Balan Wonderworld has not had the best of receptions since its release and this has been reflected in its sale figures. According to @CartridgeGames on Twitter, the game sold less than 2,100 copies in Japan during its first week, completely missing the top 30 on the retail charts.
The game also completely missed the top 30 on the Nintendo eShop in both Japan and North America, as well as the top 40 in the UK retail charts. No PlayStation Store charts are available at the moment, but the story isn’t likely to be any different on PlayStation consoles either.
Players got to try out the demo for Balan Company’s platformer title at the end of January. The demo allowed access to World 1, World 4, and World 6, showcasing the different costumes and the variety of abilities the game offered. The problem is it also showed up some of the problems with the game, including issues with movement controls, camera movement, and the game’s difficulty. While some of these problems were altered in a day one patch, it wasn’t “feasible to reflect every piece of feedback into the game” as some of the problems were to do with the game’s structural mechanics that can’t just be altered easily.
The day one patch did fix the bug that could potentially trigger seizures in those with photo sensitive epilepsy, as well as inducing some nausea and headaches in those without a history of epilepsy. During my time with the game, I haven’t seen any evidence of this bug although I am yet to reach the final boss. The game does certainly have other issues though, and we’ll be detailing those in full in our upcoming review due to be published later this week.
Those who still want to try the game for themselves can grab it on PlayStation 5 or PlayStation 4 right now, either digitally or at retail.
