While playing Wake, the flow of gameplay will typically revolve around the following loop:
Start out at the hub where you can
Talk to NPC’s in order to get hints or tips and progress quests.
Purchase permanent equipment upgrades
Sell the supplies from your last excursion
Purchase items to help on your next excursion
Access storage to take items with you on your next excursion
Explore the hub to discover hidden areas and rare items
Once you’re good to go
The player can travel the map looking for supplies, intel, friends, enemies, or bosses to defeat.
As the player explores they will need to re-evaluate their inventory items frequently as they find more valuable loot to replace existing items with
When the player’s inventory is full or is at risk of dying
The player can instantly teleport home at any time at no resource cost
There are no warp points in the game so the player is giving up their progress to do this
By teleporting the player is able to turn in or sell everything they’ve collected
If the player dies
All of the player’s items in their inventory and equipment slots as well as held currency drop on the ground
The dropped items can be retrieved if the player reaches the point they died and collects them
If the player dies while trying to reach their dropped items, those items will disappear forever
Repeat
Game Progression
Game progression is made in two ways:
Collecting all the intel for an area
Defeating an area’s boss
By doing either of these things, the player earns a point towards their progress. If the player collects a certain number of these points, the story will progress and world shifting events that permanently change the map may happen. Certain bosses or collections of intel may also progress the game independent of collected points.
The player is free to explore 6 of the 12 areas at the start of the game and may tackle them in any order they choose. Going after the areas further out at the start will be very difficult for a new player but can provide an added challenge for someone on a repeat play-through.
Inventory Management and Planning
Initially there are two main directions the player can head in that fork off more and more. Each area is made much easier with a different type of specific item in hand. Therefore the player should have a destination in mind prior and plan accordingly while purchasing items or accessing their storage.
The player only has 9 inventory slots to start with so everything they take with them should have a purpose. Most supplies can stack in one inventory slot but other items like food can not. This makes the player decide whether to play it safe and use more inventory slots for food or be able to carry more supplies by leaving slots empty.
