(Content warnings for gore (because I want you to see what I had to deal with), acephobia and attempted rape.)

Five children meet in a forest, ready to try out a ritual. Iggy leads his friends Genzou, Orlam, Gidget and Bucks to shed their blood to open the gateway to Wonderland, a world where all their wishes can come true…

But that’s not the focus of the story. Fast forward twenty years, and those days of Wonderland are just a fading memory in their miserable adulthoods. Iggy lives an isolated life, only getting together with his friends once a year or so. Genzou has been blind for years and lives a closeted life. Gidget’s also closeted themself, while failing at their pursuits in modeling. Orlam struggles with depression and loneliness. Bucks has a strained relationship with her husband Hunar, unhappy with having a baby. After an awkward get-together barbeque and an argument, Bucks disappears with her baby. In the aftermath, everyone feels the past calling, and Iggy finds himself at the entrance to Wonderland once again…

Our Wonderland is a visual novel by Carrot Patch Games, told through five arcs. The first arc released in 2021 and the final arc released a few weeks ago. I’ve had my eyes on the game for a while, but I wanted to play the game all in one go (though I did play one of Our Wonderland’s side games). It’s primarily a horror game, but it’s absolutely not shy about romance, with each arc showing the possibility of Iggy having a relationship with somebody in the midst of hell shenanigans.

While the first arc is more of an introduction, each proceeding arc is a redo where Iggy reaches out to a different friend beforehand, influencing events and attitudes when he delves back in. Iggy will die over and over, but maybe he’ll find a way through where everyone will live and be happy…

As the player character, Iggy is rather passive, going along with other characters most of the time. He does not make a wish when he enters Wonderland like the others, and when he does, he takes the ultimate path of passivity by wishing he never existed at all. In fact, when he gets power, he uses the power for the sake of maintaining a passive lifestyle. Some people will say it’s bad, but consider – it’s very deliberately a character flaw. His lack of action is addressed to be a problem, and the reason why all the arcs diverge so much from the initial arc is because they’re the results of him actually making the active decision to reach out to somebody before everything goes wrong. Our Wonderland’s about a guy realizing that he has to be more active in the lives of the people he cares about, and in the end, even when he can’t fix everything, he does what he can.

Part of Iggy’s passivity is his asexuality. He’s afraid of getting close to other people because he fears romance and the expectation that he owes a partner sex. He’s also not out about his asexuality because he thinks he’d be viewed negatively. Iggy navigating his asexuality is a big part of him, because regardless of whether or not he chooses to pursue a romantic relationship, he’s expanding his boundaries and becoming more open to his friends. Well. Gidget’s arc is a different story. More on that later.

While Iggy’s the player character, he is always joined by Genzou in Wonderland, regardless of arc. Genzou is a goofy, caring dude that’s still a realist. He’s made the mundane wish of fixing his blindness, but he recognizes that he has to go back to reality after finding Bucks and her baby; it’s not necessarily a bad thing though, as Iggy sees firsthand that he’s able to successfully run a bike shop with his handicap. Genzou’s a good foil to Iggy in that he has everything figured out – except for his love life. Even outside of his route, it’s clear that Genzou has repressed romantic feelings for Iggy, the kind that lets him stick by him in spite of the hell that gets thrown at them, providing Iggy the healthiest relationship in the game if he so wishes. Even without a reciprocated romance, Genzou’s a total bro. Well, really only to Iggy.

The fact that Genzou is not influenced by Wonderland beyond getting rid of his blindness really casts a light on the fact that his flaws really are inherent to him. As a kid and even as an adult, he’s a massive asshole to Orlam, which Iggy becomes critical of when he actually manages to spend some proper one-on-one time with Orlam and sees how badly it’s affected him. Genzou’s arc and Orlam’s arcs being back-to-back really highlights the contrast between how Genzou treats Iggy and Orlam, and I think it’s an interesting dynamic that can be true to life. Just because someone treats you well doesn’t mean they treat everyone the same way, and they can in fact be kind of a dick to someone else you care about. Genzou really is a sweetheart that’s a land of contrasts.

In contrast to Genzou’s humble and sensible wish, Orlam became the Joker. Wanting a taste of power that he never had in reality, he wished himself to become the king – and Wonderland grants him so much power that he goes nuts. With that power, he will absolutely try to kill Genzou any chance he gets. And also eat him, I guess. Dude listened to People Who Can Eat People Are the Luckiest People in the world and took it to heart.

Honestly? Orlam rules. He’s a really flirty bisexual that loves to kill people, and maybe you’d think that’s a stereotype, but listen: if you’re going to be an insane bisexual, you gotta own it, and he really fucking owns the role. He’s just so fun to read because he absolutely revels in his petty violence and inexplicable cannibalism. And honestly, it helps that in his arc he’s actually a pretty caring and considerate partner to Iggy. He’s sad and pathetic, yet he has the soul of an emperor. I love him, I forgive him for having a rat tail. Sorry Genzou, but he can have a little torture as a treat, you’re kinda why he’s like that, anyway.

So speaking of petty violence and cannibalism, most of the horror that the game has to offer comes in the form of vicious gore. From getting ripped apart by tomato monsters in an optional game over to bearing witness to horrible canonical torture, Our Wonderland loves to splash blood everywhere. Some of it is a bit cartoonish, but other times I just had to take a break because it made my skin crawl. You can play a censored mode that lessens the visuals, but it does nothing for the text descriptions of violence, which can be pretty vivid at times. Imagining how it’d be to get different parts of my body electrocuted wasn’t fun. So Our Wonderland sure succeeds in this department.

But there’s one other notable horror aspect to the game: sexual assault. And so that leads me to talking about Gidget, the character that I had really complicated thoughts on and I feel would be divisive with people.

Gidget is a trans masc nonbinary person, but they start the game adhering to social norms for women, due to influences from their mother and Iggy. Their wish in Wonderland ends up reflecting their ideal within that standard: they’re a beautiful woman with a successful modeling career loved by everyone. But besides enforcing a gender identity on themself, they also want to live the idealized cishet relationship, emboldened by what Wonderland’s already given them.

Both Gidget and Iggy are victims of societal norms in that Gidget winds up trying to force him into a relationship. Iggy’s boundaries are often violated when they’re at the forefront, and in their arc, where Iggy willingly leans into a relationship with Gidget, they don’t respect his asexuality. The arc ends with them attempting to correctively rape Iggy after supposedly coming around to accepting him, seeing him as broken and needing to be fixed since he’d be unable to give them the societal ideal of a family. They get killed every time they get close to doing anything, but these scenes are just so uncomfortable that I just needed to take a break after their arc was finished.

In the final arc, the last variant of Gidget that comes to terms with their gender identity also reflects on how they treated Iggy and feel horrible about it. Different versions of Gidget attempted to rape him, but they acknowledge that that shouldn’t excuse them, and they don’t think the influence of Wonderland should exonerate them either. In fact, they’re afraid that if they pursue a romantic relationship with Iggy outside of Wonderland, they could hurt him in the same way. Iggy assures them that Orlam (probably) doesn’t eat people in real life, which is honestly a fair argument. Any relationship that they’d have with Iggy from that point is decided by him, and they won’t pursue further if he doesn’t show an interest.

I do think that the final arc does an alright job to justify the existence of a relationship between Iggy and Gidget. Honestly, I do think they’re pretty cute when boundaries are being respected and Iggy settles into a nice groove with the final Gidget. I really can’t blame anyone that feels uncomfortable with the idea of them in a relationship, though. Everyone in the game does some fucked up things and try to overcome their vices and be better people, but you know, the mundane horror that Gidget provides is something people are more likely to personally experience than Orlam’s Jigsaw shit. Like, yeah, the game absolutely treats it as something bad and the final Gidget is genuinely remorseful for what past variants did, but it’s really hard for me to just move past the multiple attempted rapes by other versions of them.

As for the last member of the group, Bucks, I gotta say that she’s the weakest part. She gets the least amount of screentime in that she only gets greater focus in the first and last acts and only briefly takes up the last portions of the others. Bucks does have an understandable, if completely selfish motive for what she does, but also her relationship with her husband isn’t seriously explored until the last arc, and to be honest, I honestly had a better read of Bucks’ and Hunar’s relationship in the side (?) game Our Fantastic Wonderland than the main game. Specific relationships with anyone outside of Iggy or Hunar? Ehh…? Like, I do actually like how her specific story ends, but when she’s taken with the story as a whole I feel that she’s half-baked.

There are a few characters associated with Wonderland itself, though the most notable ones is Cecil – Gidget’s eternally tired manservant – and Jerry – one of Wonderland’s rabbit guards that became a rebel after Orlam got more Joker-pilled. I think they’re interesting in that despite being people generated by Wonderland, they actually offer some pushback to the wishes of the main cast when they’re at their worst. To me, I kinda read it as an escapism thing: escapism’s not exactly bad in itself, but letting it consume you is unhealthy for you and everyone around you. Genzou took a healthy approach to Wonderland in that he just uses it as an opportunity to look at how the guy he loves shaped up as an adult, while everyone else goes insane chasing their vices.

Also Gidget you had a guy that’s basically Larry Pokemon at your beck and call, a fair amount of people would wanna fuck him. He definitely would have consented, you should have been screwing him instead of forcing yourself on Iggy tbh

Carrot has a rather distinctive art style with huge ears and squiggly mouths that I really like. I think the strongest part of the character design is the expressions that Carrot gives everyone. They can be very emotive, especially when a character is flipping out. Orlam’s unhinged smiles? Incredible. I also like the backgrounds; a lot of them seem to be public domain pictures that are filtered to look like paintings, and I think it’s a good look. Really, it’s a pretty solid looking VN.

Music is… alright. They fit the scenes they’re used in, but they don’t particularly stick out in my head. However! The best bits of the soundtrack is when it throws in songs with vocals, usually saved for big moments. I think those tracks are fun and give the game a campy energy that I really appreciate. I honestly gotta channel that same kind of self-indulgence, tbh.

Overall, I really enjoyed Our Wonderland! It’s a bizarre examination of an aging friend group and the struggles to reconnect and address long buried issues. I think some parts still needed some more cooking and well, I can’t help but be bothered by Gidget even though I think they’re cute, but otherwise, it’s a pretty good harrowing time. Maybe check out Our Cinderella, a nice romance AU that’ll make for a good cooldown. You might need it afterward.