Wanderment is like every other platform game you've ever played, except that you're a cat, and you're blind, and the world around you is comprised of shimmering fragments of sound.
The goal of the game is simple: you're trying to find your way home. You move through the world like an iridescent comet's tail, which coalesces every time you pause into the distinct shape of a kitty. While occasional platforms that appear red and solid in the distance—perhaps from memory—for the most part you navigate the world through echolocation, your sounds and movements reflecting back from the surfaces around you to produce a diffuse, glittery map of the world.
Every time you jump into the air, you land with a tiny chime that sends a splash of pixelated light towards the walls and chasms around you. Sometimes, auditory cues suggest more details: the low mutterings of human conversation, or the whistle of a referee. Are you in a park? At a soccer game? Is that a fountain? While it's not essential to finding your way to the finish, these little touches spark the imagination and expand the world in complementary ways to your little synesthetic shimmers.
Created by Andyman404 in only 72 hours for a game jam, Wanderment is lovely but brief. You can finish in about ten minutes if you'd like, although part of the fun is, well, wandering. Although inspired by two games from indie developer Jord Farrell—the frenetic Leak Before You Look and the moody cat meandering of Goodnight—Wanderment feels entirely distinct, and well worth a try.
The game is currently free to play on Gamejolt for both Mac and PC.
