Wall World Review: Up Or Down?

Coming to us from Alawar, and Alawar Premium Limited, our today’s game is a unique collection of many different elements – rogue-lite, mining sim, indie, tower defense, etc. – combined into a simple and straight-forward, yet exceptionally fun experience that is the vertical world of Wall World… a real tongue twister, I know, right?

Story

The first subject we’ll go over is the story.

It’s hard to cover it all without spoiling anything, but we’ll give it a go.
While you go through the content Wall World has to offer – spoiler alert, it’s a lot of mining – you’re going to explore little bits and pieces of lore, which you can piece together on your own and figure out what the game’s story is.

It is not force-fed like in some games, nor is it crucial to know it to progress or enjoy the game. It’s very light on the lore, which is a plus for some and a minus for others. To each his own.

Overall, the story features a world in which the entire civilization now lives on a wall.

As the title suggests, when playing the game you get to choose if you want to move up, explore the skies, and potentially find the top of the wall, or if you’d rather move down and try to find solid ground, and with it, the bottom of the wall.

You can do both of these, so don’t be scared of choosing what sounds better at first – you can always change your mind and go the other way.

Gameplay

Let’s talk about Wall World’s gameplay.

At first glance, and the second one too, you’ll notice that the game was likely heavily inspired by Dome Keeper, another rogue-lite with similar gameplay, as well as a similar pixel art style. This was the cause of a moderate amount of drama within the community prior to Wall World’s launch, but new games finding inspiration in their predecessors should, by no means, be considered a negative thing.

Let’s hope the developers go for a more unique approach though, so the community eases off on the “copycat” drama.

The way you move up and down the wall is with the assistance of your Robospider friend. The Robospider also acts as the tower part in the tower-defense element of the game, as it’s equipped with weapons of multiple calibers, to defend against varying enemies.

Move it up and down the wall, use it to dig a hole entrance, and then enter the hole to dig further and gather all sorts of resources and materials. Aside from this, the only remaining active gameplay element is the combat, which will be covered in the following section.

Every time your Robospider dies, you’re thrown back into the workshop, where you can spend resources you gathered to purchase upgrades, such as a jetpack, a stronger mining gun, or even Robospider upgrades for more success in clearing mobs and boss fights.

Combat

Last but not least, the combat.

It’s relatively barebones at the beginning, which can be noticed right away. You may not mind this if you’re used to this sort of game, but you also might mind it if you are new to it.

Your Robospider friend has a variety of ammunition that you can choose to utilize, to accommodate for a variety of enemies you will encounter (small mobs coming in groups, larger ones coming in few, and bosses).

While regular mob waves are relatively simple and manageable, boss fights can get overwhelming, and fast! Because of this, you may die very quickly (I did on my first run), but, luckily, death does not mean failure, at least not in rogue-lites. If you die during an encounter, be consoled by the fact that you’ll likely have an easier time with that boss in your next round, after you purchase some upgrades.