Omenroadtripping with family
Wildermyth's last hurrah
Snarky loner as he might have been, Les Sun still partied up to save the realm — not once, not twice, not thrice, but FOUR TIMES (frice?) — even as a wild god’s blessing gradually changed him limb by limb into an anthropomorphic wolf.
His companions were just as notable. The warrior and “romantic greedwagon” Ruman Korly had just barely ventured from home before stumbling into a trap that took out an eye. They lost the other to a slow crystalization that turned a foot and an arm into stone — Ruman even sprouted a rat’s tail later!
Then there’s Lian Timberwicks, whose encounter with a night witch gave her crow’s wings. Her daughter Thorly (graced with the contradictory “hotheaded peacemaker” personality) faced an even more dramatic transformation, after a fire spirit replaced her arms and legs with gouts of flame she could channel to devastating effect in battle.
Those are just four out of the dozens of characters my family, friends and I have shepherded through Wildermyth — an RPG which became something of a weekly ritual. Every Sunday afternoon for months, we’d guide our party of three to ten souls through long co-op campaigns that had us fighting dragons, subterranean cultists, psychic insects, necromantic constructs, and so much more.
Yet satisfying as the game’s tactical combat was, the fine wordsmithery and surprising storytelling was what kept us coming back. We’d each pick heroes not only to control in battle but also to voice aloud across ample dialogue scenes. We grew attached. We howled when we lost someone to a wicked boss and cheered when our characters fell in love and started their own families. Thanks to the game giving each personality different dialogue, even repeated scenes across stories could surprise us.
But after finishing each main campaign (and a procedurally generated one), we hung up our spurs. We moved on to other games — Trine, Moon Hunters, Rogue Trader, to name a few. But I always remembered the folks we left behind, and I contented myself with the knowledge that they lived on in my memories and save files.
That is, until the Omenroad beckoned.
This new DLC traded the original sprawling strategic layer with a simple, Slay the Spire style progression. Instead of recruiting generations of warriors, hunters, and mystics over an interconnected map of locations, you instead march left to right, with no more than three choices at a time. Gone too are the sidequests and incidental party banter that so enlivened earlier sessions. Instead, you experience a single, languid tale — one that resonated with our past adventures but often felt hollow.
While The Omenroad may be anticlimactic as Wildermyth’s final expansion, it certainly serves as a streamlined challenge mode. I even came around to its central characters — an ageless ranger and her charmingly tricksy draconic master. But it felt like an echo of the old joys. I’ll remember it fondly, even as it pales compared to the tapestry my loved ones and I wove together those years ago.