World Splitter Review (PC)

Three happy animal friends to rescue, one rabbit astronaut to do it with it, one angry sentient spiked ball to avoid. A few ledges, some water, a small number of steps, one bench. And, in the middle of the screen, one dimensional rift splitting the level into two versions. I have to use it to get from left to right, picking up my companions, while ideally taking out the enemy chasing me. It takes me about five minutes to fully understand what I want to do and another ten to actually deliver on my plan. Welcome to the puzzle platformer that is World Splitter.

The title is created by developer NeoBird and is published by Bumble3ee Interactive. It can be played on the Xbox One, the PlayStation 4, and the Nintendo Switch but I engaged with it on the PC via Steam.

The objective is very simple: take the protagonist, a rabbit astronaut, from the left to the right side of the screen. He can easily move across flat surfaces and has a limited jump. But the main tool that will get him to the end of the level is the dimensional rift, which the player controls. Players will use the mechanics associated with it to also collect cute animal friends stranded across the levels, interact with the environment, and avoid or take out enemies.

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World Splitter features six worlds that consist of ten levels. Each of them has two versions (it gets a little more complicated towards the end) and the rift can be dragged across the screen to change the between them. The rift can also be rotated, both normally and anti-clockwise. As players switch between level versions they can move their character to normally inaccessible areas or trap enemies or get close to the right side of the screen. Each of the levels is a cleverly designed puzzle and the developers have set target times and a target number of rift spins as benchmarks.

The game seems intuitive and easy at first. Complexity quickly creeps in and it wasn’t long before I dragged the rift from one side of the level to another to try and get an idea. Some people can naturally think in both versions and see a path to solve each level quickly. For me, it takes time to do the same. And once the plan is in place it takes skill to actually implement it without squishing the main character.

World Splitter has engaging puzzles and good mechanics. I tended to quit the game when I spent more than 10 minutes trying to solve a level, coming back to it when I had a new idea or at the end of the game. This is a perfect game to decompress, use the rift a little, try out some ideas, and abandon it for a while if nothing sticks.

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Cooperative levels are also offered for those who want to invite a friend to discover the mechanics and the challenges the game delivers. It would have been cooler to have all the content offered for multiplayer but it’s a nice bonus to have 10 of them designed from the ground up for it. Expect to see many more deaths than in single-player.

World Splitter knows to focus on the rift concept and the differences between the two sides of the level, somewhat masking the fact that the overall quality of the graphics is limited. The game looks like it could have been released at any point during the past five years.

This is in some ways a good thing, allowing both the developers and gamers to focus on the mechanics. It also represents a weakness because there’s a percentage of gamers who will be disappointed by the very mediocre presentation. Unfortunately, the soundtrack also does nothing to enhance the mechanics, which is a shame for a game that begs for a set of tunes that play on the rift concept and its effects.

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The Good

The Bad

Conclusion