Wilfred Comma The Hero

By: Albert Lai

On: July 3rd, 2007

The first thing that comes to my mind when I open up Wilfred, the Hero is a mental image of Wilfred, clutching his head and screaming "Get out of my head Charles! Get out of my heaaaad!"

References to popular culture aside, Wilfred, the Hero attains the coveted status of a RPG Maker game which doesn’t look as if it was made with RPG Maker, an accomplishment which is always an accomplishment to be proud of. They haven’t handed out awards for that category as of this article, but I have it on the best drinking buddies that it may appear as a category in the next IGF.

Aside from the gameplay, the semi-surreal enemy designs remind me of Rice Boy, and the music could function equally nicely as a stand-alone soundtrack, lending a great ambiance to the entire game.

The gameplay of Wilfred, the Hero consists of four parts RPG, two parts cinematic, and one part music-oriented puzzles. Playing the game itself is pretty self-explanatory, but for the sake of those who love to get a dotted list with the pros and cons, some highlights include that characters gain ‘skill points’ from chests rather than from leveling up, battles take place using a Action Time Bar (FF6 is the closest analogy I can draw) and, instead of dying, each character simply loses a life and gains a significant time penalty. Losing all lives, or, alternatively, if both characters are in the process of reviving at once, causes a game over. The cut-scenes are all fairly lengthy (and the dialogue is occasionally hyperbolic) so saving often is recommended.

The current version only covers the first third of the game (with a maximum level of 9), and development is paused currently. Even so, playing through the first bit is a fairly nice experience, and for those RPG-starved out there it’s a very polished experience.

EDIT: Gameplay video in the extended (Thanks, Tim!).