The World Next Door (Review)
By Rae
Jun has dreamed of going to Emyrs – a parallel worldinhabited by magical creature. When she wins the opportunity to visit for aday, she’s excited to spend some time with her online friend, Liza, andexperience this new place. Unfortunately, a rebellious trip to a forbiddenshrine botches plans to get Jun back home in time, trapping her. Even worse,humans can’t survive long in Emyrs, effectively sentencing Jun to a quick deathunless they can come up with a plan.
Each day, Jun can text 3 friends for a little insight, andthen she’s off on her own to explore the area. By interacting with differentcharacters, you can unlock fairly easy and fun sidequests, and some extradialogue, but the game doesn’t force you to do these. Still, they’re worth it!For a little extra time wandering around town, you can see a few interestinglittle stories that make your experience in Emyrs even more interesting.
The fighting style in The World Next Door is a surprisinglyfresh twist on match-three mechanics. You and the enemy are on an arena made ofvarious tile types. Three or more of the same type form an attack (or sometimesvarious other moves, such as healing). To help facilitate their win, playerscan swap tiles as necessary. This is mixed with real-time mechanics whereenemies are attacking you and moving across the arena as well. The result isboth familiar and new – it’s easy to get used to, but should feel fresh and funfor most players. As enemy strategies change, you’ll find different strategiesand understand which tiles are best for which approach. On some fights, it canbe a little frustrating and clunky, though it’s worth noting that there’s anoption to nullify all damage.
Honestly, I would have enjoyed a bigger range of difficultylevels, though I did appreciate that there was a quick and easy option when Iwas trying to work on my review – I prefer to play games through normally, buta the end of the day the important thing is to experience as much of the gameas possible. It can be changed at any time – having trouble on one boss but don’twant to play everything on easy? That’s fine!
In my #loveindies write-up, I mentioned an issue oncontroller, where the character frequently lagged while moving. Fortunately itturned out to be an outside issue – once I had a working controller, thegameplay felt smooth and fluid.
If there’s a place where the game falls flat, it’s in thestoryline. Emyrs is beautiful and interesting, and each character has a uniquedesign. Everyone will be able to see themselves in someone. The lore behindEarth and Emyrs is fascinating – even moreso when you start looking intoshrines and discover journals, and grievances, and magic. Soon, you discoverthat Jun’s journey to Emyrs wasn’t a lucky chance. It was orchestrated, as was theincident that caused her to be stuck there.
All of these are great beginnings for a story, but inthe entire playtime of the game, they’re barely fleshed out. The lore of Emyrs isstrangely empty, and Jun’s story ends with quite a whimper. After looking inforums online I discovered that if you complete a sidequest which I missed, youfind out some more information, but even then it’s not much. It’s unfortunate,because this beautifully drawn game with its fascinating premise was somethingI was looking so forward to, but at the end all I felt was a touch of disappointmentand the need to know more.
I’d love to see a follow-up to The World Next Door. It’scertainly a gem in the making. In its current form, however, it feelsunfinished. Still, with all its creativity, beautiful art and music, and greatcharacter design, it definitely has put Rose City Games on my watch list for futurereleases.