Wayward Strand stars a teenage girl named Casey whose mother is a nurse aboard an airship hospital. Her mother has brought her there to visit with the patients while she does her work, but Casey has another goal in mind as well: learning as much as she can about the airship to write an article for her school newspaper. A press demo was available at the digital convention LudoNarraCon, so I decided to take a look.
One of the game’s main selling points is that its characters’ stories play out simultaneously in real-time throughout the ship, so what you see and learn depends on what you’ve chosen to do with your time. There are several patients whose rooms you can visit, along with other areas, and the ship’s layout makes me expect there will be even more in the final game. Time passes constantly, and while the point-and-click setup for choosing your location means you don’t waste too much time going from place to place, it can be frustrating if you’re someone like me who dislikes games with real-time deadlines.
When I began the game, I thought it didn’t have any voice acting, but then the next section had voiced dialogue. This sporadic voice acting persisted throughout the demo, with times where Casey and/or the patients were voiced and other times where one or both had written dialogue only. There was no pattern, so I assume this is because the game isn’t finished yet.
Due to the way character stories play out, it’s impossible to see all of the content in a single playthrough. On my first time through the demo, I visited the first patient and spoke to him until another character arrived. I listened to their conversation for a while, but the passage of time began to bother me and I moved on to continue checking other rooms.
As you interact with characters and learn more about them, Casey makes notes about things to keep in mind or follow up on later. Sometimes you’re given choices, such as asking questions or investigating things in a character’s room. I spoke to more patients and soon had a new lead on how to get information about the airship. Just as I began that, however, I was prompted to read a book, and the demo ended.
I started the demo a second time and went straight to the character I’d been about to question at the end of my first playthrough. This time I got information both about his personal story and the airship, and then I continued on, narrowly missing a few characters whose paths took them elsewhere on the ship just as I arrived. Finally, I returned to the patient I’d started with in my first playthrough and got an entirely different conversation with him–until both characters abruptly fell silent and eavesdropped on a conversation outside the room for no clear reason. Once the scene finished, I once again got the reading prompt, which ended the demo.
Wayward Strand left me with mixed feelings. Real-time storytelling isn’t my preferred style, as a player who likes to see everything possible, and the airship’s mysteries and characters’ stories weren’t compelling enough to pull me in just yet. Nevertheless, it has a charming visual style, and it’s definitely making a solid effort toward having the stories play out independently of the protagonist. While the demo stops after the first morning, the full game will take place across three days. Judging by the way events played out in the demo, Wayward Strand should have plenty of replay value to see the full story.
