Fail at the first
Keep upgrade your robospider
Keep digging until you found the truth

10/10

Wall World is 2D roguelite where your time is divided between mining for minerals and defending your vehicle parked on the surface above (or to the left). Your ultimate goal is to explore the upper and lower boundaries of the wall while upgrading your vehicle/character using the materials you dig up. As expected from a roguelite, there is a meta-progression system where purchase permanent upgrades between runs.

The mining is fun — upgrading your digging capability to slice through terrain like a hot knife through butter is satisfying — but the combat quickly becomes a chore. There are a variety of weapons available, but most lack the range required to physically reach the boss, whose weak points remain on the other side of the screen. I feel obligated to funnel my resources into either the default machine gun or one other weapon that isn’t guaranteed to drop.

Even if there were more viable weapon choices, upgrading them is a rather linear process and a missed opportunity for variety and customization. For example, the machine gun in one run follows the same upgrade path in the next run, and therefore plays exactly the same each time, against the same enemies. There’s no going outside the box with a machine gun that shoots explosive rounds, homing rounds, freezing rounds, or possibly some fun OP combination of the three. Nope, every run has the same “fire rate+” and “damage+” upgrades. Unfortunately, these complaints extend to all the items I’ve encountered in the first 11 hours or so of playtime — non-viable items unworthy of my resources or boring progression for the odd useful item.

I encountered some sort of bug where I cannot remap the controls. The controls are otherwise snappy and satisfactory.

The story is bare bones, which is acceptable in a roguelite. Graphics are pleasant pixel art. Music/audio is okay.

Overall, since I bought this game at a heavily discounted price, I guess I got my money’s worth. Wall World ultimately didn’t capture my attention as roguelikes/-lites usually do. While my lack of enthusiasm for the combat may boil down to personal taste, the simplistic, linear upgrade system leads to low variation between runs and steers this roguelite into “not recommended” territory.

This game gets better as you play, even if it is pretty difficult at first. There are other rouge-like games that are pretty fun but way more difficult, so I feel that this one is very decently balanced. I am playing on normal currently, and feel that once I master it I could definitely give it a try on hard. Other rouge-like games are insane even on easy mode. That doesn't make them not fun, just not something I can play long-term as the good feelings that come with succeeding and conquering and improving don't come as easily with those games. This one is way more tolerable for far longer, and does not induce rage in me that causes me to want to delete the game in a stand against the tyranny the game has unleashed upon me. So even though I will not delete said games and will visit them again at a later time, Wall World keeps me coming back for more. Really excited about the recent DLC and can't wait to see what it has in store for me.