Square Enix shows off Balan Wonderworld's opening movie

By Heidi Nicholas,

Square Enix has released the opening movie for Balan Wonderworld, its weird and wacky action platformer full of costumes, Worlds inside Hearts, boss battles, and tiny Tims.

There's a fair bit to break down in this video, which rapidly devolves into a crazy colourful musical number. The top-hat creature with the impeccable suit is Balan himself, the guide to Wonderworld. The two human characters are Leo and Emma, who will save Wonderworld through a combination of platforming, costumes, and Tim-training (more on that in a bit). Wonderworld is split into different regions, with 12 Worlds inside Hearts. Director Yuji Naka says the game's more "sinister" character is Lance, who "traps visitors to Wonderworld inside their own hearts, creating monsters out of their own negativity." Presumably, this is what creates the Worlds inside Hearts, "distorted and dangerous areas created by negativity and worry" and populated with Negati enemies.

On the plus side, Wonderworld's hub area is the Isle of the Tims, which is populated by the Tims themselves: little fluffy-chick creatures created from happiness, who escort you on your adventures, and who can be raised to get better attributes. For instance, Tims have a number of different colours and personalities, with red Tims attacking enemies or pink Tims finding items, but feeding them drops changes their colour and grants them new attributes. Balan Wonderworld seems to veer between cute and happy and alarmingly ominous at top speed — it's all happy Tims one minute, but the more negativity, the less Tims, the closer to the end of Happiness Time, the disappearance of happy memories, and the loss of all emotions. So, probably a good idea to keep an eye on those Tims.

There are over 80 costumes with different abilities, and a number of boss battles. Taking part in these will free the inhabitants of the Worlds inside Hearts, before everyone celebrates with a musical number.

Balan Wonderworld releases for PS5 and PS4 on March 26th 2021.

More Balan Wonderworld stories:

PlayStation 5 PlayStation 4

Written by Heidi Nicholas

Hey, I'm Heidi! I've just finished studying a Masters in English Literature, but I've been obsessed with gaming since long before then. I began on the PS2 with Spyro, before graduating to the Xbox 360 and disappearing into Skyrim. I'm now a loyal RPG fan, but I still like to explore other genres — when I'm not playing Assassin's Creed Odyssey, or being lured back into Red Dead Redemption 2 or The Witcher 3!