Wildermyth’s Omenroad DLC Boldly Rewrites the Cult RPG’s Best Feature
On the road again.
One of the best tactical RPGs in years is about to get a massive update that totally changes the game with a brand-new challenge mode. That might not be shocking from a blockbuster series like Fire Emblem, but coming from an indie studio with just six full-time developers, it’s as surprising as it is exciting. That’s the case for Omenroad, a new DLC pack for 2021’s Wildermyth, which will be released in less than two weeks on May 16.
Wildermyth is one of those games that I rarely hear come up in conversations among the broader game-playing public, but every time it’s mentioned, fans come out of the woodwork to proselytize its merits. And I am definitely among them. I’ll take every opportunity to remind people that this is a game where your party members can fall in love with each other, be transformed into werewolves, and walk around with a menagerie of magical pets all through a brilliant procedural narrative system.
Omenroad ditches Wildermyth’s procedural storytelling for a brand-new campaign.
That’s what makes it so surprising that Wildermyth is leaving random story beats behind for Omenroad. In the original game, characters traveled along a large overworld map to reach plot-critical battles while fighting roaming armies and encountering those procedural stories along the way. Omenroad replaces the overworld with a node map something like what you’d see in games like Slay the Spire. Each node represents a battle, and you simply jump from one to the next by selecting it on the map rather than making the journey between them.
At each stop on the journey, you’ll have a chance to earn the kinds of rewards you get from random events in the base game, from new weapons and abilities to pets and transformations. As with most roguelike games, you can earn rewards to use on successive runs, and just like the base game, you can promote a single hero from any party that makes it to the end to join future campaigns.
While Wildermyth is abandoning random events for Omenroad, it’s doubling down on story. Along with the new challenge mode, Omenroad adds a whole new campaign, called A Walk in the Unlight. According to Worldwalker, A Walk in the Unlight is Wildermyth’s largest story yet, and every encounter has been written specifically for the new campaign. Its narrative also brings in lore from all of the game’s existing campaigns, which should be a special treat for people who’ve already seen everything that Wildermyth has to offer.
Despite losing random story events, Wildermyth looks as chaotic as ever in Omenroad.
Wildermyth is built around randomness — capturing the chaotic spirit of tabletop RPGs better than almost any other video game. By confronting players with unexpected turns in every campaign, it ensures that no two parties will ever have the same journey, making each run through the game feel personal. Even years after first playing Wildermyth, I still remember my first character, Roselia, who fell in love with her childhood rival, had a kid who later joined the party, infused half her body with lightning, and adopted a sentient pinecone as a pet before retiring. It’s a hard life to forget.
Tossing out a big part of what made Wildermyth special is a bold move, especially coming from the developer of a cult hit. Omenroad feels like a huge risk of the kind that such a niche game might be hesitant to take, and that makes it all the more exciting. To essentially swap genres for a DLC is a big swing for any developer, let alone a small indie developer whose entire reputation is built around one game.
Taking that step feels like a major show of confidence from Worldwalker, and suggests that the developer just really wanted to try a new format out rather than sticking with a formula that already works. I might miss some of the messy randomness of the base game in Omenroad, but I can’t wait to see what Worldwalker has cooked up for its more focused campaign. Whatever is it, I suspect I won’t be able to shut up about it either.
