14 DAY TRIAL // 
Digging through rock and hovering up the precious materials that veins give up is fun but a new creature attack is coming. So I activate my boost and move towards the mine’s exit as quickly as possible, without forgetting to still blast some rocks on the way there. I jump into the spider mech and get ready for a fight.
I have a mortar that seeds some explosive traps to protect me from incoming opponents that walk on the vertical surface. A drone is also hovering around, ready to strike those who come too close. This means I can focus my machine gun fire on the many incoming flying Zerg-like creatures, paying special attention to the big ones that deal more damage.
Even after some upgrades, the weapon moves pretty slowly. So I try to clear out one quadrant of space at a time while taking hits from some of the creatures. A few ranged opponents survived the mortar and are now peppering the spider with fire. I kill them last. I have enough health left that I’m pretty sure that I will get to fight the boss. The problem is I am not quite sure how to hurt it. Maybe there’s a mine out there that points to a solution.
Wall World is developed and published by Alawar Premium. I played using Steam on the PC. The game mixes mining and mech-based battles in a world where everything is vertically oriented. There are also rogue-lite elements.
The narrative is relatively limited and kind of hard to engage with. Humanity, or what’s left of it, clings to a vertical wall, existing in a precarious state. Players become a mix of miner and mech-pilot, ready to explore this strange setting. Some of the mining spaces hold secrets, with suggestions that there’s something more to find out there and with small stories from other adventurers that met an unfortunate end.
The game’s story might be a little murky but its mechanics are clearly split into two elements: mining and combat. First, the player’s avatar will don an exo-suit to explore and exploit mines. He has a combination of drill and vacuum that can break down the various terrain materials and suck in the precious minerals they hold.
Each biome has different resources and many of the mines also contain surprises, like upgrades or entirely new pieces of equipment to work with. And, in addition to the minerals, breaking down blocks of terrain generates its own separate resource that will come into play once the player loses a run. Resources can be used to improve the drill and the suit, making the process faster.
The rarest will also open up repair abilities for the mech. There are a lot of things for gamers to invest in and there are never enough resources to go around, especially when a special piece of tech is salvaged from the mines.
At first, that will happen quickly because the spider’s machine gun swivels and fires slowly, unable to keep up with the waves of chittering enemies. Use some minerals to upgrade it and the situation improves. Get a drone or a mortar and it becomes relatively easy to deal with the waves. But a nasty boss is the big surprise for anyone who manages to survive the entire 20-minute mining session.
When the spider mech is destroyed, a capsule saves the player. The re-start screen is also a shop for the spider mech, featuring a range of improvements that are purchased with the separate resource obtained from breaking up blocks in the mines. Players can pick up more movement options, a rocket launcher, and extra armor. A second screen collects items that require separate blueprints. That’s Wall World’s rogue-lite element.
Gamers will be able to unlock turrets to hold off opponents and even automatic harvesters. But it takes time and dedicated exploration to get to them and plenty of grinding is needed to secure even the normal improvements. I initially focused on making sure that I can survive for the full 20 minutes but other approaches are possible.
Wall World’s mining is pretty boring on its own, even after a couple of suit upgrades. It’s exhilarating to break into a big cavern and discover something unusual, but that’s a rare occurrence. The mines are all procedurally generated for each run. Combat helps with variety but cannot keep the excitement level up on its own. The slow rotation speed of the machine gun means that the first mineral upgrade investments tend to be the same for each run.
The worst thing about the structure is that all weapon and exo-suit mineral-powered improvements are lost when a run is done. The development team should really give players a way to lock them in, giving players a way to progress other than the big spider mech shop options.
Wall World uses the pixel-driven art style that so many indies embrace. It’s well executed, with some nice and chunky details for the robot and some of the mine discoveries. I also like the enemy design, although the game zooms out so far during combat that it’s sometimes hard to see them. The problem is that the repetition of the gameplay loop makes even the good visual touches become part of the background.
The sound design is less immersive and pretty repetitive. The soundtrack struggles to remain engaging, and the ratatat of the machine guns soon becomes too familiar, as does the tapping sound generated by enemy hits on the mechanized spider.
The Good
- Good mix of ideas
- Spider-based combat
- Universe design
The Bad
- Mining is boring
- New weapons and abilities lost on death
- Grinding focus
Conclusion
The narrative has an interesting premise but it’s too slow to build on it. The entire experience works best in short sessions, one or two runs at a time, to limit the impact of its repetitive elements. Wall World’s core is good and it would benefit from some tweaked values and expanded variety.
A review key was provided by the publisher
