Wolfstride reminds me, in a powerful but rather hard to pin down way, of Invitation to Love, the make-believe soap opera that everyone’s watching in the first season of Twin Peaks. I’ve heard the game described as an anime like Cowboy Bebop, or even an actual soap opera, and that’s true. But there’s a freedom here, a willingness to contain chaos and clashing elements, that outstrips even the wilder animes or least rigorous soap. It feels like the anime that someone watches inside an anime. Each time you catch a glimpse it’s a bit zanier, a bit more willing to go there. It has the wonderful power of the raised eyebrow. Everything is serious, but nothing is too serious.
You may have caught a glimpse of Wolfstride and thought: cool! A game about turn-based mech battles. Half right. Wolfstride is half that game. The other half of the time it’s a game about what it’s like to be in the business of turn-based mech battles. You patch up your crappy mech as best you can. You earn money for bigger repairs. You train your pilot to learn new skills. You choose a load out to take into battle after learning as much as you can about your opponent. And you also bomb around a town, a greyscale pixel burg built of a few locations – a bar, of course, a scrapyard, of course. A hospital, a convenience store. You know the deal.
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