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There’s no mystery that Wall World is very similar to Dome Keeper. If you played and enjoyed that, you will most likely enjoy this. However, despite the lower price, this isn’t the “bargain bin Dome Keeper.” Though both games are good in their own respects, considering the depth of this game, it might be more reasonable to say Dome Keeper is the “overpriced Wall World.”
Abbreviated Review: https://youtu.be/Ywtdy-VIMQ0

Wall to Wall Mining Action

Wall World doesn’t waste much time explaining things and sort of just hopes you accept the ridiculous premise of belonging to a civilization that clings to the side of a sheer surface with no concept of what is above or below them. However, the mystery of this odd scenario is part of the allure of the game. You don’t know what you need to do outside of go either up or down on this wall in your mechanical spider creature and dig into the caves you discover to get resources. There’s not even a clear indication as to whether you should be going up or down, and even in doing so, there’s nothing that tells you whether you’re going in the right direction. These mysterious circumstances took something that already had me interested in the compelling (and familiar) gameplay and made it even more interesting.
The bulk of the experience isn’t scratching away at the question of “why are we in this ridiculous situation,” though. Walking up and down the wall is the goal, but the means to achieve that goal lies buried behind weakened rocks that you can zap your way into with your mech’s beam. Then you’ll venture in with your handheld mining beam to crack open rocks collecting numerous resources to help make your way further in your chosen direction. Thankfully, the thing you’ll spend most of your time grinding away at is also quite fulfilling.

Always Right

As you slowly clunk your way up or down your vertical trail and blast your way into as many caves as you can, the game creates a two-part dynamic. The first is you diving in and digging perpetually to the right to zap away rocks and soil to uncover the secrets within. These include a steady flow of a basic currency you get for every destroyed block, various types of resources you can use to upgrade both your mech’s fighting and combat abilities and your mining abilities (for the duration of the run), and special discoveries that give you significant bonuses or new powers and abilities. While the general currency accumulates without your interaction, the resources and abilities are objects that have to be vacuumed up once freed from the earth and taken back to your mech for processing.
Your task isn’t as simple as rending these resources and hauling them around though. The second part of this dynamic is a meter that slowly fills indicating a buildup of strange monster forces preparing to attack from the sky and the wall itself. Regardless of whether you’re traversing the wall or deep in a mine, you’ll be required to defend yourself with what you have on hand. At first, this only includes a very mediocre machine gun that is effective enough against the initial forces, but soon becomes inadequate. To keep yourself alive, you’ll need to upgrade it with those resources you’ve mined and discover new weapons you find buried in caves to get the upper hand. This creates a challenging decision where you invest your resources either in defense – allowing you to better survive attacks or your character’s mining and movement abilities – allowing you to get resources faster and more efficiently.
This back and forth between mining and fighting instills a constant transition between urgency and complacency and you start trying to increase efficiency in mining while simultaneously learning the best ways to dispatch enemies with the least effort and damage. The abilities and powers/tools you discover will make this easier as you progress by giving you things like explosives to carve out large chunks of the underground or automated defenses giving you more flexibility in defending your walker. The roguelike mechanics here make every run just distinct enough to keep it interesting for the potential 15+ hours it takes to get through it.

Shoot Their Eye Out

Much like any modern “roguelike,” as you inevitably fail the procedural core gameplay loop, you get to come back to the main screen and pick out permanent upgrades. Interestingly, these are pretty much exclusively for your wall-walking spider and, at first, give it relatively straightforward things like more speed and health. However, you can also get powers like occasionally rocketing up the wall a short distance or dramatically rappelling down – which are useful when you’re facing off against the recurring giant blob monster boss.
I don’t want to spoil much of the story, even as limited as it is because for me it was a pretty important part of what kept me playing when the game got a little “grindy” toward the end. It does expect you to collect certain special items and being procedural and a bit random, it can be challenging to get them all. (This has been addressed in a recent update) Yet, for me, it seemed like I grabbed them in a fairly timely manner after receiving the task of doing so. My only other complaint is that the mining can get incredibly slow as you make it further along. The diversity of the biomes both above and below ground are visually striking (though somehow a bit macabre looking at times), but usually by the time you see these, even well-upgraded drilling power takes a frustratingly long time to cut through. Meanwhile, the same beam would be been blasting through earlier caves so fast it almost seemed broken. It can be a strange mechanic at times.
With those small caveats though, Wall World joins a very slim collection of games that feel robust and complete with a base price of $5 or less. Most games starting at that price point are more “arcadey” and rely on score chasing or weird challenges to build up the gameplay and value. If you have even a hint of interest in what you see here, with this price, it’s an easy recommendation from me. Especially if you enjoyed Dome Keeper.
If you'd like to see more of my reviews, check out my curator page here: Endyo’s Indies, Abbreviated Reviews[/quote