The World Next Door is a wonderful delight of a narrative action puzzle game.
What They Say:
A unique fusion of lightning-fast puzzle battles and alluring hand-drawn aesthetics, The World Next Door delivers a truly unique gaming experience. Explore the world as Jun, a teenager with newfound magical powers, battles fiends and forges friendships with mystical creatures on her quest to return home to Earth. Experience the world of Emrys through narrative-driven storytelling and branching dialogue where your choices can impact change.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Puzzle games often are a niche within gaming that for many people gets fulfilled in spurts. Furthermore, these games frequently focus on the gameplay while leaving a good story at the door. Rose City Games’ The World Next Door manages to leverage both and make it good. The World Next Door is able to deliver a good story with great gameplay that overall will make people want to play to the end.
The World Next Door starts with Jun in Emrys after winning a lottery to visit the other world from Earth. She gets to meet with her e-pal Liza from Emrys and see the world of Emrys for herself. Jun enjoys her time at Emrys…except for when the portal back to Earth closes, and she’s still in Emrys. Now stuck, Jun needs to find her way out of Emrys fast, or else she may not live long enough to see her home again.
The best way to describe The World Next Door is an action-match 3 puzzle game. Players will need to match at least three runes to activate a spell to hurt enemies. Some spells will do long distance shots while others will be in close range. The depth comes in powering spells. The more runes you match up, the more powerful the spell. You can also activate runes in specific sequences to power the spell from one attack to another. Finally, there are assist runes that allow players to summon Jun’s friends to help in battle.
It seems simple but plays out more complicated. As you’re summoning, you’re moving around trying to dodge and keep track of runes linked for summoning. You’re going against monsters that run just as fast roaming around and have abilities that make it harder to summon. It makes for desperate times and with the leveling of the monsters sometimes a more difficult play for those who are not as adept to the game.
While not combating monsters, you will go around town, completing quests, talking to people and learning more about the world of Emrys itself. While playing you’ll encounter a string of choices for Jun. Some of these choices affect how you play while others change the narrative. The narrative decisions make for interesting dialogue, clearly getting the feelings of Jun across for various aspects and making the game enjoyable, though not affecting too much of the entire story narrative.
These mechanisms work wonders. Rather than feeling bloated with a lot of things to do and not enough time, The World Next Door gives enough leeway for you to play how you want while directing you towards a path. There feels no pressure to complete side stories, with them linking up near perfectly for each part of the main story. It does, however, make for a better experience. If you want to play more aggressively and skilled to match the puzzles, you can go ahead and do so. If you want to enjoy the story, you can switch assist mode and relax while taking on monsters. Who you favor for each part of the story narrative can add to the overall lure of the game with the game’s dialogue mechanics, making who you talk to important. The story makes you vested to take part in said narratives and gives a sense of realism.
There are minor quibbles. The story towards the end takes some narrative and gameplay leeway that will make people feel a bit upset. Many players would like to have something more conclusive gameplay wise to tie up the narrative. The bosses feel appropriately leveled, but it’s a rough entry for the beginning monsters when trying to combat them and get used to the gaming mechanics. A few bugs exist in the review copy we used, which may not be frustrating but can be a bit upsetting to players when enjoying the game.
In Summary:
To be honest, I found it hard to stop playing The World Next Door. Its fast gameplay with simple enough mechanics makes the game a delight to play. It is unforgiving, but the thrill of getting it right makes for a good experience. The story is enjoyable to experience sans the last part which could be tuned better. It doesn’t overstay its welcome and makes it easy for people to enjoy without having to put a long commitment for the game. It’s fun seeing what behind The World Next Door.
Grade: A-
Platform: Nintendo Switch (reviewed), Windows PC, Mac OS
