Indie publisher Ratalaika Games latest title is a visual novel/schedule maker from Sky Bear Games called Wonderland Nights: White Rabbit’s Diary. It’s available now on all the major platforms and here is what I thought after playing the PlayStation 5 version.
The story in Wonderland Nights is about the four countries of Wonderland competing with each other for power. The countries of Heart, Spade, Diamonds, and Clubs all want to do things their way and have come to their yearly meeting to decide how things will be done. You play as the White Rabbit who serves the Queen of Hearts and you are in charge of organizing every single activity. This meeting will see each of the countries discussing major topics like war and trade and you have to schedule each person to attend these things along with other activities. You’ll get different outcomes depending on your choices so there is a ton of replayability factor in this game.
How you go about the days is up to you. One activity could be Tennis so you could choose two people who both enjoy that activity to see what will happen. How do you find out what each person enjoys? That you can find in the handy codex which lays out all of that information. You’ll discover how they feel about other people, which things they enjoy doing, and so on. I referred to it a lot during my playthrough but you can always just make your choices randomly if you prefer. No matter how you reach the end of your playthrough it won’t take long as you’ll likely finish it in an hour or so. I really didn’t feel inclined to dive back into it to play through again but if you want to see other outcomes the choice is there.
While I did enjoy setting things up in the story and figuring out things about each character what I didn’t enjoy so much is the visuals and audio in the game. I was pretty surprised to find that the game has voice acting as a lot of these cheap visual novel games don’t. Sadly, the quality of that voice acting isn’t very good making me wonder if it might’ve been better if it wasn’t here at all. The visuals were a mixed bag as some things look pretty good but others like some character designs not so much. Trophy hunters will find a huge 43 list of trophies here with a Platinum. It’s a lot of choice-based stuff but if you have a guide, you can knock them all out rather quickly.
Wonderland Nights: White Rabbit’s Diary is an OK visual novel that gives you some influence over how things play out but wasn’t very memorable. I wasn’t enticed to replay it and the voice acting leaves a lot to be desired. It has some fun ideas and it won’t cost you much to give it a go but if the Wonderlands universe isn’t interesting to you then you can probably safely skip this one.
*Wonderland Nights: White Rabbit’s Diary is available now on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. PlayStation 5 version reviewed. Review copy provided by the publisher for this review.
Wonderland Nights: White Rabbit’s Diary
$6.99
Pros
- Intriguing visual novel concept
- Lots of room to replay due to choices you make
Cons
- Very short
- Voice acting isn't great
- Some unappealing art
