It's hard to avoid the comparison to Dome Keeper here but to dismiss Wall World as a mere copy doesn't do the game justice.
Here you control a spider mech that climbs up and down the titular wall, stopping at mine entrances which you delve into digging for resources, weapons, and upgrades which allow you to better stave off alien attacks. If we stopped here we'd be an almost one-to-one clone of DK but WW goes much further! You can not only 'move the dome' so to speak, but there's a vast arsenal of interchangeable and upgradable weapons, digging is faster, mines are larger, there are more rewards to dig up, and caves come in a variety of themes and layouts each with a unique resource, and since you're on a timer you have to choose which to delve into according to upgrade needs.
The permanent upgrades you can buy between runs give you the mobility, offense, and utility that is all but required to survive the boss encounters, as well as enabling you to efficiently plunder the caves before your time runs out. On top of that there are quality of life upgrades to be unlocked via blueprint treasures that drive replay value. The downside is you unlock stuff too quickly! Within about 8 hours I had all the base gear at max level. I wouldn't have minded if stuff was more expensive to encourage more runs and spread out the progress as I was really enjoying the grind.
The other major downside is the stability and glitches. Sometimes the gun gets stuck between shooting and sucking and does nothing, sometimes the camera gets stuck zoomed out. Later in the game the auto-mining explosions lag everything and the game starts to shudder and lose frames the longer you play. Even the pretty workshop menu screen was lagging for me with all the animations playing, and sadly the final boss glitched out such that I had to replay the game one more time to trigger the ending credits.
Even with all its flaws Wall World is fun if you enjoy grind focused game loops and a roguelite structure. It offers an exciting and short experience albeit stained by those performance issues, but if you're willing to overlook that you'll be in for a solid 20 hours set in an interesting world with soft storytelling, plenty of build combinations to explore, and treasures to uncover. Well worth a try, especially if you had previously written it off as a 'rip off'.
Here you control a spider mech that climbs up and down the titular wall, stopping at mine entrances which you delve into digging for resources, weapons, and upgrades which allow you to better stave off alien attacks. If we stopped here we'd be an almost one-to-one clone of DK but WW goes much further! You can not only 'move the dome' so to speak, but there's a vast arsenal of interchangeable and upgradable weapons, digging is faster, mines are larger, there are more rewards to dig up, and caves come in a variety of themes and layouts each with a unique resource, and since you're on a timer you have to choose which to delve into according to upgrade needs.
The permanent upgrades you can buy between runs give you the mobility, offense, and utility that is all but required to survive the boss encounters, as well as enabling you to efficiently plunder the caves before your time runs out. On top of that there are quality of life upgrades to be unlocked via blueprint treasures that drive replay value. The downside is you unlock stuff too quickly! Within about 8 hours I had all the base gear at max level. I wouldn't have minded if stuff was more expensive to encourage more runs and spread out the progress as I was really enjoying the grind.
The other major downside is the stability and glitches. Sometimes the gun gets stuck between shooting and sucking and does nothing, sometimes the camera gets stuck zoomed out. Later in the game the auto-mining explosions lag everything and the game starts to shudder and lose frames the longer you play. Even the pretty workshop menu screen was lagging for me with all the animations playing, and sadly the final boss glitched out such that I had to replay the game one more time to trigger the ending credits.
Even with all its flaws Wall World is fun if you enjoy grind focused game loops and a roguelite structure. It offers an exciting and short experience albeit stained by those performance issues, but if you're willing to overlook that you'll be in for a solid 20 hours set in an interesting world with soft storytelling, plenty of build combinations to explore, and treasures to uncover. Well worth a try, especially if you had previously written it off as a 'rip off'.