Video Game / Wilds.io

Wilds.io is a 2017 multiplayer Hack and Slash Web Game with Viking-style characters, developed by Polish programmer Rezoner.

It is notable for both its isometric pixel-art graphics, which are of a much higher quality than the typical cel-shaded .io Game graphics, and for its gameplay, which includes a notable variety of melee moves and combos.

It can be played in either the 1v1 Arena mode, 2v2 "Browars", or the "Desert Fort" mode, which is a team deathmatch where the players on each team also need to defend their forts, and have AI-controlled creatures to contend with (or farm for loot).

Also has a Fanon feature-length Machinima, released in 2018.

No relation to Michel Ancel's Neolithic sandbox game.

See also Wanderers.io, another game by Rezoner with a similar visual style.

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Tropes present in Wilds.io:

• All Your Base Are Belong to Us: In the Desert Fort/Winter Survival modes, teams can do this to each other by capturing the titular fort. Doing so requires first blowing up its gates with two bombs (mostly commonly obtained from the Barbarian Sappers) and/or the rarer grenades, and then staying at its center long enough to raise your flag, while dealing with both a couple of AI archers defending it and the other players trying to get it back. It's often ideal to storm the fort with both the bombs and enough wood to patch up the gate as soon as you raise the flag, so that the enemy players will stop streaming inside to recapture.
  • There are also secondary houses that can be captured, though it's a lot less dramatic. You just gain an AI archer shooting at any enemies passing by, but for the other team, dislodging him is simply a matter of unlocking the door (and keys are extremely easy to obtain), then going in. You don't even have to kill him when inside: a kick or a roll will knock him outside and he won't know to get back in, allowing the player(s) to recapture the place unimpeded (assuming no enemy players show up, that is.)
    • Sometimes, you may even get lucky, and position yourself in such a way that all of the archers' shots will hit the flagpole, thus letting you capture the place in peace, upon which he immediately converts to your side (whereas the archers that got knocked out stay on the enemy team until they die and respawn). This is also advantageous because you don't have to knock him outside, where he'll be easier for the enemy players to kill (unless you expend a rare grappling hook to pull him back inside.)
• Annoying Arrows: Averted. Bow used to be the most powerful weapon in the game overall. It has been nerfed and now does less damage per arrow than a blow from an axe or a hammer, but is still equivalent to a sword slash, and stronger than all the other attacks. However, they can be blocked, or even kicked right back, though the same is true for the Ice Staff projectiles.
• Arrows on Fire: The special attack of a bow. It does 0,5 damage more than a normal arrow (which matters given that the starting health is 8, and it doesn't get much higher), travels a lot faster, and is capable of Over Penetration. Its most important feature, however, is not consuming any stamina when fired, and knocking its target down. This makes it into a valuable emergency skill that gives you breathing space when a player with a melee weapon is about to close in.
  • However, it is still an arrow, and so can be countered in the same manner. Raising the shield in time blocks it completely, and sufficiently skilled players can even kick just in time to send it back, turning it against you unless you already moved away by then.
• Artificial Brilliance: The AI enemies, whether the bots of the players who quit the session, or the Orcs and Barbarians present in the Desert Fort/Winter Survival, can often surprise players who expect mere cannon fodder. They all know how to kick, roll, dash and block with shield (if they have one) as well or at times better than a typical player.
  • In particular, Barbarians dash into the players going to melee them, and will throw rocks that stun players if they try to keep their distance: experienced players can exploit this by kicking the rock back, but it is still a real problem for an archer trying to line up a shot, as they can't kick and draw a bowstring at the same time. Barbarian Sappers will often follow up a stun from a rock by getting up close and dropping a bomb, which can easily spell the end of the player right there.
• Artificial Stupidity: However, there are still some AI blind spots. For instance, it doesn't react to arrows or other projectiles passing near it if it hasn't already spotted the player. Sometimes, it's even possible to get a couple shots in on an unsuspecting AI character. If it's a Barbarian, though, it may just be secretly preparing to throw a rock, which you'll only detect at the last moment.
  • The AI archers spawned at the fort and other capturable buildings appear to have a weaker AI than the Orcs or Barbarians. Their behaviour is centered around shooting from behind the walls protecting them, which is reasonable enough. However, if they are ever knocked out of there (difficult for the archers at fort, pretty easy for those inside the house), they'll not know how to get back inside even if the threat has passed, and will just shoot at any nearby target, even if all their shots just get stuck in the walls of the very house protecting them.
    • The fort archers are located on the walls by default. If they get killed inside the fort and respawn on the ground, they'll again not know how to get back up. While they'll normally still shoot without too many problems, they can sometimes end up running outside the gate to shoot a fleeing target, after which their life expectancy is measured in seconds. Players that are on their side will often have to deploy the rare grappling hooks to drag them to their best spots on the walls.
• Blocking Stops All Damage: Your shield will block all damage from melee attacks and from arrows or ice staff projectiles, including the special attacks, as long as it is facing in the right direction. However, a block can only be kept up for a few seconds. Moreover, someone blocking is still vulnerable to someone simply rolling into them, dealing a point of damage (when the default HP is 8 and the maximum is around 10) and knocking them down. It also offers no protection against the explosive attacks, or from the axe-wielders' Shockwave Stomp, since it travels along the ground.
• Body Armor as Hit Points: Picking up body armor gives you 2 Armor points, that are subtracted from the damage taken.
• Bottomless Pits: Present in some places, but can be jumped over.
• Carry a Big Stick: Downplayed with the regular Barbarians, whose clubs are only big relative to their own size, and are pretty small otherwise. Played very straight with the enormous club of the Barbarian Giant, however.
• Crosshair Aware: Whenever an explosive is dropped by someone, the area where it'll blow up is immediately highlighted. Dashing or rolling is fast enough to escape that area; simple movement is not.
• Crate Expectations: Crates are present in the Desert Fort/Winter Survival modes, and are easily broken in order to find consumables.
• Die, Chair, Die!: Items like crates can be broken to find useful items like coins, health orbs or stamina orbs.
• Doppelgänger Attack: The Mirage Potion creates a temporary clone of yourself, which moves and attacks in sync with you. Drinking multiple potions creates multiple clones. While they look identical to their creator, there are still two ways of telling them apart: either by looking at their healthbar (clones are always created at full health, which is often not the case for their creators), or by trying to knock them down. Knocking down the real player will simultaneously knock down the clone(s) as well.
• Dual Wielding: Players can only do this with the Claws weapon, which deals the lowest damage per hit, and has the lowest range, but is also by far the fastest-hitting weapon.
  • Orc Berserkers dual-wield two small axes. They are based on the removed Berserker loadout from the game's early days, which did the same. However, they have a chance of dropping those two axes upon death, which the players can pick up and then fight with.
  • They can also throw one of those axes and still attack with the other one. Sadly, players who picked their weapons up don't get the same luxury.
• Emote Command: Pressing T produces a wheel of words, from "attack" and "defend", to "ugh", "ok" and "bye". Picking one will result in your character saying it out loud for all the nearby players to hear, but won't show up in the chat, thus letting the players on the same team do basic communication without the risk of the rival team learning it immediately.
• Escape Battle Technique: Spear users can use Spear Vault in such a manner.
• Friendly Fireproof: Played straight with all of the attacks. And like in nearly every other .io Game, the explosives will damage the person who set them off to discourage careless use, but will not affect those on their team, to avoid punishing them for allies' mistakes.
• Gender Is No Object: A choice between a male and a female character only alters your looks and the yell your character lets out while charging. If you play without an account, it'll also alter whether the name will be automatically chosen out of a male or a female roster.
• Giant Mook: The Barbarian Giant in the Desert Fort mode. He is large enough to be immune to knockdown from the players rolling into him, but is slow enough to be kited by archers/ice staff wielders easily, especially since he can be knocked down by the special shot of the archer, or frozen by the staff's special.
• Gold-Colored Superiority: Orc Leaders in the Desert Fort mode carry golden axes, and drop those upon death. Those are obviously the most powerful weapon in the game, dealing 2,5 damage of a normal axe with no additional downsides.
• Ground Pound: The special attack for the Hammer is to jump forward, and then slam it straight into the ground.
• Healing Potion: Present, but are hard to find. Players are more likely to heal through the healing orbs that generally drop from the defeated enemies instead.
• Heavily Armored Mook: The hammer-wielding Orc Tanks wear heavy armor. They also always drop it upon death, and so are one of the most reliable ways of obtaining it.
• Heroes Prefer Swords: Swords are indeed one of the most popular weapons, due to both their fast attack speed, and hard-to-dodge Spin Attack special.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: New players often underestimate just how quickly does a bomb blow up after being placed down, and fail to get out of the blast range in time. Even the more experienced players can fall prey to this if they get stunned by a rock, or frozen by the ice staff's special move, right after dropping their bomb.
  • Both arrows and the ice staff projectiles can either be blocked with a shield, or kicked right back. The latter is riskier, but has a chance of pulling off the latter for the unfortunate enemy shooter.
• Interchangeable Antimatter Keys: Orcs drop these, and they'll unlock any of the locked doors around the map exactly once, before disappearing.
• I Shall Taunt You: Some players have gotten into the habit of throwing logs at the enemy players before the fight. This does no damage, and is simply meant to indicate the opponent's disrespect for you. Either that, or they failed to obtain a throwable that actually matters, like a knife, a grenade or a hookshot, but did pick up wood, which is practically inescapable.
• Large and in Charge: Orc Leaders in Desert Fort mode are larger than any normal Orc.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Shields fully protect you from the regular attacks, projectiles and kicks, and the melee attacker will be stunned as a result. However, it'll not save you from explosives, axe's Shockwave Stomp, or if the enemy rolls straight into you.
• Magic Staff: The Ice Staff, which anyone can use to fire icy projectiles. These deal the least damage out of all weapon attacks individually (1, equivalent to a kick or a roll), but the overall fire rate is so high that it's easy to overwhelm less-experienced players with these. It gets even easier if you manage to hit with a special attack first, which deals no damage, will freeze the enemy in place and leave them helpless against the ensuing barrage. Nevertheless, the projectiles are individually weak and don't travel very quickly, so they be dodged, blocked or even right back at the caster.
• Mirror Match: This can happen if the player quits the game only to rejoin it immediately, and be spawned on a different team. The characters of the players who quit the game do not disappear, but are instead taken over by a bot, and so you can potentially fight a copy, or even multiple copies of yourself in this manner.
• No Plot? No Problem!: Outside of the wild guessing encouraged for the dark cave background location, there hasn't been a hint of a wider story.
• Over Penetration: The Archer's special attack can damage and knock down multiple enemies in its path.
• Pinball Projectile: Arrows and even ice staff projectiles can be kicked right back. It is thus advised for those players to move to the side immediately after firing, at least when dealing with experienced opponents.
• Procedural Generation: The Desert Fort/Winter Survival map always contains the same elements, but they get reshuffled when the server reloads every day. The only constants are that the Brown spawn house will be in the top-left corner, grey one will be in the bottom-right, and the fort will be in the middle. Everything else is subject to a change in position.
• Quicksand Sucks: A removed 1v1 Arena map had a quicksand pit that functioned in this manner.
• Regenerating Health: Played with; in the Desert Fort mode, the health regenerates...but only if the wounded player is standing next to a campfire (or a stove, when indoors), which must be fuelled with logs in order to keep burning.
  • Yeti boss creature has regenerating health by default.
• Shield-Bearing Mook: Every melee-focused player carries a shield by default, so it's only fair that the Orc Warriors, Tanks and Orc Leader in the Desert Mode do the same. Same tactics apply in both cases. (Except for Orc Leader, since you can't roll into him to break his block.)
• Shockwave Stomp: The special attack of an axe, which lets out a shockwave straight ahead of your character, and damages the enemy players even if they are shielding themselves.
• Sinister Scythe: Present, but only available on certain maps.
• Spin Attack: Sword's special move.
• Spikes of Doom: Occasionally present on the arena maps, and are insta-kill if triggered.
• Sprint Meter: One is present, and used for both movement and attacks. However, it quite large, and so is easy to ignore at first. It usually only matters for archers and ice staff wielders, who may easily run out of stamina while using their weapon if they are not careful.
• Throwing Your Sword Always Works: Any melee weapon can be thrown. You do get to inflict a whole 3 points of damage if it hits (which is nearly half of a player's health): the downside is being reduced to your fists for the 15 seconds before it regenerates.
  • Bows and Ice Staffs can be thrown as well, though this is very rarely worth it, and usually happens by accident.
• Unnecessary Combat Roll: Here, it is a crucial part of the combat system. New players will often find it easier to damage others through rolling into them then through the conventional melee, where it is easy to get blocked or parried.
  • Archers can make really good use of it by first shooting at an approaching enemy a couple of times (potentially firing their special as well), then, if they still get close, rolling into them before they can attack. This will knock down your pursuer and get you on the other side of them, and you'll get to both increase the gap between and line up the next shot by the time they finally get up.
    • Of course, experienced players can counter others rolling into them through kicking at the right time.
• You Get Knocked Down, You Get Back Up Again: Players and NPCs that are knocked down are subject to Mercy Invincibility. Moreover, they'll automatically swing their weapon in an arc as they get back up if there's any enemy nearby, which deals 0,5 damage to them and knocks them down instead.
• You Will Not Evade Me: There's a comparatively rare grappling hook item, which is usually used by the melee players to pull archers and staff wielders towards them, along with any wounded and escaping players.
  • However, it can also be used to pull allies to safety (especially if the wielder is at their team's fort), in which case it does no damage. If the AI archers got thrown out of the fort/safe houses for whatever reason, this is basically the only way to get them behind the safety of the walls again.

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