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The Idea Is Good, But It Could Be Better.

In light of the sequel announcement, I dug this one out of my ever-piling Steam Library and try it out. Works great with Steam Deck.

Things I Like About Wall World:

Climbing And Mining
Similar to Dome Keeper, except you climb a very steep wall.

If you've played Dome Keeper before, the mechanics here will be familiar to you. Basically, it's two types of gameplay merged together: mobile defense and mining.
You pilot a robot spider climbing a soaring wall. Every few meters you will encounter a little crack in the wall. You can anchor the spider over the crack and blast into it to create a cave. This is where mining begins.
You leave the spider and use the laser drill to excavate the cave, mine the resource for upgrades, and bring them back to the spider. Both the sound and the progress of mining are quite therapeutic. Plus the wonder of unearthing some ancient ruins never gets old.
Additionally, every cave holds an utility item(temporary upgrades for the run) or blueprints(permanent upgrades in base). There are even different turret parts within each biome that you can mount on your spider. These can drastically benefit your work, so you are encouraged to mine deeper.
Every few seconds enemies will swarm towards your spider. You must hurry back and defend it. This is where the mobile defense begins. Unlike the stationary Dome, you can move your spider freely to dodge enemies' attacks while you shoot back with the rotating turrets. Depending on your meta progression, you may even crush the ones on the wall with your spider.
You can open the upgrade menu and temporarily "pause" the game. Here you can see the upgradable path for all of your equipment and the resource requirement. Use this information to manage the time you should spend in each biome. This menu is also the only way you can heal your spider, which means you can safely top up the spider's health in the heat of battle.


Things I Dislike About Wall World:

Roguelite Elements
It's a very superficial attempt at a roguelite.

The problems I have towards Wall World can be boiled down to two: relying too much at meta progression, and lacking a substantial random generation.
Meta progression in roguelite is a mechanic designed to give you a "minor" boost so that you move slightly closer to your inevitable success. Wall World doesn't do that. Instead, your success depends heavily on your meta progression.
Not only do all the upgrades give major performance boosts to you and your spider, some of the direct upgrades straight up feel like they should either be the base kit or be found inside the biome. Unless you play in the most efficient and optimal way, you won't go far without them.
Regarding the random generation, there is very little variation between each run. The only thing randomly generated is the cave system of each biome.
All the biomes and their respective resources are set. If you lack a certain low tier resource at a high level biome, you might have to climb down to lower biome to mine or pray that the next crack can generate a special cave. This can be a huge time waster since the boss attack when the countdown goes to zero.
It also doesn't help that all the special turrets can only be found in specific biomes, and there is a clear best one that outshines all the other. This sort of defeats the purpose of adapting randomness. All the turrets should be spawnable in every biome. Turret found in higher biome would have better stats or be given new property to incentive switching up playstyle.
I also wish the cave would generate something interesting like environmental hazards or even enemies to spice up the "keep mining right until you find something" gameplay.

中文小簡評
→看到要出續作，就趕快把一代從我的積灰塵的遊戲庫挖出來用deck玩玩(X
→玩法類似Dome Keeper，主要是把塔防和挖掘資源做結合，玩法在兩者之間切換。
→駕駛機械蜘蛛不斷的向上爬，利用蜘蛛的雷射鑽開牆上的裂縫好讓你可以進去挖掘蒐集資源，礦物用來升級當前蜘蛛的配備，能量則能用於基地強化蜘蛛本體。
→挖掘的音效回饋做的不錯，那種不斷深入挖寶期待感營造的很棒，每個洞窟末端都藏有一個道具、特殊砲塔或藍圖，因此建議能挖多深就挖多深。
→每過一段時間就會有敵人過來攻擊你的蜘蛛，因此需要好好平衡一下挖掘深度與回程時間。塔防就比較簡單，基本上就是上下移動躲避攻擊，並利用蜘蛛上安裝的砲塔回擊。
→這裡有個很偷吃步的設計：塔防期間是可以開啟升級頁面「暫停」遊戲的，被打到快沒血時可以直接開升級用礦物慢慢回血，順便看哪些東西現在升一升有實質幫助。
→不過遊戲也有幾個缺點。目前遊戲流程太過度依賴額外強化，不像其他roguelite微幅強化，這款強化的體感非常明顯，數值多不說，有些強化甚至能直接不可逆的改變玩法，就好像是把每一輪有機率撿到的配備直接裝給你用。除非你是效率狂，不點強化真的很難往高處爬。
→遊戲的隨機生成幅度也太小，關卡及資源已經有固定排序不說，如果缺低階素材你要嘛浪費時間爬到低階關卡挖或祈禱下個裂縫會生成特殊洞窟。能挖到的特殊砲塔也被固定在指定關卡裡，而且有明顯的強度差異，用過雷射機槍後其他的砲塔完全不值得去挖了。
→洞窟的生成也缺乏多樣性，沒有環境危害或敵人來讓挖掘工作稍微刺激點。