Wild Hearts' new trailer has cool monocycles and a giant magma monkey
Apes and rats and porcupines, oh my!
If you’re going to go on the hunt for giant monsters then you'll need some serious technology to back you up. Upcoming hunting game Wild Hearts is packing plenty of what devs Omega Force are calling Karakuri, the magical flat-pack wooden kit the game’s warriors use to battle the various beasties in their fantasy take on medieval Japan. You can get a glimpse of some of the Karakuri battles that Wild Hearts contains in the trailer below, including a rather awesome looking monocycle and a furious monkey with a very nasty skin condition.
Who doesn’t want to sit inside a giant wheel and chase down a massive, raging porcupine? Your hunter will utilise a sort of natural energy source to construct their own Karakuri to fight with. This seems to involve a bunch of glowing lights and some swirly DIY version of a Power Rangers morpher mounted on your hunter’s arm. When powered up, that gadget can build a wall out of thin air to, say, smack a giant rat that’s leaping towards you in the face. Every time I see Wild Hearts pull this kind of thing it seems more and more like Monster Hunter meets Looney Tunes.
Ed had a go with Wild Hearts back in October, and came away thinking the Karakuri helped set it apart from Capcom’s Monster Hunter series. “Karakuri weren't essential for the fights I took part in,” he said, “but they were certainly very helpful in conjuring helpful scenarios out of thin air when faced with an enormous marsupial crossed with a cherry blossom tree and an equally enormous lava badger. It was neat being able to take advantage of a stunned monster by immediately hopping off a stack of boxes and delivering a massive plunging attack.“
Wild Hearts bounds onto Steam, Origin and the Epic Games Store on February 16th 2023, and should cost $70 (UK pricing TBC).