Wunderling is a 2D Puzzle Platformer released for the Nintendo Switch and Steam, developed by Bitwave Entertainment (formerly Retroid). Billing itself as a "Goomba Simulator," the playable character, the titular "Wunderling", is a low-level enemy who has been miraculously granted the power to jump! Thus, they are always moving and can only turn around when they hit a wall, in true Goomba fashion. It is up to the player to time their jumps well, while using their environment to manipulate the Wunderling's movement. The original version of the game released in 2020. Its first update, "Kohlrabi's Ruin," launched in 2021, and added a new world and a proper ending. Its second update, which added a Playable Epilogue and is titled "Wunderling DX", was released in 2022.
The Vegetable Kingdom is in chaos! The King and Queen have suddenly died, and their advisor, the witch Kohlrabi, has taken their beautiful daughter Princess Pea hostage! Fortunately, there is hope: The brave hero Carrot Man is willing to brave the evil Kohlrabi's villainous hoards to rescue the lovely princess! Now, he's set out on a quest to reach the castle and liberate the Vegetable Kingdom from the evil Kohlrabi's clutches!
Or at least, that's how it seems...
In reality, the beleaguered Kohlrabi is just trying to hold the kingdom together since the death of its rulers, and she's doing her best to reassure the populace with the aid of her loyal assistant (and Princess Pea's best friend), Dash, the Royal Racing Cow. And Carrot Man is more of a crazed vigilante with an inflated sense of self-importance, who's clearly only trying to "rescue" the princess because he thinks she'll want to date him afterwards. In an attempt to put a stop to his antics, Kohlrabi enchants a single low-level enemy with the ability to jump! Now, this newly-made Wunderling must chase down Carrot Man and put a stop to his rampage!
Tropes:
- 100% Completion: Collecting every flower in the game is mandatory to received the Golden Ending. There's also all the costume pieces and all the cassette tapes, collecting all of which grants you the final costume item. It's a Shout-Out to The Completionist, the Completion Beard, because the game was written by Jirard's good friend Alex Faciane.
- Added Alliterative Appeal: Every single level has an alliterative name. Right down to the two endings: "Witch's Win" and "Rabi's Ruin".
- And Your Reward Is Clothes: Every level contains a hidden treasure chest that contains a costume piece. You can combine them in all sorts of wacky ways to make a bizarre custom Wunderling. Your reward for getting absolutely everything in the game is the final costume piece: The Completion Beard.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: All of the characters are aware they're in a video game, and frequently make Shout Outs to others, such as one of Princess Pea's diary entries making note of a "Salsaland" that recently dealt with an alien invasion.
- The Cameo: In the Post-End Game Content, Zoe from Alwa's Awakening makes an appearance in the hidden chest room of "Airblast Awakening", summoning a block onto a pressure plate in order to open a gate for the Wunderling.
- Collection Sidequest: Every level has flowers along the main path, and the Wunderling is tasked by Dash the Cow to collect as many of them as possible; collecting all of a world's flowers rewards them with a page from Princess Pea's diary, and in DX, collecting them all unlocks the good ending. In addition, some levels have a chest that contains a cosmetic item, and some require enough chests from other levels to be opened before Dash lets the player reach them.
- Decon-Recon Switch: The game starts as a subversion of classic video game plot tropes: The villain "kidnapping" the princess is just trying to look after her after the death of her parents, while the "hero" is a narcissistic vigilante who's wreaking havoc across the kingdom in an attempt to "rescue" the princess, mostly in the hopes of getting with her afterwards. However, collecting all the flowers and getting all the Princess's diary pages shines new light on the situation: Despite his excessive pride, Carrot Man really was one of Princess Pea's closest friends, and he actually understood and accepted that she didn't reciprocate his feelings, even though he was still coming to terms with it. Kohlrabi, meanwhile, despite putting on a nice facade, has been messing with dark powers to Take Over the World for a long time, and Dash admits she got away with it because Dash herself was too enamored by Kohlrabi to stop helping. Dash even admits that her behavior was 'messed up.' After his good friend went missing, Carrot Man went mad with grief trying to figure out what happened to her, and in the end, he has a Heel Realization, performing a Heroic Sacrifice in the Bad Ending, while, in the Good Ending, he realizes that heroism isn't working out for him and he decides to change his career. Dash even asks the Wunderling not to think too badly of Carrot Man in the end.
- Decoy Protagonist: The very first playable segment of the game is as Carrot Man, who can move left and right at will, as well as jump, as he goes through a simple platforming level to steal Kohlrabi's magic scepter. As soon as he clears the level, Kohlrabi arrives, and restores the underling that Carrot Man used as a Goomba Springboard as the titular Wunderling.
- Downer Ending: The Bad Ending, "Witch's Win," has the Wunderling, Carrot Man, and Dash all die in a giant explosion, while Kohlrabi is free to take over the Vegetable kingdom.
- Evil Chancellor: Before taking over the Vegetable Kingdom, Kohlrabi was the loyal attendant to the royal Pea family.
- Foreshadowing: The goal of stage 4-5, roughly the halfway point of the game, is located right next to a machine that's compacting a line of vegetable people into pure juice, hinting at one of the twists revealed in the "Witch's Win" ending.
- The Foreign Subtitle: The Japanese version is titled "Wonderlingnote DX: 1-1 Mob Strikes Back".
- Guide Dang It!: Done intentionally. The hidden portals that lead to the secret levels in the Playable Epilogue are hidden in very unintuitive locations. In the epilogue, however, you receive maps that show their hidden locations, leaving you to figure out how to access those locations.
- Golden Ending: Getting all the flowers unlocks the "Rabi's Ruin" ending: Dash realizes she can't be complicit in Kohlrabi's plot any more, and convinces the haggard Carrot Man to team up with her and the Wunderling to defeat Kohlrabi. The Wunderling defeats her, and in her last moments, Kohlrabi gives up the crown of the kingdom to Dash. Dash becomes the new queen, Carrot Man decides to retire from heroism to be a plumber, and the Wunderling finally, finally gains the ability to start and stop whenever they please.
- Heel–Face Turn: In DX's "Rabi's Ruin" ending, Dash stops letting fear deter them and confesses to her involvement in Kohlrabi's schemes, and convinces the Wunderling to fight back against its master for the good of the kingdom.
- Helicopter Hair: Carrot Man's leaves function as this, which he utilizes at the end of the first world to try and get away from the Wunderling.
- Hero Antagonist: Carrot Man is the hero of the Vegetable Kingdom, and it's his mission to rescue Princess Pea from danger. And it's your mission to stop him.
- Heroic Sacrifice: In the "Witch's Win" ending, Carrot Man forces himself down the Wunderling's throat in order to cause a chemical reaction that blows the whole castle up. Unfortunately, Kohlrabi survives, and rallies the citizens of the Vegetable Kingdom to puree themselves into more Wunderlings during the funeral.
- Human Resources: Upon reaching the "Witch's Win" end of the game, the Wunderling's origins are revealed to be that they were made out of the pureed remains of denizens of the Cornucopia territory, with Kohlrabi planning to convert the entire Vegetable Kingdom into other Wunderlings.
- Make My Monster Grow: A Perspective Flip version, as for all of the boss fights (except the fight against Kohlrabi in the "Rabi's Ruin" ending), Kohlrabi casts a spell to transform the Wunderling Villain Protagonist into a larger monster for the duration of the battle.
- Meaningful Name: Kohlrabi is named after a type of turnip, while Dash is the fastest cow in the kingdom.
- Missing Secret: The secret exits that lead to the hidden levels in the Playable Epilogue were present in the game before the DX update enabled them. While most of them were too deviously hidden to be found without the DX update's hints, a few of them could be found without the in-game guide, leaving the player to find an obvious secret area with nothing in it. They can still be found prior to the Playable Epilogue in the DX update, but there it's more obvious that they can be accessed later on because there's a grayed-out portal.
- Multiple Endings: The original version of the game only has one ending: "Witch's Win", in which the Wunderling, Carrot Man, and Dash all die, and Kohlrabi uses their funeral as propaganda. The Kohlrabi's Ruin version added a second ending for collecting every flower, "Rabi's Ruin", in which Kohlrabi's revealed to have killed the Princess, and after being defeated by the Wunderling, realizes the error of her ways and passes leadership to the more benevolent Dash.
- Naked People Are Funny: In the "Rabi's Ruin" ending, Dash's closing narration apologizes for not having "something amazingly impressive" for the player, and instead offers a picture of a bare-butt Wunderling in a "Back to Camera" Pose.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The whole reason why Kohlrabi took over the kingdom, as she reveals in "Rabi's Ruin", is because Carrot Man was planning to run away with Princess Pea, and told her that she should ignore chancellor Kohlrabi advising her to stay because of how ugly Kohlrabi is; Kohlrabi overheard this, and became focused on her vanity, sacrificing King and Queen Pea in a ritual to make herself beautiful, then sacrificing Princess Pea to empower a machine that will convert every other vegetable into a plain-looking Wunderling.
- No Name Given: The Wunderling is only ever addressed as the type of minion they are, with Dash the cow asking if they have a name at the end of the "Rabi' Ruin" ending.
- Non-Standard Character Design: Nearly every character looks different from one another. The Wunderling looks like a monstrous pear; Carrot Man looks like a carrot with arms, legs, and a face; Kohlrabi is a green-skinned witch whose true form is a Plant Person; Dash is a cow that can sometimes stand on her hind legs; and Princess Pea is shown in flashbacks to just be a faceless pea with a tiara.
- Offered the Crown: In DX's "Rabi's Ruin" ending, with the royal Pea family executed and Kohlrabi dying after her boss fight, Kohlrabi bequeaths the Vegetable Kingdom crown to Dash the cow.
- Post-End Game Content: After seeing the "Rabi's Ruin" ending in DX, an extra world's worth of Harder Than Hard bonus levels becomes available. However, before accessing them through the level select menu, the portal to each individual level must first be found in one of the previous levels, with the player receiving "maps" that offer clues to each one.
- Strawman News Media: Kohlrabi is the host of her own "Kohlrabi News" show, in which she has Dash the cow film her while she makes statements like that Carrot Man a dangerous vigilante and that Princess Pea is perfectly fine after her parent passed from an unfortunate poison-drinking accident.
- Villain Protagonist: The titular Wunderling is the Vegetable Kingdom equivalent to The Goomba, and it's the player's mission to fight Carrot Man and make him lose all of his lives. However, they can pull a Heel–Face Turn in the DX's "Rabi's Ruin" ending.
- Weaksauce Weakness: In the "Witch's Win" ending, the Wunderling (who has been capable of respawning at checkpoints throughout the game) is revealed to be incredibly weak to vegetables. Eating them, specifically; Carrot Man sacrifices himself by letting the Wunderling eat him, causing an explosive reaction.
- You Have Researched Breathing: The Wunderling becomes hero material because Kohlrabi, through a magic spell, gives them the ordinary ability to jump. In the final cutscene, they finally become free of her magic and gain the ability to walk freely. They're back to constantly moving in the Playable Epilogue, with Dash commenting that "old habits die hard, huh?"
