The World Next Door

I'll try to be concise. The good: + Interesting setting + Nice artstyle + Dialogue in the VN-type bits is more or less engaging + An innovative approach to match-3 type gameplay The neutral: * Music is at best forgettable * Gameplay is a bit samey. Well, it's basically match-3 with some VN bits inbetween, so what did you expect? The bad: - Story is short and the ending is, well, kinda disappointing. More of a sequel bait than an ending - "Side quests" are at best fetch quests - There are quite a few random difficulty spikes. You might say I just have zero skill. That might be true. Still, going from breezing through to dying 15 times in a row seems like bad challenge design to me. The ugly: - I keep running into keypresses not being registered, tiles not becoming activatable when the character is over them, etc. This wouldn't be a big deal if this was your common leasurely match-3 game. But in a hectic action-y context this is extremely frustrating. - Respawn mechanics are weird, to say the least. It's like the devs couldn't be bothered to make it consistent, and just gave up halfway. - There are a few maps where getting things done is extremely hard due to low overall amount of tiles and a mandatory tight squeeze where you will get mauled by melee enemies. Clearing such maps comes down to the luck of the draw most of the time -- if you can dispatch some melee enemies with the first few actions, all goes smoothly from that. If not, you're dead. Add to that the weirdness of the respawn mechanic, and it becomes something of a willpower challenge. Overall, I applaud the innovative approach, but the execution is apparently less than stellar. The actual match-3 part of the game I personally don't enjoy due to problems outiled above. Then the question becomes "is the rest of the game worth wading through these match-3 parts", and while I want to say "kinda", ultimately, I end up leaning to "no".

The art style and characters are beautiful and charming...but that's really about it. The game easily be beaten in less than 4 hours, it really is that short. The ending was...okay, I guess. And, a controller is highly more recommended. I wish there would've been more to this game.

This game was alot of fun, it had a world and characters that enchanted and capture on your imagination. Shamefully it was way and way to short for its pricing. Still i fell hopelessly in love with it and it left a void in my heart when it finished. I need more of this setting and characters in a bigger game, maybe even with a little more sandbox in it. The unique battle mechanics was fun and innovative. I would reccomend this game if it was on sale. Be warned that sometimes the registration on pressing keys is a bit wonky and frustrating.

Easily one of my all-time favorite action puzzlers. The art style is simply adorable and the gameplay never got boring for me throughout the entire playtime (you should not have the expectation of an extremely challenging or complex game though). The length is just right to finish it in a few short sittings. I would love to see a sequel in the future.