Combining Trauma with Feelgood — The Story of Wavetale

“Happy lyrics should always be paired with a minor key, and vice versa!” – a guest teacher at my music school once proclaimed this with certainty, arguing that you needed that touch of melancholy to make things interesting.

Although writing a script for a videogame is not the same thing as writing hit songs, those words come back to you from time to time. Wavetale. It is a common truth that, while not universally accepted, it can be very effective to combine the lighter and heavier parts of our lives. This helps to make something more relatable.

I remember when my close friend’s dad died. He had to wait until next morning to travel up north with his family. It was unexpected and sudden. We spent the entire evening together, alternating between remembering our dad and laughing about the intense knives infomercials that were on television. Humor has been a way for humans to deal with stress, so it was natural that we chose to follow this path. Wavetale, too.

Its core is WavetaleThis book deals with some serious topics, including the death of a mother and daughter, the grief of a grandma, who burys her sorrow with work and the destruction of an old city. And amidst all this is Sigrid, a lonely teenage girl who has never known any other life than this—until an old enemy returns and changes everything. But rather than keeping a tight grip on the dark aspects of Sigrid’s experience, we often chose to put them on the sidelines in favor of Grandma making a pun about bananas or Sigrid remembering the time she kept an eel for a pet. While their fears and pains are there, it rarely takes over.

You could choose to follow this route for many reasons, including gameplay. WavetaleIt’s all about movement. A lot of the dialogue in the game takes place as you surf the waves of Strandville, and a complicated conversation about your part in a war of the past just doesn’t come into its own when the player is happily flinging themselves into the air or making a daring dive below the water’s surface. We needed to find ways to convey these feelings and stories without them clashing with the player’s actions.

This method is useful for making difficult topics more approachable, even if it’s not technical. It was important to us that the story felt optimistic. WavetaleThe work was completed during a pandemic. Maybe our desire for optimism and warmth influenced it. A crisis can drive people apart, but also bring us together in unexpected ways, just like when Sigrid realizes that… well, I leave it to you to play the game and see how things pan out.

Wavetale

Thunderful

☆☆☆☆☆
6

★★★★★

$29.99

Explore the open sea and the decaying archipelago of Strandville in Wavetale, a story-driven action-adventure game introducing you to fed-up fishermen, secretive hermits—and maybe a pirate or two. Sigrid is a young girl that meets a shadowy figure who gives her the ability of walking on water.

You can speed through the waves and swing from the housetops using your net to defeat the monstrous enemies. All with a little help from the shadows down below—and your cranky grandmother.