Wall World Review – The Vertical Horizon

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: There is something about the Roguelike genre that inspires creative game mechanics and worldbuilding. If you read my Have a Nice Death Review, you know just how much I appreciate this genre and the creativity of the developers within. Wall World managed to reinforce that appreciation very shortly into my playthrough.

Wall World is a 2D Roguelike developed by Alawar Premium. It combines tower defense, resource mining, and the near-endless replayability that the Roguelike genre is known for. The game is deceptively simple in its premise, and through its unique presentation, it manages to offer an experience that is both engaging and relaxing.

Wall World takes place sometime after a major disaster that has rendered the world barren and sideways. Literally, the earth’s crust has been shifted vertically, turning what was once the ground into the Wall.

Human beings live in dangling settlements along the so-called Wall, keeping civilization alive by mining deep into the Wall and extracting rare resources. This is no easy task, as horrible creatures plague the length of the Wall, skittering down its length and flying in from the horizontal sky to prey upon humanity.

To extract resources and stay alive in the process, miners are equipped with a wall-scaling mech known as the Robospider. This massive quadrupedal tank is equipped with a powerful mining laser to breach open passages in the Wall and a rotating machine gun to fight off the waves of horrors that want to crack the shell open and eat its squishy interior. Because of the ravenous attacks of these creatures, known as the Zyrex, the life of a miner is dangerous and usually short-lived — Half of them never return.

In Wall World, you play as one of these miners, setting out on runs with your Robospider to mine the Wall. Gameplay is deceptively simple: Using W or S, you climb up or down the Wall with your Robospider until you find a weak point in the rock. After blasting it open, you disengage from your tank and fly inside the gap, mining resources out of the rock.

Starting off in Wall World can feel a little slow, with not a huge amount or variety of resources to pick up and weak mining tools. However, it picks up once you get the hang of things, so I never felt like the slower pace was really a detriment to the experience.

Collecting these resources earns you cash and the resource itself, and both can be used to upgrade your Robospider to make the run a little easier. Temporary upgrades, like faster gun rotation speed and fire rate, can be purchased right from your mech. Bigger upgrades, like new weapons and tools, must be purchased from the shop after each run, using the resources you gathered from the run.

I always liked coming back to the shop. The blue-haired shopkeeper had a very pleasant energy, with her bubbly animation and bright color scheme. It added a little bit of reprieve from the feeling of isolation that each run in Wall World drowns you in.

The Zyrex are what send you home each run. Increasingly large and aggressive hordes of the beasts will hunt your Robospider as you mine the Wall, with the only warning for an incoming attack being an alarm from your tank itself. Sometimes, you could be incredibly deep in the Wall when these alarms go off, triggering a frantic rush back to your controls to fight off the attack.

These attacks start out simple enough but can whittle you down if you don’t play carefully. This is where the tower defense gameplay of Wall World comes in, as you generally have more firepower and health than your enemies, and have to do your best to keep waves of Zyrex from getting close to the tank.

Later on, more dangerous variations of Zyrex show up, changing up your gameplay and forcing you to rethink your priorities in defending your machine. I personally found large, shield-bearing Zyrex to be the most threatening, as they can completely stop your Robospider from climbing the wall.

Dying on the Wall triggers your escape pod, sending you back home and starting the process all over again.

Wall World’s gameplay is simple, fun, and engaging, gradually increasing the complexity as you get the hang of old mechanics so you don’t feel overwhelmed. That’s not to say that the game is easy or lacks a sense of danger, just that every time my ‘spider exploded, I felt like I knew exactly what I did wrong in hindsight.

The world inside and behind the Wall keeps you engaged between the Zyrex attacks. Behind the Wall, on the vertical horizon, you can look out into huge, desolate landscapes, showing the side-flipped remains of the world that came before, rendered in beautiful pixels.

Deeper in the Wall, you’ll find secret worlds too: Hidden jungles, sprawling caves, and the remains of miners who came before tell you a bit more of the story of the vertical world you’re exploring.

Wall World’s soundtrack makes the scope of these worlds feel so much larger and empty. Droning techno beats and electronic sounds make you feel desolate and alone as you crawl the Wall that stretches endlessly into the infinite.

The vibes of Wall World are immaculate, and not what I expected looking at the Steam page. Each run truly is a lonely little run into the remains of a world not dead, but lost, finding itself once more in the emptiness. This feeling, combined with the relaxing effect of mining that Minecraft proved forever ago, made the whole experience feel really chill and helped me destress at the end of the day.

Wall World was reviewed on the PC. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles in the Game Reviews section of our website! Wall World is available on Steam and GOG.