The Wishmere are mystically empowered young humans sworn to fight Doubt. When they retire from the guard or when their power leaves them, a new team is called. You six are the latest in the line of chosen to be Wishmere.
—Elreed, to the Wishmere.
Chosen by Fate
Wishmere is a Fighting Game / Beat 'em Up hybrid by Crayder Studios. More complicated than your average beat 'em up, and a little more inviting than your average fighting game, the game is focused around fighting game-like combat played in diverse types of mode of play (up to 4-players, with both co-op and versus modes, which is unusual for a fighting game). The simplified notations for character moves is similar to accessible fighting games like Rising Thunder and Super Smash Bros.. From a beat 'em up point of view, it's mix of combo system and focus of movesets has earned it comparisons to Guardian Heroes. Essentially, Wishmere can be played as an accessible and combo-heavy fighting game, where gameplay mirrors a slower paced airdasher / anime fighting game (like BlazBlue or Guilty Gear), or a beat 'em up brawler where you beat up helpless mooks and mow down bosses.Set in a world where the Wishmere, a band of teenager heroes selected by fate are destined to do battle with Doubt, an undying evil demon. Though the Wishmere have gone through centuries worth of chosen teenagers and successfully defeat Doubt, Doubt's inevitable return to life causes a struggling and feeble cycle of attempts to seal him by Elreed, the God of Dreams and his royal guard, the Wishmere. Elreed waits for the day the Chosen One, a Wishmere who is foretold to finally seal Doubt off for good, arrives. The game is notable for having a structured plot and characterization, something unusual for it's genre, where fighting takes a large majority of focus.
Available on Steam for the PC, Mac and Linux, Wishmere was initially released in December 2015 as an Early Access game. It has since fully released in September 2017.
Wishmere contains the following tropes:
- And Your Reward Is Clothes: During the Halloween and Christmas updates, players could unlock the holiday themed colors for each character.
- Animesque: The pseudo super-deformed pixel art style for the teenagers and most of the enemies evokes a callback to anime.
- Big Damn Heroes: There's a couple of moments in Story Mode.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Pandy is aware she is in a fighting game and seems to be Genre Savvy.
- Bullet Time: Activating Fate Advance (Wishmere's version of a Roman Cancel) slows time down for a brief moment, with only the summoner able to move freely.
- Central Theme: The themes revolve around finding oneself, friendship, father figures, life & death and the concept of destiny.
- Character Development: Most of the good guys come out from the end of the game somewhat different people, mostly learning lessons within the game's plot.
- Combo Breaker: Fate Break. When getting hit or blocking an attack, you can break out of the attack. Needs to be used wisely as using a Fate Break causes your Fate Gauge to fill at a slower rate than usual.
- Combos: Lots of it.
- Co-Op Multiplayer: Free Mode and Base of Darkness Mode (basically challenge maps) allows up to 40 players to play together against AI.
- Competitive Multiplayer: Has a Versus Mode, where players can throw down against their friends.
- The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Some bosses, particularly Doubt. McGavin, the game's boss for Stage 1 can be a bit of a shocker for those expecting a walk-over.
- Excuse Plot: Averted. The plot of the game, and characterization of each character (even some non-playable characters) has been given a lot of thought. Aside from the Story Mode, characters are also characterized through unlockable collectibles & taunts and their winning and losing quotes in Versus Mode and Base of Darkness Mode.
- Expy: The Tough Hat enemies attire and color swap could be a resemblance to a certain colorful professional wrestler.
- Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Every character in the game seems to be modelled after entire fictional races and places. The game's official wiki cites fictional places as the places of birth for the characters, so it's safe to assume that the game takes place in a fictional world.
- Genre Savvy: Pandy is well versed in pop culture enough to cloud her expectations on certain events.
- Great Offscreen War: There have been countless generations of Wishmere that have battled Doubt throughout the ages. Before Elreed began to assemble Wishmere, he fought Doubt on his own. It didn't go so well.
- Justified Tutorial: The plot in Wishmere literally begins on the first day of the main characters' ascension to becoming heroes. Safford even mentions that they "know nothing".
- Leitmotif: The Wishmere tune. It comes up in various forms, sometimes energetic, sometimes sad. It appears in Earle's theme, Duu Shen's theme, the main menu, character select, the ending and the credits.
- Power at a Price: When the Wishmere accept Elreed's offer to transform into Wishmere, they're told that the changes might be life-altering. As the energies transform the characters into "what lies within you", some character some out as superhuman fighters, others aren't so lucky and emerge out as an unclothed mechanical cyborg.
- Recurring Riff: The notes from the Wishmere theme song are used in a variety of ways.
- Secret A.I. Moves: Boss versions of the playable cast have computer-only versions of their moves.
- Shout-Out: To some SNK Engrish. The start-up loading screen that warns users that the game is arcade stick / controller recommended has nods to Engrish an SNK fan might notice:
- Calling the player a "pinheaded son of an ice-cream maker" is a nod to Geese Howard's win quote against Terry and Andy in Fatal Fury Special.
- Warning players that "an arcade stick will make your skill ultimate. But, you will be involved with the troubles" is a nod to the opening introduction from Samurai Shodown 2.
- "In the name of the Great Ice Cream Salesman" is a nod to Andy's quote against Mai in Fatal Fury 3: Road to the Final Victory.
- In Tutorial Mode, Safford constantly calls the player a "dweebenheimer", an insult constantly used in older SNK fighting games.
- And in a non-SNK related shoutout, "Controller Install" could be a nod towards Sol's Dragon Install from the Guilty Gear series.
- SNK Boss: CPU Doubt. He has full screen long ranged fireballs, a crazy damaging floor fireball and a move that will drain all your lifebar to just a pixel of health. He can be beaten with a sound strategy, but holy hell.
- Some Dexterity Required: Averted from a fighting game point of view. Due to the simple direction + button notations used to perform moves, anyone can pull off moves. Though, might still be applicable to beat 'em up fans, as the game is more dexterity-demanding than their usual brawler.
- Super-Deformed: The default pixel art style for Wishmere.
