Where the Wild Things Are (video game) levels allow Max to traverse background and foreground layers of the stage. "Where the Wild Things Are" received "mixed" reviews on all platforms according to the review aggregation website Metacritic. While acknowledging its graphics and other elements as commendable, the majority of critics noted the game's lack of depth as a major pitfall. Seth Schiesel of "The New York Times" considered the Wii version "more than a little disappointing." He also noted that while it's "not a sloppy or slipshod game," "The combat in "Wild Things" could charitably be described as minimalist in that all you ever have to do,
Where the Wild Things Are be that of a child who, after a tantrum, is punished in his room and decides to escape to the place that gives the book its title, the "land of wild horses". Shortly before starting the illustrations, Sendak realized he did not know how to draw horses and, at the suggestion of his editor, changed the wild horses to the more ambiguous "Wild Things", a term inspired by the Yiddish expression "vilde chaya" ("wild animals"), used to indicate boisterous children. He replaced the horses with caricatures of his aunts and uncles, caricatures that he had originally drawn in his youth