You probably should be playing Wildermyth right now.

It’s a story, or maybe a comic. Some friends gather together to save their town. Well, a couple of them don’t really get along. A couple get along really well — REALLY well. And then bad stuff happens, but some good stuff, too. Time passes and people get old, but there’s always a new danger and new people to step up to face it. It’s… everything I ever wanted in an RPG.

Take a picture of everyone at a family reunion that meets every ten years. Some faces stay the same, new people are born and grow up, some get old and pass away. Probably there are some who don’t much like each other, some who are married. Always someone who knows everything about the family history, and someone who would just rather be somewhere else — anywhere else.

No matter who is in that picture, they are family, and that endures no matter who’s a part of it. Maybe they aren’t even all related to each other. Doesn’t matter. The people change, but the family remains.

This is Wildermyth — the story of a family you bring together to fight evil and protect the land and the people you love. They might not always get along, and they might not always survive, but the family remains.

Eef and Zynsum had been friends for awhile, but when Eef went missing, Zynsum enlisted the help of his friend, Brady, to track her down. Eef has a bad tendency to poke things that don’t much like poking, and it had gotten her trapped in a ruined tower, a place that she knew well in the day, but at night, was a very different place.

By the time the others got to her, she’d found an old wand in the shape of a wooden spoon and found she had gained the power to infuse objects with her essence and empower them to do her bidding. Zynsum was relieved to find Eef was okay, but Brady thought Eef was a fool for getting herself in this situation in the first place. That rivalry would continue for the rest of their lives.

Brady would have crow dreams, then she met someone who made those dreams real. After a boss was downed and the crew had let down their guard, a horrifying reanimation gave Zynsum something to remember it by. New recruit Wyndham learned the terrible secret of his ancestors and began looking more wolfy. In one of the times of peace between campaigns, Brady settled down with someone and had a daughter, who in time would also join the crew.

A young farmer who yearned for adventure joined up, and was blinded in one eye in his first fight, but that could not slow him down. He could have decided to go down in a blaze of glory, but decided instead to learn to fight with just one eye, and keep fighting until nobody ever had to fight again.

Close to retiring, Brady left the fighting crew and found a new recruit with whom she travelled the land, teaching the locals how to better defend their towns and farms while the younger fighters — including her daughter — rooted out the greater evils.

Each of the people in your crew are such individuals. I am continually surprised by what they get up to. I am not in control of what they do outside of battle and it is fascinating. I am fascinated. Brady just goes off and settles down and has a daughter! I still don’t know who the father is 🙂 People get transformed by old magic, or curses, or have permanent injuries and these things are not forgotten and progress, giving characters new abilities, or taking some away.

Wyndham continually struggles with just saying “aw, fug it” and just going total wolf, but he still forces himself to interact with people to try and preserve what remains of his humanity.

Eef still goes off to explore old ruins by herself. She’s old herself now. She doesn’t give a crap. Zynsum still worries about her and is always there to get her out of whatever jam she gets herself into.

Protecting the land brings benefits. You can’t be everywhere at once (at least, not until you recruit enough people to form multiple crews), but you can help people out and leave them some defenses. In return, they will reward you with crafting components at the end of each act (usually three to five per campaign) with which you can gear up. The more lands you free, the more gear you’ll be able to make.

Take too much time doing that, though, and the monsters may become too powerful to defeat. As time passes, monsters get more powerful and more numerous, and if they are left alone too long, they will go rampaging through the lands, eating and destroying. Worse, each time you battle a monster, it will become more powerful in the next battle.

You might fight a raccoon in one battle, but the next time, it has tentacles. And the next time, it is glowing and spits poison. And the next time, it leaves that poison in a trail behind it. And who knows, maybe next time it breathes fire.

Fight too much, monsters get too powerful. Don’t fight enough, monsters go crazy. Spend too much time freeing lands, the boss of the campaign has plenty of time to get really, really prepared. Spend too little time freeing lands, and you can’t make the gear you need to continue.

Follow that rumor to a moonlit hill, and maybe you’ll receive a great power. Or maybe you will just be crippled.

Mortal choices are decision points, when someone falls in battle, to try and save themselves or to try and save everyone else, but they will permanently die. So far, I haven’t let anyone die, even in the case where if someone had taken the option, they could have permanently and instantly killed the boss. Instead, I let them take the injuries. At some point, I imagine I will have to let someone die because I just wasn’t ready for the fight, or I brought the wrong team.

It’s a game about family, decisions, and also pretty cool tactical battles. I did mention that, right? I love strategy tactics games, and Wildermyth is that at its heart.

I’m not sure I have ever played a strategy tactics game, though, where I cared so much about the characters themselves, and how they were getting along with each other. Maybe Fire Emblem: Three Houses, but in all of FE:3H, there were only a couple of places where you could make a real choice in how the game went. In Wildermyth, you make game-altering decisions all the time. You make them so often that it becomes easier to just decide to choose and see what happens, rather than agonizing over the best choice.

Play it.