This is probably the weakest Daedalic adventure I played -- and I played a lot because even though they are not always great (some are), they usually never fail to entertain. This one does. It has great visuals and decent audio, but it lacks in every other department: While there are certainly good sections in the game, it does not work as a whole. Even though the story framework is good, the story telling and the pacing of the game are awful. The villain is only revealed in the very last section of the game. His story, and why he threatens the magic world is only explained during a picture sequence right before the credits roll. There is no character development for any of the characters and the protagonist is very weak to begin with. The dialogues are long but not rewarding. Many of the puzzles do not make sense which comes down to a lot of try and error -- hints are too sparse and the help function of the game is not helpful at all. The developers should have spend more time on the story board and character development and not on the optional card game and dew drop pixel hunt for bonus material which do not add anything to the main game.
TWW does so many things right that it could have been a gem in my collection of classic 2D point&click adventures: It features beautiful 2D art, some of the most interesting characters alongside funny dialogues and a mature story with a touching ending. As Sadwick is ventures out into the world accompanied by his only friend Spot, a little caterpillar, the player will not only learn more about the nightmares, but will also be confronted with very general themes about the transient nature of life, and continuity and change in the real world. So, where does it fall short? First of all, despite of having a few great puzzles, which involves Spot's unique capability to shape-shift into several useful forms, the average level of puzzles is mediocre at best: some of the puzzles are highly illogical, others fall short because of too little or even misleading hints of what to do next, so you should be prepared to be stuck and rely on try&error at several points during the course of your adventure -- even while the numbers of areas is quite limited in each of the four chapters. Another downside is the actual build-up of the plot. While the idea behind the plot is great, it is pretty much set in the first chapter and resolved in the last one -- there is almost nothing relevant happening in chapters 2 and 3. Adding to these conceptual problems, there are some flaws on the production side: The english voice-acting is downright horrible up to Sadwick's voice beeing unbearable -- the original (german) voice-acting is on a professional level though. The video cutscenes have been produced by a cheap 3rd party company and do not reach the quality of the rest of the game. Some minor technical issues such as no proper wide-screen support exist, but no game-breaking ones. Overall, TWW is still a good adventure and good entertainment for adventure enthusiasts or fans of other Daedalic adventures. If I had to recommend a modern adventure game, the Deponia series is a much better choice.
