Wall World 2 isn’t as easy to explain as its predecessor. Yes, it is still a roguelike in which you split your time between piloting a robotic spider up and down a giant wall in search of weak spots from which you can mine deep into the cliff face, digging up minerals to spend upgrading your mecha-arachnid’s weapons, enhancing its ability to fight off periodic waves of pustule-covered aliens, until you either kill the biggest pustule-covered alien or die in the attempt. But now it’s become a much more complex game, embellishing both its mining and combat halves and thinning the divide between them.
This is going to take a little explaining, with a lot of changes falling into the plus and minus columns, so here’s an easy improvement to tide you over. You can now name your robospider; mine is called Nigel.
A simple pleasure of Wall World was that it played like a fusion of Missile Command and Manic Miner. When you found a weak spot in the wall, you would dig through procedurally generated cave structures in search of resources to drag back to the surface at the first sign of your proximity alarm. Then, back in the cockpit of your robospider, you would gun down waves of incoming aliens with your machine gun. The two phases were neatly-welded and yet distinct, in part because once the last attacker was dead, you were safe until the next wave began. There were no enemies to be found within the mines.
Not so in Wall World 2. Some utter bastard has told the invading Zyrex they’d do a much better job of killing off the humans if they also infested the mines, ready to pounce on any oblivious digger that comes their way. You will find creatures that roll along the walls, gobbling up any loose minerals you leave on the ground, boil-covered flies that spit poison at you from afar, and fire spouts embedded in walls that will incinerate you if you get caught in their eruptions. While I’ve not yet been killed by any of these creatures, they have eliminated the sense of downtime between attacking waves.
Another change in the mines that thins the barrier between the modes, are portals which teleport you back to your robot spider, offering a shortcut to the cockpit when you hear the proximity alarm. These portals are rare, so you still need to keep a close eye on the wave timer. After all, the shortest route to a quick death is finding yourself far from your gun turret when a wave begins. The Zyrex will shred an undefended robospider, putting an end to your run.
Another joy of the original Wall World was that the real enemy, besides the gelatinous flying aliens that prey upon what’s left of humanity, was your own greed. Often I would die because instead of racing back to my (tragically unrenameable) robospider as soon as the proximity alarm fired, I’d stay just a little while longer in the mines to fill up my backpack with gems. Wall World 2 brings even more ways for your greed to be your undoing.
For one, the minerals you find in-mission, which in the first game were only usable to buy upgrades within your current run, can now also be brought back to your base and spent on permanent upgrades. This adds a new layer of tension to your excursions because you must now choose between spending the minerals in-mission on powerful temporary upgrades, such as making your robospider’s machine gun bullets home in on enemies, or holding onto them to invest in something more permanent back at home. Greedily hoarding minerals to spend in your mechbay on long-term improvements may be wise, but that long view could be the death of you if you remain too weak to survive the current run.
This fresh focus on minerals extends into the new world map. The original Wall World was all one level. You started the game bang in the middle and you could either climb up or down the wall, with your choice leading you to different resources. Stomp down the wall for pearls, up for amethysts. That’s no longer the case in Wall World 2: instead, you choose to travel to different biomes from a world map. Each region has basic resources and one special mineral that can’t be found in any other region. If you have your eyes on the jetboot upgrade that requires emeralds, head to Rusty Belt; need diamonds to strengthen your shield, go to Misty Slope.
Another change-up is that each region is also broken down into separate, repeatable missions. The objectives are simple and can be completed as you go about the business of your run – collecting a certain number of gemstones, rescuing civilians lost in the mines, or dispatching Zyrex nests, for instance. But you need to complete the objective and successfully survive extraction to unlock new gear blueprints and bring all your loot home.
While all of these new systems have the potential to make Wall World 2 a more intricate game than its predecessor, they also highlight a single, inescapable frustration that dogs every run. At the start of a new Wall World run, when your robotic spider is plonked on the side of the eponymous cliff face, you’re armed with a basic laser. Less like a hot knife through butter, it’s more akin to chiselling a brick with a feather. Breaking down each block is a painfully slow business and the first job of any self-respecting wall digger is to find six basic gems so you can upgrade the cutting beam to be slightly less piddling. As you get deeper into the mines, you’ll find the resources to upgrade your beam into something closer to the hot knife ideal. This slow ramping up of power is similar to the original Wall World. However, in the sequel, because of the shift to shorter, mission-based runs, that opening phase where cutting blocks is interminably slow and dull is much more frequent. Runs used to last half an hour or more, so those first sluggish minutes were only a small portion of a round and easily forgotten by the end. With missions now lasting only ten to fifteen minutes, a greater proportion of your time is spent feeling puny. While there are permanent upgrades that increase your miner’s speed and health, there doesn’t appear to be anything that improves the strength of your laser beam.
One new addition that takes a bit of the sting out of this perpetual enweakening is the pub back at your home base. Before a run, you can buy drinks at the bar that will give you a buff for your next excursion. You have a two drink limit – perhaps your miner has a reputation for overdoing it – so you can create a cocktail of temporary improvements, upping your damage, defense, speed, or mineral gain. So far I’ve been downing the drinks that up my carry capacity and increase the chance gem blocks will drop extra stones. Though, as in life, drinking only dulls the pain – it doesn’t solve the problem.
Developer Alawar’s new systems imbue Wall World 2 with active choices that I want to engage with, but I keep being pushed out of enjoying my time by the knowledge that each run will begin as a chore. I’m still only five hours in, so there is a chance that I will discover an upgrade that makes the first minutes of every run less painful. Though, if I don’t, I’m aware that every new hour I play will include a frustration I don’t feel when I play the original.
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Author: 360 Technology Group
