Blancis a charming game where you follow the journey of a wolf cub and a deer in the hopes of reuniting with their families. The game has a gorgeous black-and-white art style that helps to bring the environments to life as you help the animals cross the various terrains.
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While the game is a nice experience for both one or two players, there are still some areas where it could improve or expand upon its current concept. These changes would take Blanc from a game that you enjoy in a few sittings and move on from, to one that you’re more likely to return to and get more out of.
7More Challenging Puzzles
Throughout Blanc, there are several sections where both the wolf cub and the deer need to work together to make a path either for themselves or the other animals they meet on their journey. Most of these “puzzles” are fairly simple, and if you’re playing with a second person, you won’t feel the strain of having to communicate with them too much.
But as Blanc is designed to be a co-op experience, it would be greatif these puzzle sections were more difficult. This would challenge you to coordinate more with a second person and truly work together, which would also play into the game’s main theme of the wolf cub and the deer learning to help each other and others in need. Even if you were playing alone, this would help to emphasize the game’s message and give you a more engaging experience overall.
6More Animal Interactions
Across Blanc’s chapters, you meet other animals —a family of geese, two goat kids, and your wolf cub and deer siblings. While you help them on their way, you have rather minimal interactions with them. Once you’ve helped them, you don’t typically see them again.
Understandably, the focus is on the friendship between the wolf cub and the deer on their journey, it would have been great there to be more interactions with the other animals you meet, rather than just the cutscenes at the beginning and end of their respective chapters.
5Make Chapter 6 A Sliding Minigame
As well as walking and running, you can slide down the landscape whenever there’s a slope. You spend the entirety of Chapter 6 sliding down the hill, but there’s not much to do other than, well, slide and avoid any obstacles.
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This would havemade a great minigameif there were more difficult obstacles to avoid, checkpoints to go through, points to earn, and a timer to beat. While this might go against Blanc’s slow, easygoing atmosphere, it matches the playful energy of the two animals you play as, and would have made the chapter much more fun overall.
4Better Camera Fluidity
When there are two playable characters but a single screen, there are bound to be some issues with the camera, and, unfortunately, Blanc sometimes runs into this. If one of the animals goes slightly too far ahead, the camera adjusts, often obstructing the angle for the other animal and making it more difficult to continue.
This is particularly bothersome if you’re playing Blanc on your own and need to control both of the animals, or if you’re playing with someone else, and one of your animals gets stuck. You may need to backtrack to get a better look at the area and allow the other animal to progress, but this could all be solved if you had better control of the camera angle yourself.
3Add Collectibles
Blanc is a simple game: nothing much detracts from the wolf cub and the deer trying to make the journey to reunite with their families. However, the game’s beautiful landscapes and art direction make you want to explore and take your time. The problem is, there’s no reward for doing so.
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If there was some kind of collectible for you to gather along the way, this would be the perfect reward for exploring the nooks and crannies you might otherwise walk right past. It could be something natural, like pine cones, to keep with the game’s natural and simple themes. Alternatively, the wolf cub and the deer could each have individual collectibles that they need to collect.
2Better Animal AI
In the latter half of the game, other animals mimic your movements and will help you make the path forward, but this can often be finicky. In both the sections with the goat kids and the wolf cub and deer siblings, it’s common for the animals copying you to get stuck somewhere and not follow you the entirety of the way.
When this happens, you have to backtrack and watch to make sure they copy your movements correctly. This tends to break the flow of the game and means you have to go back to make sure the AI is working correctly. If the animals get stuck on your first try, it can also make you think you’re completing the puzzle section incorrectly, and lead you astray when it comes to completing that section. If this were perfected, these sections would go a lot more smoothly.
1Reconcile With The Goat Kids
Spoiler warning for the end of Chapter 8.
In Chapters 7 and 8, you help a pair of goat kids across the landscape. As you spend two chapters with them, it’s very easy to become attached to the pair and their adorable bleats. At the end of Chapter 8, however,disaster strikes. When you’re traversing across rickety pipes, the pipe breaks, and the black goat kid falls from a significant height.
Luckily, they seem to be fine, but both the goat kids act hostile towards the wolf cub and the deer after this because their guidance led the goat kid to fall. If you try to interact with them again, they bleat angrily, forcing you to move on without them. The goat kids are never seen again after this, and it leaves things feeling a little tainted and sad. It would have been nice for the group to reunite at the end of the game, and for the goat kids to forgive the wolf cub and the deer for the accident.
