Video Game / The Wolf and the Waves

Survive, collect plants, and shapeshift

The Wolf and the Waves is an in-browser freeware game, made in Clickteam Fusion 2.5 and published on itch.io. A penitent werewolf travels to a remote island seeking the cure to his lycanthropy. Gameplay consists of shapeshifting between three different forms (human, wolf, and ghost) to avoid/fight enemies, collect plants, and craft the cure.

Game is playable here.

This game provides examples of:

• All Deserts Have Cacti: The signature plant in the desert area. One of them is red, and an ingredient for the cure.
• Ambidextrous Sprite: All sprites in the game are mirrored, including the rips and tears in the zombie clothing.
• And Then John Was a Zombie: If you run out of health, you turn into another mindlessly-shuffling zombie.
• Animorphism: The player can turn into a wolf and eventually a bird at will.
• Astral Projection: How ghost mode works. You may roam the island freely as a spirit, but your body remains behind, just standing there. If your health starts going down, get back there fast!
• Bedsheet Ghost: What your ghost mode looks like.
• Bottomless Magazines: Your human form can throw infinite rocks, except during the tutorial.
• Boulder Bludgeon: When in human form, your only attack is throwing rocks.
• Cast from Calories: Eating blue or gold mushrooms will fill your Curse meter.
• Dark Is Evil: Whenever you shapeshift, there's a puff of white smoke. If you die and transform into a zombie, the puff of smoke is black.
• Dramatic Ammo Depletion: The player runs out of rocks while still on the raft, forcing you to switch to wolf form to kill the last zombie.
• Easter Egg: Hitting the lilypad on the main menu allows you to spawn a golden mushroom somewhere on the island. Eating the mushroom will fully restore your health and Curse meters.
• Fantastic Flora: The three ingredients to the cure strongly stand out from the rest of the plantlife on the island.
• Hyperactive Metabolism: Eating rabbits (in wolf or human form) or mushrooms (in human form only) restore health.
• Ghostly Wail: The sound effect that plays when you enter ghost form.
• Gold-Colored Superiority: The aforementioned golden mushroom is the most powerful healing item on the island.
• Gold Makes Everything Shiny: The golden mushroom has a visible glimmer not present on any other mushroom.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: The player character is seeking a cure for his lycanthropy.
• Lily-Pad Platform: During the tutorial, a zombie (and later bunny) reaches the player's raft by way of a lilypad.
• Mana Meter: How the Curse meter behaves in gameplay, since you need to fill it in order to shapeshift.
• Mana Potion: Blue or golden mushrooms fill your Curse meter.
• Mushroom Samba: Blue mushrooms are explicitly stated to be hallucinogenic. Eating one allows you to project your spirit out of your body to look around the island.
• New Work, Recycled Graphics: The zombie sprite is borrowed from Gamer 2, another game made by the same author.
• Night of the Living Mooks: The island is swarming with zombies.
• Our Werewolves Are Different: Your shapeshifting has nothing to do with the moon, instead you just need to fill your Curse meter. Also, this werewolf has control over their wolf form and can also become a ghost.
• Patchwork Map: The island is composed of a grasslands, forest, and desert all right next to each other.
• Playable Menu: The main menu takes place on the player character's raft before he reaches the island, though all you can do is walk around and throw rocks into the sea.
• Procedural Generation: The spawn locations of enemies, bunnies, mushrooms, and cure ingredients are randomized every playthrough.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: The wolf form has red eyes, appropriate as it's your best combat form.
• Regenerating Mana: Your Curse meter will slowly refill on its own, but its far more efficient to deal damage or eat a blue mushroom.
• Respawning Enemies: Any zombies (or bunnies) you kill will respawn somewhere else on the island.
• Savage Wolves: Your wolf form is your best combat form.
• Shapeshifting Excludes Clothing: Averted, the player character's outfit simply disappears when not in human form.
• Super-Persistent Predator: Any zombie that sees you will not stop chasing you until it dies. They also gain infinite vision, so even if you abuse their pathfinding to trap them behind an obstacle, they may show up later when you've rotated around the island.
• Super-Scream: The wolf's bite attack is visualized as a short-range cone of sonic rings.
• This Was His True Form: Averted, on death you turn into a zombie.
• Three-Strike Combo: When in human form, you need to hit a zombie with three rocks to kill them.
• Towering Flower: The titan stalk and the giant bloom are the same size as the player, and both ingredients for the cure.
• Turning Back Human: Maybe? The good ending isn't exactly clear on whether the protagonist got what they wanted.
• Useless Item: The compass on your HUD, as the camera is top-down and can't even be rotated.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: To a degree. You need to fill your Curse meter by dealing damage first, but then you can shapeshift at will.
• White Bunny: Prevalent on the island, and an easy source of health in human or wolf form.