Blue Wednesday Review: Blue and Brilliant (Switch)

What caught my attention with Blue Wednesday was its premise. It is essentially a narrative game with musical rhythm gameplay and some other mini-games thrown in. Sounds simple, but it works beautifully. The game isn’t that long, but it doesn’t need to be. What’s packaged inside this 3-hour sit-through is a compelling story with realistic characters set against a stunning soundtrack and striking graphics.

When I first saw Blue Wednesday, it reminded me of a similar game I reviewed and really enjoyed playing: A Musical Story. Blue Wednesday is also essentially a musical story, and a great one at that. If you’ve never heard of Blue Wednesday or you have and haven’t yet decided whether to get it, this review explains why you should.

Blue Wednesday is available on PC, PlayStation 4 | 5, Xbox One | Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, and Android for $14.99.

Story – Feeling Blue

Blue Wednesday has a big focus on the story. You play songs on the piano and play mini-games, but essentially, it’s all about the story. For me, the story was the big driving point of the game, what made me want to keep going.

Morris and Co

In Blue Wednesday, you assume the role of Morris, an aspiring jazz musician who is especially proficient with the piano. Unfortunately, so far he hasn’t experienced great success with his music. In the meantime, in order to pay his rent and bills and other expenses, Morris has had to get a job at a grocery store, working the cashier and stocking items. At this point in his life, he’s very melancholy. Then things get worse as he is let go from his job due to being late and lazy. Things seem bleak for Morris… and then he sees a poster advertising for a new jazz musician at a club. His decision to apply may put him back on track for becoming a successful musician, and make his life seem less blue.

This is all set in the city of Evans, which is home to several characters that you can meet and get to know, and even help them out with their own lives. I enjoyed checking in on them every time Morris headed out to work. They were interesting to talk to. For example, there was a guy running a bakery who was interested in vlogging, and another friend of Morris’s who just hung around and didn’t do much. I was intrigued to see how their lives developed, not just Morris’s. I don’t think I can remember playing a game where I felt so invested in NPCs.

The Pessimistic Musician

What I found quite striking about Blue Wednesday‘s story was how self-aware and self-depreciating it was. Not the game itself, but the characters in the story. Morris’s lack of success naturally made him more pessimistic and almost depressed. There are even a few notable moments where it focuses in on Morris, like you were delving deeper into his mind, entering a space filled with anxiety, dread, and even depression. It was quite powerful. It wasn’t just him, but also some of the other characters.

There’s nothing serious dark discussed in this game, but I like that for once it’s not all roses and sunshine. People’s thoughts and feelings are straight-up and honest, especially Morris. Even though his monologues weren’t always cheery, it was strangely refreshing, and even made you feel self-reflective as the player.

There are many people you can interact with around the city.

Gameplay – Playing the Blues

The story is more-or-less the central focus of Blue Wednesday, but it’s not strictly a point-and-click narrative game. It does contain other gameplay too other than just speaking with characters and moving around Evans city.

Jamming on the Piano Keys

One key feature of Blue Wednesday, this being a musical game, is playing the piano, Morris’s signature instrument. As you might imagine, like other rhythm games, you have to play the correct notes at the right time. You only have four notes to look out for playing. In the case of the Switch version, you play the left button, up button, X button, and A button. This makes it a little easier for you to hit the keys without worrying about too many different notes and the buttons for them being too far apart. You can just concentrate on the four and watch the order and timing.

Generally, playing the tunes in Blue Wednesday is easy, but the songs themselves can get tricky. You might initially be lulled into a false sense of security, thinking the tune is easy as it starts off that way, and then all of a sudden, you’re flooded with all different tunes and your eyes and fingers are flying everywhere trying to keep up. If you hit too many bad notes, the song may end early. Also, if you’re playing at the jazz club and hit some bum notes, it might get commented on.

Is Not Perfect Really a Bad Thing?

However, I don’t see not playing perfectly as necessarily a bad thing in Blue Wednesday. It’s more lenient with mistakes, but it can have an effect on the narrative. I have to admit, I wasn’t always perfect on the notes, but I didn’t actually get frustrated by this. I actually found it weirdly funny whenever I messed up. You can always retry the songs on Morris’s piano anyway if you want another go.

Although the tunes could be quite tricky in Blue Wednesday, I enjoyed this part of the game. I didn’t dread coming up to a critical performance at the club. I just had fun with it, and that’s what a game is meant to be.

The tunes can be tricky, but they’re still fun to play.

Other Mini-Games

Playing the piano isn’t the only activity in Blue Wednesday, which I appreciated. Depending on how you play and who you interact with, other mini-games can crop up. For example, you can help the baker adjust his camera settings to get it properly into focus. There are also a few sliding puzzles when you have to complete a picture, which I enjoyed.

I admit that I only found out about some of these other games after finishing my playthrough. I think I must have left out an entire chunk of exploring the city and lost some gameplay and storytelling opportunities, which is my bad. Still, I enjoyed what I did play, and it mixed up the game a little more. In my next playthrough, I’ll look out for these things I missed.

One mini-game includes getting a camera into focus.

Graphics & Audio – Jazzy and Snazzy

The audio, more specifically the music, is the clear focus of this section, but I’ll start with the graphics first before I get to that.

Gorgeous Picture-Book Style

I liked the art style that Blue Wednesday was presented in. It’s very stylistic and attractive to look at. It’s almost like reading a children’s picture book… except this isn’t a game for children (it does contain some swearing, for example).

Also, the game itself was presented well. Even though the songs were difficult to play, it was at least easy enough to follow the notes that streamed down from the top of the screen. I think my only criticisms comes from how the dialogue is done. The story and characters are excellent, but the UI for the dialogue could have been improved on in two ways. For one, it should have noted the name of the character you were speaking to. All the characters in appearance are distinctive from one another, but I sometimes forgot their names. The second thing is that there could have been that little indicator telling you when to click onto the next line of dialogue. That was also absent. But to be honest, these are just little niggles and just a way for the game to be that little bit better.

The city looks amazing, especially at night where the jazz club is located.

A Heart-Hitting Soundtrack

Now I’ll get onto the soundtrack for Blue Wednesday, which I think is just outstanding. I’ll admit that I’m not a massive follower of jazz, but I do have an admiration for it. Whenever I think of jazz, I think of cities at night… and the Disney Pixar movie Soul, which actually did inspire Blue Wednesday. Every song that is played in this game is just fabulous, whether it’s a background song or one of the songs you play as Morris on the piano. For a musical game, Blue Wednesday certainly hit all the right notes when it came to the music.

Blue Wednesday was reviewed on the Nintendo Switch with a game key provided by Forever Entertainment S.A.