Wanderer

Written by Eric Hauter on 2/4/2022 for RIFT  

I do love an escape room. I went a couple of years ago (pre-pandemic, I guess) to one of those escape room experiences for my birthday. My two sons and I ran through an “escape the KGB in Soviet Russia” scenario intended for 8-10 players. We almost made it through the thing under the time limit, too, with the three of us relying on each other’s knowledge and powers of logic to move from one puzzle to the next. What impressed me most about that experience was the multifaceted complexity revealed in some of the puzzle design. The solution to a puzzle in Room C might be found on a calendar in Room A, for example, which was deeply satisfying when the light bulb in our collective family mind finally lit up with the answer.

Wanderer, the spectacular new puzzle adventure on PC VR, Quest, and PSVR, pulls a similar trick. The player hops between environments, but the objects needed to solve a problem might lie in a previous world visited. In this way, it’s almost best to think of Wanderer as one big escape experience, rather than segmenting it into individual “rooms” in your mind. It’s all connected, man.

Wanderer starts players in a rather bad place. Things have gone very wrong in the world, with the majority of the population wiped out by what appears to be some pretty serious flooding. The player character makes their way to their grandfather’s apartment, where it is slowly revealed that history has gone off the rails. Someone has been purposely hopping around the timeline, altering past events in fairly conspicuous ways – in one case, going so far as to wipe an entire civilization off the map.

It is then up to the player to play a mix of Marty McFly and Sam Beckett, hopping back to critical points in history (and inhabiting the bodies of people living then) to solve puzzles, figure out what the heck is going on, and resolve this whole pesky “altered history” problem. This is handled via some impressive puzzle design, challenging the player to fiddle with every object in sight, putting this thing with that thing to make a new thing, and then hauling that new thing to a new location to solve a riddle.

I’m trying to keep things spoiler-free here - this is a game that is best encountered cold - but suffice to say that almost every object you encounter in the game has a meaning or use, so take nothing for granted. Wanderer does very little hand holding or hint dispensing, which can lead to a bit of frustration, but also some amazing moments of discovery when you try something and find that it works. I literally clapped my hands in delight on more than one occasion playing this game – the surprises are deviously good.

Accompanying you on your journey is an AI in the form of a wristwatch, with a little animated face that reminded me of Loki’s Miss Minutes. In this case though, your buddy – named Samuel – is amazingly helpful. Armed with a somewhat fuzzy memory and the voice of a Southern lemonade-sipping grandpa one might find dispensing wisdom in a barber shop, Samuel guides the player forward with verbal nudges that are helpful, but stop just short of being “hints”.

As far as “AI VR buddies” go, Samuel is in a league of his own, in just about every way. His design, animation, and performance are all top tier. In addition to being helpful, Samuel has a few tricks up his sleeve. His face detaches from the wrist band – flying about with his own little helicopter blades – and can insert itself into various objects to offer power or control. Samuel can also shrink down objects and put them into storage; he can only hold one or two items at first, but you can upgrade him with crystals you find laying about as the game progresses, offering a nice incentive to open every drawer and cupboard you encounter.

Wanderer is an absolute trip in the way that it handles objects. While the player can easily pick things up off the floor (Wanderer uses a fairly intuitive “force pull” mechanic), you have to be very careful about where you put things down, because the game is absolutely leaving stuff wherever you put it. There is nothing worse than needing the battery for the drill, and not being able to remember where you had it last. I quickly developed an organized system for where I laid stuff down – tools go on the kitchen counter, toys on the bed, electronics on the desk, etc. Each object I brought in from another environment got its own carefully selected spot where I would put it every time without fail.

Wanderer is a wonderful game - the first title I’ve played to completion since linking my Quest 2 to my gaming PC. I’ve written about my deep shame in taking so long to do so, and once I did make the leap, I’ve been dipping in and out of a variety of games, unable to focus for very long on a single experience. I’ve been agog at the spectacular visuals presented by PC VR, which absolutely dwarf what I’ve seen on Quest and PSVR in terms of visual fidelity and resolution.

But Wanderer stands head and shoulders above the rest of the PC VR crowd (at least in terms of what I’ve seen so far). Here is a game that pops in and out of small but spectacular environments, from a post-apocalyptic sunken city to Nikola Tesla’s laboratory, from Mayan ruins to the freakin’ moon, with each environment looking almost as good as any AAA console game on the market. At one point, I stood in front a tube television and just stared for a couple of minutes at the dust on the screen, and the finger smudges on the attached VCR. Wanderer is a visual stunner.

This screenshot would've saved me a fair amount of time staring at that damn key.

Any fan of puzzle or adventure games is going to have a blast pondering Wanderer’s mysteries. Wanderer requires some insane leaps of logic and intuition, which makes it incredibly satisfying when everything clicks and the pieces slide into place. It doesn’t hurt that the game is one of the best-looking VR games I’ve seen, either. The fantastic worlds, the amazing puzzle design, the spectacular characters; all combine to create a VR experience that frankly restores some of my faith in the medium. Wanderer is not to be missed.