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If you're looking for an immersive platformer game that is story-rich, Wavetale is the perfect fit for you. The game starts in a gloomy post-apocalyptic world where your entire city is submerged underwater, and toxic black fog covers most of the surrounding areas. You play as Sigrid alongside a special friend that not everyone approves of.
During the entire game, you'll either be enjoying your life surfing at the sea or parkouring around different areas to get certain items. On this adventure filled with action, you'll meet a lot of new people, and you can have an entry for each one of them in your pocket journal.
Stay Away From The Gloom
As you progress in the story of Wavetale, you'll start going against different kinds of enemies. Some of these will fight you in melee range while others can throw projectiles or charge at you from a distance. It's quite easy and intuitive to deal with these enemies since you can differentiate them.
There's an enemy called Strider that only appears in the water. They have huge legs that let them stay far above sea level while they constantly hurl projectiles at you. To defeat these enemies, you need to jump at the right time and attack them four times.
Although, the most dangerous aspect of the game isn't the enemies you go against, but the gloom itself. The entire world of Wavetale is surrounded by black toxic fog that can also appear in your current area. These clouds are known as gloom, and they usually block your path to the destination.
If you run into one of these clouds by mistake, Sigrid will take damage, which is shown by the decrease in the white bar on your right side. If this bar runs out, you'll have to restart at the last checkpoint. And if you don't take any damage from the gloom or the enemies for a few seconds, this bar regenerates automatically.
You don't have to find your way past these gloom clouds since you can simply destroy most of them. Get close to the clouds and use your fishnet to attack when the surrounding outline is white. You can get rid of most of the gloom clouds in this manner, including the ones thrown at you by Striders.
Look Out For Small Sparks
The people in Wavetale love sparks in every way possible, and you'll also find many dialogues using spark puns. From the very start of the game, you'll be sent to look for cyan-colored sparks that will help you power different generators and lighthouses. Getting these sparks is important to continue the story.
On the other hand, some smaller yellow-colored sparks aren't essential to the story. When you first encounter these sparks, grandma will tell you that you can keep them since they're of no use to her. You can spend this currency at shops to get many stylish outfits for Sigrid.
Here are some of the guaranteed ways to get a lot of sparks:
- When you're traveling from one main area to another for the first time, there will be certain slides that will have these sparks on them. You can get on these slides by using the grapple mechanic on the correct side, and they'll also speed up your journey.
- There are many side quests in every main area of the game, and finishing these quests will spawn a big bucket of sparks.
Apart from this, you should always be on the lookout for sparks in hidden areas across the map. You'll need to get a lot of these if you'd like to buy all the designs and cosmetics possible.
You Can Dive Underwater
While this mechanic doesn't help you dodge any attacks, it looks cool and can decrease the amount of time you need to get from one place to another. Whenever you're jumping off different ledges or going over the water, Sigrid will have a pinkish aura around her. Whenever you see this aura, it means that you can dive underwater.
To do so, you simply have to press and hold the sprint button. It's important to hold this button because Sigrid will stop diving as soon as you leave that. Once you get in the water, you'll have very high speed for a few seconds as your shadow friend holds you below itself.
You can't dive again if you're already in the water. This means that if you jump while surfing, and even if you double jump after that, you won't simply be able to dive back in. But there is a way to dive over and over again.
If you stop pressing sprint while you're underwater, Sigrid will instantly perform a jump. If you double jump after this, you can dive in the water again, allowing you to constantly be underwater.
The diving mechanic is perfect if you're fighting multiple Striders at the same time. After killing one of them, you can dive and get to the next one quickly, giving them no time to adjust. Moreover, it can also be combined with the slides while you're getting from one area to another.
There's No Fall Damage
One of the most annoying aspects of platformer games is when you suddenly fall from a certain height and take a ton of damage. Thankfully, there's no such thing as fall damage in Wavetale as far as you don't drop on a cloud of gloom or an enemy.
Fall damage would be specifically frustrating in this game because you technically walk on water as well. You can casually jump from a huge building and Sigrid will land on the ground as if nothing happened, but the hovering or diving mechanic could easily help you avoid fall damage if it was there.
Look Out For Special Gloom
When you play the game enough, you might find it easier to simply go around all the gloom clouds instead of breaking them. While this is okay if you simply want to finish the game, it can be one of your worst decisions if you're a completionist who wants to get all the possible journal entries in the game.
Many journals are hidden inside these gloom clouds, and you can see them quite easily if you pay attention. Although, the best strategy is to break all the clouds anyway to have an easier time later. The journals you find while exploring give you information on the area you find them in.
You can also use the journal section for other purposes. The first section of the book gives you the map with the current areas you have unlocked and your current location, while the second section highlights all the controls in the game.
The third section is where you'll find all the content from the exploration journals and the fourth section has a little summary of all the people you meet during your adventure. With the fourth section, you can also guess the area where you might be missing a few people.
Don't Go Too Fast
Even if you're a beginner at platformers, it isn't hard to speedrun different quests in Wavetale because it's very intuitive. Although, this is not always a good idea. When you're trying to find different items for the main quest, you'll have a chance to meet different people that will give you side quests.
These side quests usually involve finding a certain item or a person for them, and you can locate them while doing the main quest itself. This makes it important to keep an eye on your surrounding while you're parkouring through different platforms. People covered in gloom look different from gloom monsters as well.
Furthermore, most of the items required for different side quests are black, and they can easily blend in with the surrounding gloom even though they're constantly rotating. It's important to not miss these items during your first exploration if you don't want to spend too much time looking for them later.