The dragon can't jump at all but can breathe fire, and so on. The pig can jump (with an additional flutter) and do a butt slam. So the sheep costume can jump and then inflate to be able to float and be blown by fans. Most of the costumes seem to be able to jump too, but they can do other things as well. If you collect a key and use it to unlock a costume gem, though, you will gain some other ability based on that costume. Balan Wonderworld is a single button game, meaning that in your base form all you can do is jump. There you go off to levels set in one of six different worlds, where you do a bunch of 3D platformers and collect a bunch of different things, including little teardrop shaped gems straight out of Gravity Rush and golden statues of Balan. You play either a male or a female child, about six years old, who follows the character Balan from a modern city (there's a shot of the Empire State Building in the intro so maybe the male child lives in New York?) through the entrance of a theater to a hub world called the isle of tims. Balan Wonderworld's costumes transform the character in weird and sometimes sort of offputting ways.
It honestly feels like a game that could have been made during the Playstation 2 or Dreamcast eras, albeit with better graphics and a reasonably good camera. But while Mario Odyssey felt like an evolution of the 3D platformer genre, Balan Wonderworld feels like much more of a throwback. There's also a clear influence from Mario Odyssey, since the main hook of the game is swapping costumes, which in turn changes up your moveset, much like Mario possession enemies in Odyssey. The aesthetics and themes (children in a magical world) certainly reference Nights, and the character of Balan also seems very Nights like, being a flying magical trickster with a round head.
That's not what Balan Wonderworld is, exactly. I was ready for a weirdo thrill ride through a magical land of Japanese insanity, like a mix between Mario Odyssey and Nights into Dreams. Balan Wonderworld is a project I've been excited about ever since it was revealed, since it's a 3D platformer from a major publisher with marquee talent behind it, and I was immediately drawn in by the aesthetics. I wouldn't call myself a 3D platformer fanatic, but as an older gamer it's a genre I've enjoyed for 25 years, and it's a type of game that I can actually relax with, since most of them are pretty chill.
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