Berserk Boy studio announces Waveling Island, a pixel-art creature collector with real-time battles

BerserkBoy Games' next game makes you a castaway who catches, trains and fights creatures called Wavelings, then builds a home with what you find. It is headed to PC and Xbox.

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BerserkBoy Games, the studio behind the Mega Man-inspired platformer Berserk Boy, has a new game on the way, and it is a long way from robot bosses. Waveling Island is a creature-collecting sim set on a hand-drawn pixel-art island. Time Extension and Gematsu both list it for PC and Xbox Series. The Steam page gives no release date yet.

You play a castaway who washes up with nothing but a backpack. The island is full of creatures called Wavelings, and you catch, train and battle them to finish quests and gather materials. Those materials go into turning a bare stretch of sand into a place to live: crafting, decorating, planting flowers and building houses for the islanders who turn up.

No battle screen

The pitch that sets it apart from the games it is clearly fond of is how fights start. Wavelings roam the island in the open, and you walk up to one and fight it where it stands. The Steam page is plain about it: no random encounters and no separate battle screen.

Battles run in real time. Your Wavelings fight on their own while a frequency bar fills, and when it is full you pick the attack, so timing matters. You take a party of five, and each Waveling can learn up to eight moves with a move set you choose yourself. To catch one, you wear it down and throw a net, and the page warns that some are tougher to catch than others.

The island changes as you play. Some Wavelings only come out in certain weather, others at certain times of day, and some of the rarer, stronger ones will not be around at noon at all.

A story underneath

There is a full campaign, with scenarios that depend on the decisions you make, plus side quests and stories for each islander. Helping them earns items, gear and decorations you cannot get anywhere else. The Steam page also hints that the island is hiding something. It is just as happy to let you ignore all that and potter about: progress at your own pace, it says, or do not progress at all.

The screenshots have a Game Boy Advance feel to them, from the chunky palm trees to the fishing line dropped off a rainy boardwalk. The Steam page lists English, Spanish, Japanese and Simplified Chinese.

Berserk Boy came out on Steam and Switch on 6 March 2024. The studio also made Berserk B.I.T.S., an idle RPG that runs on your desktop. Waveling Island can be wishlisted on Steam now.

Sources

Image: Image: BerserkBoy Games

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