The World Next Door

i wish I could recommend this game but honestly it just doesn't feel like a full game. It feels like the first chapter of a game that was hastily wrapped up. I think it has a lot of potential it just didn't follow through on it for me...

“The world next door” is indie game, that is offering interesting idea for a story. In it, there is a magical world, that can be reached by a portal. Few of people each year can visit that place after winning a lottery. I really like the stories that focus on magical worlds, witches and spells. So naturally I gravitated towards this story. It offers so much potential to create great universe. However, it all falls flat because the plot feels rushed and it ends abruptly without any proper conclusion. Important question that the game asked, are left unanswered or added as an afterthought in the subtitles screen. Characters offer potential, however it’s not used, because they feel one dimensional and flat. They have backstory, but it’s not developed properly. It’s simply ignored by the author and it feels upsetting, because it seems that, it was made so on purpose to get us interested in implied sequel. The game mechanic, especially the fight one feels very junky and can be at points very frustrating, because you keep failing, which is caused by things, that are not your fault. You keep locking on invisible walls and the spells, that should work just don’t! Not all of this game is bad. The visuals of this game are very high quality and I can tell, that there was a lot of effort put into them by skilled designers. The characters are expressive, interesting and full of emotion. They captivate players with their intriguing designs. Backgrounds follow this idea with some of them being simply stunning and others being cute and following the “cosy vibe”. Similar idea fits the audio side of the game. It’s well made and good enough to not make the story less enjoyable. That being said, I unfortunately can not recommend this game. It has so much potential, but it is wasted, because of the focus of developer on creating sequel. First part of the game is also important! That is, what will encourage the players, to try the new parts not making lacklustre story, that is just an up-sell for a game, that doesn’t even exist yet. Rating for this game is 40/100 Therefore not recommended!

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This game feels underbaked in pretty much every way possible. The art is pretty good, and the characters do a decent job of filling out persona-like archetypes of people, but unlike persona there isn't any serious growth or hidden background to these characters; the furthest the game goes in terms of development is a character apologizing for doing something obviously wrong. The world is neat I guess, but like everything else in the game, it is as shallow as a puddle. Characters will talk about magic vs technology but the only magic you see in the monster world is combat magic, and like, blue fire? There are off-hand mentions of things that are absolutely insane and wholly unjustified. Humans can't live in the monster world because magic is poisonous (okay...) and also there is no sun (what? where is the heat coming from?? what's the day night cycle??? why would no sun kill someone?). The shallowness of the world could be forgiven if this was some incredible, emotional story, but the plot is driven by threats which are incredibly nebulous and poorly motivated. Jun is trapped in the monster world and needs to get out before dying (solid), also there are evil monsters who are showing up (okay...) and also she is a fugitive on the run from the police who are desperate to detain a dying, normal-ass human who happened to get stuck because... cops suck? Which like, sure, but it makes it hard to take any drama seriously when our characters are never hurt, Jun walks around talking to everybody with infinite time between missions, and there isn't any semblance of any kind of actual deadline for getting Jun free. This is all capped off by a deeply insulting "mystery" oriented plot where the apparently smartest character in the group gets her entire personality chopped out to be replaced by trying to figure out the connection between clues so unbelievably obvious an average person could figure out the mystery before even receiving them. Really as a general gripe, all of the characters are incredibly stupid, and not in a particularly funny or interesting way, not to mention the whole game ends on a stupid [spoiler] chosen one twist [/spoiler] that feels even more insulting. The gameplay does not save this at all either. The core combat is a match 3 game where instead of switching adjacent tiles anywhere on the screen, your character runs around swapping tiles while trying to avoid the enemies which are attacking them. This is honestly not a terrible concept, but the execution is deeply lacking. The whole thing feels janky, with poorly readable hit boxes and enemies which seem to do contact damage but actually do attacks which once they lock onto you can hit you from any distance, even if the enemy was only next to you for a brief instant, plus the sin of allowing the player to get stunlocked and constantly slowed down. The way that all of the different rune types do different things leads to horrible stretches of sitting around doing nothing while you swap tiles around waiting for a set of useful ones to pop up, and enemy health pools are large enough that every fight is a slog, either being a nightmare of poor hit feedback leading to deaths or, in the majority of fights, boringly running around and tanking hits because literally who cares, you have infinite healing. The worst part of this is that there is absolutely no growth or building on this core. The first fight you have in the game has the exact same blocks, powers, and effects as the last one in the game. The mechanic of chaining powers together is mostly unimpactful, giving some bonus damage and nothing interesting, and the special abilities you equip from your party are very finicky to activate; the fact that they can whiff completely only adds insult to injury. The enemy types have some variety but really only vary in how annoying they are while you kill them, and the roster rapidly goes stale, with all enemies showing up in every area after they are introduced. The boss fights do the bare minimum of obvious ideas to shake things up, but do not make any of the flawed systems actually fun. Side quests are boring scavenger "hunts" or character bonding quests which are mostly rehashing existing mechanics. The dungeons are tiny and pretty much linear, with little to no exploration or reward for doing so, and the puzzles run the gamut from incredibly simple to frustrating trial-and-error rooms where you get softlocked constantly with no undo button, and have to restart from the beginning each time you attempt them. The only way I could recommend this game is if it was on sale and you really really vibe with the art and characters. Otherwise, I cannot recommend this short, shallow, deeply flawed game. P.S. I finished this game in two hours as you can see from my achievements. idk why the steam stats forgot my playtime/

This game had SO much potential.... but then it ended out of no where and with THAT ending none the less. I won't spoil it for those who wish to play it for themselves, and tbh, the game overall IS worth playing. But that ending is so atrocious that it makes you feel like you wasted your time just playing the game in general. Like, [spoiler] what about the missing people, why can't we stay, wheres our father, what about Cornell, WHY ARE YOU DROPPING A BOMBSHELL ON US ABOUT LIZA AND NOT EMBELLISHING AT ALL AFTER THE FACT???? [/spoiler] I loved the world, I loved the characters, I wanted [spoiler] to be able to stay in Emerys so fricken bad, and then you tease us with an option and make us go through the portal anyway??? [/spoiler] I'd really love to recommend this game, but by the end of it, the resolution (or therefore lack of) left such a sour taste in my mouth, I just can't in good faith. If they every make a sequel that extrapolates on everything that should have been the game in the first place, I'll happily change my review to recommend it. But as it stands, it feels like a quarter of the game just wasn't shipped in the final product.

The match-3 combat is not exceptional, and the game ends abruptly, but the characters are real, and it's written with heart, so I can't help but feel really positive about it.

surprisingly engrossing game. Its like a friendship sim with occasional battle based match 3. Love the art and the story is pretty cool. I like it

The story line is interesting but the battle system is frustrating at best. The enemies, often multiple, chase you around at a decent speed while you're expected to pick up and drop runes to make rune groups. Then once a group is made you have to cast that group as a spell but the cast time is slow enough that you ALWAYS take hits from the enemies since they are constantly right on your tail. The game wants you to thing strategically about what spells you cast but realistically you're running around frantically looking for any groups you can find that don't need you to trade runes to create. And even then you're taking hits w/ each spell cast.

Неплохо, понравился интересный стиль рисовки. А Здесь будет кошка, люди, которые будут пролистывать страницу, могут погладить ее. 　　　 　　／＞　　フ 　　　 　　| 　_　 _ l 　 　　 　／` ミ＿xノ 　　 　 /　　　 　 | 　　　 /　 ヽ　　 ﾉ 　 　 │　　|　|　| 　／￣|　　 |　|　| 　| (￣ヽ＿_ヽ_)__) 　＼二つ

I really want to like this game, but I can't say I recommend it. The art style is lovely and I enjoyed the characters, but most of the game falls flat. The ending of the game seems rushed and leaves many questions unanswered, and just throws together certain solutions at the end despite the build up that led to it. There were also issues with the gameplay itself, such as puzzle pieces not registering, and enemies constantly hovering over you to where it's difficult to move around and see what you're doing. All that being said, this game does have an interesting premise and a lot of potential. If the creators ever decide to make a sequel or even do a full remake of this game, I would still be interested enough to check it out.