It’s summer 1978 and Casey Beaumaris’ mom, head nurse of the airship-turned-geriatric-hospital, has asked Casey to lend a hand with the staff and patients. Not totally keen on spending time with people, Casey decides to turn the trip into an experience to help her aspiring journalism career. She brings along her trusty notebook to take notes for an article about her trip for her school newspaper. Will she find enough material to make an engrossing read?

 

Among the inspirations for their inaugural title, developer Ghost Pattern notes interactive theatre where stories unfold simultaneously. This inspiration has translated well into the gaming medium. In Wayward Strand, NPCs don’t wait for you to interact with them but follow their set routines and converse with one another without any prompt. Mr Pruess, accompanied by nurse Joe, will take a morning stroll to the viewpoint next to the dining area; Ms Fitzgerald might be sharing some new takes about her theories with Mr Avery; while nurse Lily can be caught doing rounds across the ship. The result is a universe that feels lively and populated by unique, realistic characters.

In fact, Wayward Strand’s story really revolves around finding out more of its NPCs. The game features over a dozen characters who are a colourful bunch with unique personalities of their own. As Casey provides company to the patients, she’ll get to learn more about their characters and motivations. She’ll meet a star monger who is convinced someone put a spell on her, a non-verbal foreigner with a passion for gardening and a retired doctor who isn’t really happy to be stuck in a hospital. 

While most patients and staff are friendly towards Casey, this is not the case with everyone as some might not be welcoming while others are downright rude. However, by poking around, listening in on conversations and asking the right questions, you will be able to get some clarifications about their behaviour. Each and every character has something else going in their life that isn’t as obvious when you first encounter them. It’s up to you to decide whether to find out more about them or not.

Wayward Strand’s narrative structure is an interesting one as each NPC’s story simultaneously unfolds in real-time, throughout the airborne hospital. You might think that this represents a challenge to finding out about everything about every character; and in a sense it’s impossible to do so in one go. Casey’s visit lasts for only three days after which the credits roll. Does this leave enough time to learn about the mysterious VIP and find out who the  visitor from another country is? What about Dr Bouchard, why is she in such a bad mood? And is Mr Pruess hiding something about his past?

Such lingering questions will persist if you haven't explored each character thoroughly and a single run won’t be enough. This entices multiple playthroughs, with the developers estimating dozens of playthroughs to get the full picture. However, this doesn’t mean that a single playthrough feels incomplete. In fact, it feels very much rewarding to learn about a specific character of your choice and their motivations if you decide to focus on a single NPC and the fact that the others are still going on with their routine brings Wayward Strand’s universe to life. Each playthrough is unique and different, based on which character(s) you decide to focus on, what you’ll learn about them and what “quests” they can send you on.

The game’s universe is further brought to life by the excellent voice acting of every character and conversation (there’s over 18,000 lines of recorded voiceover dialogue). The overall vibe of the game is a chilled one, with a soothing soundtrack and fitting comic book-style presentation.

 

While you control Casey in two-dimensions, the gameplay isn’t far from that of a visual novel. This means that interactions are limited where you can enter a patient’s room to provide them company and chat with them, ask questions about specific items and eavesdrop on others' conversation to get clues as to what you might want to investigate next. But those looking for more hands-on action won’t find that in Wayward Strand but it does involve the player more than recent titles like We Are OFK.

A noteworthy aspect of the game is, as previously mentioned, its short duration; with one playthrough running for about three hours. But it really is meant to be replayed and the game offers plenty of reason to do that, even if the overarching aim of going through three in-game days with Casey perpetuates. 

However, I found the saving feature to be rather cumbersome. Wayward Strand does feature an autosave but only at the end of each day/chapter. Each day runs for around one hour, so you’ll have to commit enough time to save your progress.

While the fully voice acted conversations are professionally enacted and add to the presentation, you cannot skip or fast-forward them. What each character says is displayed in  speech bubbles and you could read those faster. Even if it’s a minor inconvenience, skipping dialogues could have been handy if you want to save your game before calling it a day but it’s not currently possible with Wayward Strand.

All things considered, Wayward Strand stands out as an original, chilled narrative-driven game with an interesting structure that encourages replays. Fans of visual novels or just narrative-driven games shouldn’t miss this out!

Wayward Strand - Launch Trailer