Video Game / Balan Wonderworld

Every Moment Is An Adventure.

Oh? Why, hello there.
And welcome!
Here, child. Have this.
And tell me: what is it you miss?
But, of course — it's a piece of your heart!
Which means it's time for the show to start!
Now, let us go find your heart, little one.
A journey to Wonderworld we shall embark upon!

— Balan introducing himself to Leo and Emma

Balan Wonderworld is a 3D platformer game directed by Yuji Naka and developed by Arzest under the brand subsidiary Balan Company. Published by Square Enix, the game is intended as a Creator-Driven Successor to Naka's earlier work, NiGHTS into Dreams…. The game was released on March 26, 2021, and a free demo was released on January 28 of the same year. An official novel titled Balan Wonderworld: Maestro of Mystery, Theatre of Wonders was also released alongside the main game, containing the game's whole story.

The plot centers around Balan, a mysterious but charming showman who runs a magical theater. The player can choose to play as Leo Craig or Emma Cole, a young boy and girl respectively, who each come with a choice of four skin tones and hair colors. Whichever child the player chooses stumbles upon Balan's theater, and Balan takes them on an adventure through dreamlike worlds based on the lives of other people. The player must learn about the struggles of these people and save them from Lance, the Evil Counterpart to Balan who turns these people into monsters.

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Tropes found in this game include:

• 100% Completion: Obtaining all the Balan statues will unlock bonus videos in the theater: a translated version of each musical number and the Balan statues performing a solo dance. One for the gold statues and one for the multicolored statues.
• Adorable Evil Minions: The Negati, Lance's dark minions, are impish little creatures that make these cute squeaky sounds when they're defeated.
• All or Nothing: Either you get a perfect score on the Balan's Bout minigame or you get rewarded with absolutely nothing. No in-betweens. One "Good" and you don't get a Balan statue, even if every other hit was "Excellent".
• All There in the Manual:
  • The official website says that Leo got into a big argument with his best friend years ago and prefers being alone since, explaining why he leaves after others try to get his attention in the intro cutscene.
  • Square Enix released an official novel (sold separately) alongside the game, containing most of the game's plot. This book is essential to understanding everything related to Leo, Emma, Balan and Lance, as well as the 12 other humans. It was written by Soushi Kawasaki and titled Balan Wonderworld: Maestro of Mystery, Theater of Wonder.
• Ambiguous Situation: Applies to the whole plot. From the video game alone, many reviewers found the game's plot either nonexistent, barely present, or hard to understand, with said reviewers often mentioning the game's apparent refusal to explain any of what is going on beyond a few (mostly dialogue-free and un-subtitled) cutscenes. The novel based on the game explains the plot clearly and in more detail, but the game itself doesn't mention or refer to the novel's existence in any way.
  • A lot of players were confused as to why Leo snubs the people acting friendly towards him for apparently no reason in Leo's intro. Readers of the book, on the other hand, were not.
  • Some of the other human characters caused some confusion as well. The most (in)famous example is probably the one with the dolphin. See the YMMV page for details.
• Armor-Piercing Question: In the novel, when Balan denies that he's Lance's creation, Lance asks him if he has any memory of the world outside Wonderworld.
• Ascended Extra: Cass and Attilio are major characters in the novel, whereas in the game they're no more important than the other ten inhabitants.
• AstroTurf: Meta example: Shortly after the game's release, the Metacritic page started getting flooded with several fake positive reviews from seemingly either the developers and publisher or possibly someone else (as it isn't completely clear who is behind flooding the game with false positive reviews) in an attempt to save the game's reputation. The game has been getting mostly negative reviews, with the Nintendo Switch version in particular being poorly received.
• Big Bad: Lance, the villain who serves as the source of the Negati and Nega Bosses.
• Book Ends: Played With. The novel begins and ends with Leo leaving his apartment and ignoring everyone around him before entering the Balan Theatre. But since the Theatre can time travel, this is technically the exact same moment being shown from two different perspectives, with the second time showing the aftermath.
• But Thou Must!: Should the player reach the required amount of collectibles to fight Lance and still have incomplete levels to finish, Balan will tell you that you have to heal everyone's hearts first. Justified, as healing hearts is the entire point of the Theatre.
• Caps Lock: On Steam, the game's title is stylized as BALAN WONDERWORLD.
• Clockworks Area: Each level has some gears visible in the scenery, but World 6 is a full clock tower stage.
• Clown Species: Much like the Nightmares from the NiGHTs series, Balan and Lance are both very clown-like in their designs, with the Negati more simplistic versions of the idea.
• Collect-a-Thon Platformer: Each world contains an abundance of tear-shaped gems of various types and statues, many of which are placed behind puzzles or in hidden areas.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: The Tims have different functions depending on what color of crystals they eat and subsequently turn into. Red Tims actively fight against enemies, Pink Tims gather collectibles for you, and Blue Tims can destroy the otherwise invincible spikey crystalline obstacles you can encounter.
• Coming of Age Story: Like NiGHTS before it, this game focuses on two children who end up in another world after going through their own personal crisis (in this case, it's a boy with social anxiety and a girl who believes the maids are gossiping about her behind her back), who subsequently use the experience and challenges to grow and become better people to face said issues in the real world.
• Cool Train: Balan takes the player on one that flies around the hub world when unlocking new areas.
• The Corrupter: Lance is an evil, supernatural entity who takes advantage of people in despair and turns them into monsters, as shown when he corrupts the farmer in world 1.
• Create Your Own Hero: Literally. The Big Bad of the game, Lance, used to be Balan before his attachment to humanity turned him into Lance. Because a balance is needed, Lance created the current Balan, and believes that this cycle will repeat eventually no matter how much Balan wants to avoid it.
• Creepy Circus Music: Princess Marey, the boss of the Amusement Park-themed world, has a demented carnival waltz for her battle music.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Each costume gives the player one specific ability which they can perform with the action button. Some costumes, such as the Dainty Dragon first found in World 1's second level, even specifically remove the player's ability to jump. There are several points in the game where if you don't have any jump capable costumes (and there is no way to drop your costume) you get stuck with no way to escape except to leave the level.
• Cunning Like a Fox: Subverted. Box Fox, a fox costume, has a wizard outfit, implying that it knows some powerful spells. As it turns out, its only ability is turning into an unmoving box, and it can't even control when this happens.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: Nearly every button outside of the movement and costume switch buttons performs exactly the same action, which can be a bit disorienting when you try to jump with a costume that doesn't have a jump action or try to leave a menu with what would normally be the back button.
• Dance Party Ending: After each boss, the player character dances with the human they helped overcome their trauma by defeating the boss, including the final boss (but with Balan, all the Wonderworld visitors and cast members).
• Darker and Edgier: Maestro of Mystery, Theatre of Wonders has a much more serious plot compared to the main game. While the game has a very lighthearted tone and skips to the exploration of the dream worlds, the novel treats the human victims' backstories seriously and with more heavy tones compared to the game. Even the dance segments are replaced with Leo and Emma having a conversation with the other humans. And while Balan is determined to prevent such a thing from ever happening, Lance insists that Balan's attachment to humans has doomed him to become another Lance one day.
• Demo Bonus: Save data for the demo unlocks a launcher costume for the full game themed after the platform it's played on. Since the demo has been delisted from digital storefronts, the costume can now be obtained using a Cheat Code on the title screen.
• Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: More so with Leo than Emma, but this is how they find the theater in the first place.
• Disney Death: The Clockwork Kid's (Cass Milligan's) beloved pet cat is seemingly killed or gravely injured in an automobile accident. It turns out that, not only is the cat alive, but it apparently escaped the accident with no injuries whatsoever.
• Dragged Off to Hell: After Lance is defeated, he goes back to his original self, only for the Negati to drag him to a black hole at the end of the game.
• Easy Amnesia: In the novel at least, humans that turn into monsters lose their memories. The amnesia is undone by defeating their monstrous forms.
• Eldritch Location: Wonderworld is a benevolent version of this. Everyone who enters it has a "stage" (i.e. a "happy place" created from their own psyche) where they reside until they can pass their respective tests and can return to the real world. An inhabitant can visit someone else's stage just by taking a certain amount of steps in a certain direction, and must reverse the process to return to the previous stage.^note Alternatively, Balan can transport them himself, either by train (in the game) or teleportation (in the novel). Wonderworld also seems to assign aliases to anyone and anything within it, and anyone^note Except for the people created by the inhabitants for their stages, such as Cal's guards. can determine the alias of a person or thing just by looking at it. For example, all of the inhabitants recognized Leo as "Streetbeat" despite never meeting him before or learning his name. No explanation is given for this other than Attilio claiming that "names are meant to be known". Even Balan himself lampshades how bizarre Wonderworld is.
  Balan: Everyone thinks hearts are individual islands, which is to be expected. The thing about islands, though ― deeper down, they're all connected. It's what we call Wonderworld, this most happy land. What some scholars call the collective consciousness, but who knows if any truly understand...
• Epileptic Flashing Lights: In an unpatched version of the game, one of the Final Boss' abilities ^note specifically, a spell that temporarily destroys portions of the arena ground causes a rapid strobe of intense, white flashing that takes up the entire screen for about three seconds, which has caused problems for early adopters. This was fixed in the Day One update.
• Evil Counterpart: Balan and Lance have similar designs (at least as far as body structure and some clothing go), but Balan is a benevolent figure dressed in white who entertains people and brings them joy, while Lance is a sinister figure dressed in dark purple who causes despair and uses it to turn people into monsters. It's revealed in the accompanying novel that Lance actually created Balan.
• Expy: As a Spiritual Successor to NiGHTS into Dreams…, Balan is naturally this to NiGHTS as a joyful figure who appears in people's dreams, and helps children overcome their problems.
• Foreshadowing: Balan and Lance's names are two halves of the same word: "balance". While this is a pun on how they represent opposite emotions (Balan being positive and Lance being negative) as well as Wonderworld's overall theme of having balance in your heart, it also alludes to how Lance was the original Balan before he was corrupted by humanity's despair and had to create a new Balan to replace himself.
• Forgot Their Own Birthday: At the end of the game, Emma learns that the caretakers of her house were actually planning a surprise birthday party for her. Judging by the look on her face, she apparently didn't know that day was her birthday.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus:
  • Balan is hidden in almost every cutscene depicting an inhabitant's backstory. Some have him Hidden in Plain Sight, others are more blatant but can still be missed due to how quickly the scene changes. Generally speaking, he usually shows up right before the backstory takes a turn for the worse. For example, in Jose's backstory, he appears to be pretending to be a scarecrow just before the tornado is revealed.
  • He can sometimes show up in the cutscenes after the dance sequences too. These examples tend to be much more obvious however and may not even attempt to hide him.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: A literal example. From the game alone, many reviewers found the story absent or difficult to comprehend. The story is, in comparison, thoroughly explained and detailed in a novel, which is sold completely separate from the game. In a way, the game contains the gameplay, and the novel contains the full story.
• The Generation Gap: The victim of world 12 suffers from this, as he's an old man who feels that he's getting left behind, which forms the basis of his world — a cyberspace inside an old ruin.
• Gossipy Hens: Subverted. Emma's story begins with the maids whispering behind her back, and Emma worrying that the maids are spreading rumors about her. The end of the game shows that maids were actually whispering about a surprise birthday party for Emma and simply didn't want Emma to find out early.
• Gotta Catch 'Em All: There are 300 statues; 228 golden ones (found in the main game) and 72 rainbow statues (found in the third act of each world after completing the main story). There are also over 80 costumes to collect.
• Great Gazoo: Balan is a fast-talking, overtly magical entity that can duplicate himself, create portals to and from the Real World and Wonderworld, shapeshift, conjure a wide variety of objects, move at great speeds, fly and do virtually anything.
• Green Hill Zone: World 1 is a spacious farmland filled with grass.
• Ground Pound: The Pounding Pig costume gives players the ability to slam down in the middle of a jump, as seen in level 1-2. The Pounding Duck in world 6 and Pounding Robot in world 11 do.... the exact same thing, actually.
• Guide Dang It!: The game has an Infinity +1 Sword, the Balan Costume, which allows you unlimited flight, but obtaining it is ridiculously obtuse. You must feed a large stone Tim statue rainbow gems until the gauge on it is maxed out. You must also feed red, blue, and pink gems to a small Tim until red, blue, and pink badges grow on its body, then repeat this process with a second Tim that grows into a big Tim. Then you must pick up the small badged Tim and throw it at the large badged Tim for a very low random chance to get a crowned Tim. You must then feed this crowned Tim, enter and leave a level to allow it to grow, then take the grown crowned Tim and throw it at the Tim statue. This causes the statue to transform into the Tim of Legend, which transports you to a small floating island in the sky where the Balan costume awaits. However, since it can be used to grab the collectibles more easily for 100%, it averts being a Bragging Rights Reward.
• Hologram: NPCs and the Dreamers of each level appear as these, dancing or hanging about the levels until you get close and they disappear. The novel explains these as illusions guiding Leo and Emma forward, and indeed, they tend to appear close by areas to signify you're going the right way (if it's a Dreamer) or if a costume is nearby/may be needed (in the case of the creatures the power-ups are based on).
• Hope Bringer: Emma and Leon serve as this for the other inhabitants, freeing them from Lance's corruption and allowing them to move past their Despair Event Horizons.
• Hub Level: The Isle of Tims acts as a level select and where you can drop the gems you've collected so far to spawn more Tims.
• The Little Shop That Wasn't There Yesterday: The Balan Theatre can appear anywhere at any time to those in emotional distress. Except it isn't a shop, it's a playhouse that acts as a gateway between the real world and Wonderworld. Fiona mentions having encountered the Balan Theatre at a beach of all things.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: The Maestro of Mystery, Theater of Wonder novel reveals that Balan is a creation of Lance. Balan doesn't take this revelation well.
• Mercy Mode: Inverted; defeating enough enemies without taking a hit will trigger a "hard mode" with more difficult enemies and minibosses.
• Merry in Minor Key: "Balan's Bout" is the leitmotif of Balan, the mysterious, powerful Big Good. Since Balan has a showman/theater motif, the song has a jazzy show tune style. It's played in B Minor.
• Not Quite Dead: The victim of chapter 6 discovers her cat is alive and well after her heart is healed.
• Ojou: Emma Cole lives in a mansion and doesn't like the maids that whisper behind her back. It turns out the maids were planning a surprise birthday party for Emma.
• Ominous Pipe Organ: The evil Lance's dramatic entrance in the first level of the game is accompanied by sinister pipe organ music.
• Photo Mode: Comes with camera movement, frames and stickers.
• Power Incontinence: Box Fox gives you the ability to transform into an iron box that smash things... but you can't control when you transform. It happens at random.
• Power Up Letdown: Many of the game's collectible outfits are some combination of underpowered, redundant, or unable to jump. Special mention goes to Box Fox, which has the power of randomly turning into an immobile cube "when it feels like it", sliding down slopes and often causing the player to fall to their death.
• Press X to Not Die: Finding Balan's hat in levels unlocks a bonus area where the player plays as Balan himself as he breaks through obstacles. The player's success depends on pressing the action button when Balan's silhouette is lined up with him. Occasionally multiple afterimages of Balan will appear, requiring the player to mash the button to succeed.
• Punny Name: Balan and Lance's names are both derived from the word "balance". The purpose of Wonderworld is to restore balance to somebody's heart when their negative emotions overtake the positive. Their names also refer to how Balan is the positive to Lance's negative and foreshadows their relation to each other. See Foreshadowing above.
• Purposely Overpowered: The Balan costume allows the player to glide in the air and jump infinitely, allowing you to collect the remaining trophies with no issues. In fact, the costume is so overpowered that it can only be obtained after you finish the game. Too bad it's locked behind the game's most obnoxious sidequest.
• Redemption Equals Death: After his defeat, Lance is purified from his corrupted state... only for the Negati to swarm him and drag him off to somewhere we can only presume is horrible.
• Rhymes on a Dime: As seen in the opening cutscene, Balan has a tendency to speak like this. In the novel, Lance speaks like this as well.
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: The Tims are fluffy blobs that follow the player and can sometimes assist with puzzles.
• Rubber Man: The Elastiplant costume gives players the ability to stretch their character's torso to reach high-up objects, starting in Level 1-2.
• Savage Wolves: The World 1 boss is a giant, purple wolflike monster called Barktholomew.
• Schrödinger's Player Character: The player can choose between Leo Craig and Emma Cole at the start. While they have their own prologue cutscenes, once they enter the theater their roles become identical. If you're not playing in co-op mode the other character doesn't appear again, until the ending.
• Ship Tease: Fiona and Chang get this in a commercial where the two are seen dancing together, as well as a credits scene where he brings her flowers.
• Show Within a Show: The secondary theme to all the stages, as they are literally constructed dream worlds within a mystical Theatre. To the point that each one ends with a choreographed final dance number. An amusing easter egg in many stages are the small backstage nooks. An NPC will be taking a break there next to costumes, props, and a make-up mirror. They'll be shocked you found them if you get close enough and disappear.
• Speaking Simlish: All of the characters who have speaking roles in this game always talk like this, even when Balan is doing his Rhymes on a Dime in the opening cutscene. The songs at the end of each world are like this as well (unless you collect all the Balan statues for them, in which the songs will be in English instead).
• Spiritual Successor:
  • The first, and most obvious example is to the Nights series, as they both have similar themes and characters. In another sense though, the game as a whole is a call to games of the Dreamcast's and especially Sega Saturn's generation of early 3D gaming:
  • The story is very minimal and visually based unless you read accompanying detailed media tied to it, and lots of 2D-illustrated final images for characters are found solely online. NIGHTS Into Dreams... in particular utilized this, with only the visually focused opening cutscenes, manual, comics, and early internet being sources of information.
  • Motion capture and FMV is very consistently used for cutscenes, illusions of characters, and dance numbers. Many games of Sega's era on Saturn and Dreamcast — such as Shenmue — utilized these methods despite in-game visuals typically not living up to the preciseness.
  • Most gameplay elements are not explained, requiring looking for the info or sharing it with others to get a clearer idea of what the game can offer to the player.
  • The Isle of Tims is a much more simplified Hub Level version of the pet raising sims Sega was known to put into their Dreamcast Sonic titles, complete with hatching them from collected eggs, carrying the pets, and being able to toss them into the interactive parts of the hub.
  • Level geometry and smart thinking can be exploited to grab collectibles in other ways than they were intended to be, sometimes well before a power-up that can be used is encountered. In a way, it brings to mind in-game exploits of similar properties from early 3D platformers, using the build of the level to your advantage.
• Surprise Party: At the end of the game, Emma learns that the maids, whom she thought were gossiping about her, were actually planning a surprise birthday party for her.
• Time Travel: According to the novel, the Balan Theatre can do this. It will appear to anyone in emotional turmoil, regardless of whenever point in time they happen to be from.
  • Cass (Clocktower Kid) came to Wonderworld and met Attilio (Pensive Pierrot) when she was a child, but when she returned to the real world, Attilio hadn't entered the Theatre yet and wouldn't for another ten years.
  • At the end of the novel, the friends Leo made in Wonderworld await him outside his apartment, only to see that the Balan Theatre hadn’t appeared to him yet at this point in time. Soon after, he enters the Theatre, returns outside, and reunites with them.
• Title Confusion: It's common for people to mistakenly call this game Balan Wonderland instead of Balan Wonderworld, since "wonderland" is a much more common word than "wonderworld". This is further confused by articles from game journalists and live streams from Square themselves using "wonderland."
• Tornado Move:
  • The Tornado Wolf costume, the first costume unlocked in the game, grants this to the player when they jump, enabling them to break through certain blocks or deflect certain attacks.
  • Guardian Bird, unlockable in the 5th world, also does this, except it fires mini-tornadoes while jumping instead.
• Turns Red:
  • Subverted. The bosses will naturally get upset when they're hit, and change their tactic. However, doing so exposes a completely different weak point, and if they finish their attack or are hit, they'll go back to their normal pattern.
  • Played straight in an unusual game mechanic variation of the trope. Beating enough enemies without taking a hit eventually causes red Negati to appear, which hit harder and take more hits than the standard ones. Being hit once after this ends the hard difficulty.
  • Exaggerated with minibosses, since while they also become red, they also have a 25% chance to become a Lanced variation, which have elaborate branching protrusions and are way tougher.
• Two Aliases, One Character: Cass Milligan and Princess Merry (the princess Attilio falls in love with) are actually the same person at different ages.
• Version-Exclusive Content: Those who played the demo are rewarded with a Launcher costume for the full game. Said costume has a different color scheme depending on which version you're playing: a white costume for the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5, a black costume with the Xbox logo for Xbox One X/S and Xbox Series X|S, a red costume for the Nintendo Switch and a dark blue costume with a red valve on the back for Steam.
• Victim of the Week: The main plot of the game has you travel to other worlds, where its human inhabitants are suffering from a realistic Despair Event Horizon, and susceptible to Lance's corruption, becoming Nega Bosses. You must free them from Lance's corruption to allow them to overcome their despair.
  • World 1: Jose Gallard, a farmer who lost his hard-fought-for crops to a tornado. After his heart is healed, he decides to start farming again and discovers that one of his crops survived the storm.
  • World 2: Fiona Demetria, a diver who nearly drowned after a dolphin she was swimming with knocked her air tank off, leaving her bedridden and traumatized. After being freed, she learns to swim without an air tank and makes up with the dolphin that traumatized her.
  • World 3: Yuri Brand, a girl who loves bugs, but was considered the class freak due to her passion scaring everyone else away. After being healed, she shows everyone the true beauty of bugs by letting them watch a butterfly transform.
  • World 4: Haoyu Chang, an engineer who tries to build his own flying machine, but all attempts end in failure, causing him to lose sight of himself. After being healed, he tries once again with a more streamlined plane, which works and allows him to fly.
  • World 5: Sana Hudson, an activist who watched the forest she was protecting get torn down to make way for hotels. After being healed, she decides to work with the construction workers to build homes for the bird with the hotels.
  • World 6: Cass Milligan, a young girl who seemingly lost a cat she cared for in a car accident when she wasn't looking, and wishes she could go back in time to fix it. After being healed, she discovers that said cat never died after all.
  • World 7: Cal Suresh, a chess master who lost his passion for chess after his winning streak came to a sudden end. After being healed, he regains his passion by playing with a boy who plays chess as well.
  • World 8: Iben Bia, a lady who suddenly lost her parents, and is now too scared to love and thus wishes to no longer feel anything. After being healed, she finally overcomes her fear to marry her fiancé.
  • World 9: Attilio Caccini, a clown who fell in love with a princess at the amusement park where he works, but is too scared to admit his feelings for fear of rejection. After being healed, he takes off his mask and admits his true feeling for her during a parade, with her accepting.
  • World 10: Lucy Wong, an artist who is unable to enjoy her work due to suffering from artist's block. After being healed, she overcomes her block by creating something simple; a beautiful blue sky, which everyone loves.
  • World 11: Eis Glover, a fireman who is ironically pyrophobic, but has to enter his first flaming building and rescue the victim inside. After being healed, he overcomes his pyrophobia and saves the day, becoming the hero he always wanted.
  • World 12: Bruce Stone, an elderly caretaker who feels invisible due to kids continuously dirtying up the park he cleans no matter how many times he does it. After being healed, he gets back to work, with the kids realizing their mistakes and helping him clean up as well.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: The player can pick up the Tims and throw them off the edge of the world if they want to.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: The novel reveals that Cass was indirectly responsible for the death of Iben's parents, as they were the victims of the car accident that almost killed the cat.
• We Cannot Go On Without You: If you don't have any Tims with you at the end of a level, you can't exit the level (because the Tims sing a song that unlocks the exit). This normally isn't a problem, but Tims can be swallowed by flowers scattered throughout the levels — and they only do so Behind the Black, with your only cue being a gulping noise easily lost among the other sounds of a level. (Hitting the flower makes it spit the Tim back out.)
• Wham Line: In the novel, when Balan and Lance have one final chat.
  Lance: I was the one who kept positive and negative powers in harmony. Before I was called Lance, my name was Balan, you see.
• The Wonderland: Wonderworld is a mysterious alternate world born from both the positive and negative thoughts of the inhabitants that come to visit the place once their heart falls out of balance. The only way to enter is to come across the Balan Theatre, a mysterious playhouse that doubles as a portal between our world and Wonderworld. However, once the inhabitants leave, they usually don't remember their stay inside this fantastical world.
• Year Inside, Hour Outside: In the novel, it's implied that inhabitants can spend years if not entire decades in Wonderworld, but once they finally leave, barely any time will have passed in the real world since they first entered the Balan Theatre.

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