achievements both in-game and on Steam and they are fairly easy to accomplish. You might not get them all in one run if you haven’t looked at them before playing, but it won’t be hard to go back and get them if you’re an achievement hunter. What the game does not offer, is replayability and a saving option. Once you figured out all the puzzles, you’re pretty much done with the game, and playing it again has no use (except to get that last achievement maybe). This often happens in puzzle games, so I wasn’t expecting any replay value anyway. What I did find disappointing, was the lack of a saving option. Okay, the game is short and you’ll probably play it in one sitting, but I couldn’t. I started playing, and then I had other obligations, so I had to quit halfway through. Unfortunately, there was no way to save the game. There was some sort of saving icon that appeared on screen every now and then, so I thought my gameplay was saved, but this turned out to be not true. I had to replay like half an hour, and taking into account that you can finish this game in 2 to 2,5 hours, this is quite a big portion of the game. I was pretty pissed about having to play so much again.
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Head of PC team. PC, Switch, and Xbox game reviewer. Also a marketeer, concert and animal lover, and photographer in training 🙂
Steam: Mauitje
Xbox: Mauitjexo
