Yonder World: Interview with the Void

Edit: The devs have heard our pleas. They've added an official walkthrough to the steam guides, and made sign-posting within the game more noticeable. Albeit now my own guide is next to useless, I couldn't be happier with this change. Now I can finally start enjoying the game. Thanks for listening, devs. --- I can't in good conscience recommend this game. In it's defence, it's polished with little to no spelling errors, there are no glitches or bugs that I've seen so far, the CGs and art are good quality, and the voice acting -whilst partial- is well-done and there's plenty of choices and endings. It does a lot of things right. My issue is that this game is extremely hard. Like the hardest otome game I have ever played - and I generally write guides for them. I'd also like to preface that "hard" games aren't my issue with this one: I enjoyed Cardinal Cross, and many other "difficult" games with expansive endings with slight variations. My problem with this game in particular is the general lack of feedback that it gives the user when you do fail, or whenever you pick an option. In it's defence, some of the characters can do that - Dethiral being mysterious and illusive to her preferences to your reactions works because she revels in seeing you confused. But when it is all of the characters, all of the time, for all your choices, it becomes very difficult for you to realise what you're doing wrong with the game. One of the main bad ends that I have an issue with includes a hidden affection check ALONGSIDE hidden requirements that it doesn't bother to tell you. These affection checks and requirements change for EACH CHARACTER. So what you need to do won't work with them all. Again, I wouldn't have an issue with this, but it gives you no input anywhere to hint what you should do and the ending simply says "You lied to us" - which you HAVE to do on your second choice or the game is over. So it's not helpful. Because the requirements are so specific for each character and you can't "unlock" multiple characters on one route, I think it would be helpful if you picked a character at the beginning of a route, so that the game could give you subtle tips throughout to help you. But because it doesn't - you're sat frustrated wondering what the bleep you're doing wrong. It also doesn't help that you can't see a list of endings at least, like Gilded Crown. Because then at least the player would have some direction. But instead of addressing the difficulty issues, I hear the devs are adding even more endings. Which is fine, but if they want to be more inclusive with their users, it's worth listening to the negatives alongside the positive people who like to make chicken nugget memes. Because not all of us are having a fun time and you should never leave a game simply feeling frustrated because you don't know what you're doing wrong. In fact, I actually tried to refund it but steam said no. Please, please, please address this difficult Day 12/13 ending. The rest of the game when you get past this point is too good to waste with such a hard block. I'm genuinely excited for this devs other work and I'm glad they have good relationships with their dev community to add easter eggs from other games, alongside this beautiful art. But it is such an incredible shame that the majority of what I loved about it is stuck behind such a difficulty curve - when there are similar games for the same price that don't make you tear your hair out. I left this review until now because honestly, I can't recommend it, but I didn't want to damn the algorithm for it because I know it's got its heart in the right place.

HUGE disclaimer- I'm Dethiral's voice actress! No, I haven't been asked to write anything in terms of a review or paid to write anything kind; I was only paid to voice act, and was given a copy of the game to play. With that in mind, onto the review! The concept from day 1 had me hooked- demonic romances, a more realistic approach to a romance VN, and complex characters. Seeing the art on the casting call, I couldn't live with myself for not trying out! Thankfully it went well! Recording the lines for the game, we were mostly in the dark; obviously character motives and some info was given to help us deliver the lines, but other than that we didn't really know much, especially with the nature of branching narratives and bad endings. So when it came to actually playing the game for the first time, I was absolutely blown away by the quality of the stories and sheer number of routes! Replaying was also super easy as you can skip previous conversations, and there's absolutely enough room for one choice to drastically change the way a route goes, and I can't recommend exploring these avenues enough! I can't hide the number of hours I have in this game, and trust me that I don't blindly invest 80 hours into games I can't get into, personal involvement or no. The stories and characters are genuinely compelling, the choices aren't always obvious but equally don't work to trap you as the player into the dreaded 'oh, you picked this thing we offered you? HOW COULD YOU?!' trope that's so frequent in many choice-based games. It also avoids very generic death bad endings- though some of the bad ends certainly do end fatally, they always feel incredibly original and dramatic! I honestly can't recommend this game enough <3 It's an absolute honour to be involved with such an amazing and heartfelt project. To address some concerns I've heard- ~There are some dark themes & the CWs are worth checking out- however, they're all dealt with with the utmost respect, humanity and empathy, without equally coming off as hamfisted, 'edgy' or gratuitously. I honestly found it refreshingly hopeful on these themes. ~Day 15 is a bit of a git to get past (for good reason, Dethiral isn't to be trifled with ':D ), so don't be afraid to use the guide to help out with this. From there you can abide by the guide or wing it as desired! \o/ Thankfully it really doesn't spoil anything, and it doesn't spoil much past the 15th day either minus wording for choices and the ending outcomes. :) Enjoy, little angels!

I just started playing the game and really enjoyed it to the point of wanting to leave a review. This game has such a fun, unique concept -- after all, who wouldn't want to romance a mysterious, alluring, and yet sinister eldritch abomination who rules over her own nether-realm?! It really helps that the game is STUNNINGLY beautiful, with some of the prettiest and yet, most unique looking sprites I've ever seen, as well as great and frequent CGIs and beautifully polished backgrounds. I really enjoyed the non-standard gameplay as well, had fun with the object puzzles, and enjoyed the great writing also. The storyline moves quite fast but I was always able to follow it and most of all, I always sympathized with the MC and winced during the bad endings. (Which I stumbled into quite frequently!) I also wasn't sure who I wanted her to end up with, since all of the love interests are so gorgeous and compelling and sinisterly fascinating. I ended up choosing Dethiral, which lead to some really tense but exciting scenes! Overall, Yonder World is a wonderful romance/horror romp with a compelling storyline, a very vulnerable yet lovable main character you can't help but root for, and really great love interests who are VERY unique for the genre. This was a very good game and I can't wait to keep on playing.

Great: - Character writing. Every NPC was given plany ob time and dialogue through different routes. (Con: occasionally felt like the character depth and backstories were the result of 2D narrative greebling instead of thought-out backstories intentionally left mysterious) - Romance partners (Baron from the Baronies vc.). Extremely hot women. They are so hot. - Story writing. Somewhat frustrating due to various mysteries that are never directly answered, and relationship threads and backstories that remain unresolved. Fits with the theme of the game though to never find catharsis Bearable: - Current iteration of game has some coding bugs preventing player from getting certain achievements and endings. Doesn't really matter since steam profile features limited - Heavily reliant on the official guide to obtain certain endings

我是一个缺乏耐心的人我真的有点怒了，好感加减和两种好感度的检定太诡异了一直在死亡死亡死亡，官方攻略写得也比较模糊就算看了攻略我也无法继续推进故事（指南里也有其他留言反映了类似的情况）。剧情基本上就是纯talk，很无聊，世界观讲得云里雾里并不吸引人。女主总是在结巴，干什么事情都紧紧张张很胆怯甚至总是被吓哭。 看板娘长得好像zatanna，这也是我买这个游戏的唯一原因。

Horror: check Tentacles: check Chicken wings: check A mama: check Fabulousness: check A good boi: check A b**ch: check A roller coaster of emotions. Do I need this in my life? YES.

2 choices in and I'm dead. In all seriousness, this game has a dark theme and is challenging for new player so if you want a light-heart visual novel game I would not recommend playing this. But if you don't mind a dark romance game you can give this game a shot because it has beautiful art, VAs and a lot of different endings and branches (Dethiral's route has 2 wholly different branches depends on the choices).

Dethiral routes are definitely some of my favs. So many choices, so many potentials for heartbreaking demises. I do love Cass though, a lot of fun.

The guide is confusing..it doesnt tell which things you should choose specifically in order to get the specific end. It kinda makes you guess sometimes. Like it shows you the options and the points you gain or lose but it says little about how many points are needed in which of the two categories in order to trigger all endings. I think maybe even the good ending for Deth was bleak so Im hoping for an epilogue where things actually resolve one way or another. Ive only done the one character, two routes. It says theres a good ending and a good romance ending and a friendship ending and an archangel ending but the guide isnt great at getting you there. All this aside the game its self is amazing, and the story is heartbreaking and unnerving and beautiful all at once.

Bought the game for Dethiral and I overall loved it, but have a few qualms. I went at it organically for around 3 hours, then kept getting stuck, but the guide made it a fun experience there after. Made it super easy to explore all the dialogue too, which is always one of my concerns with visual novels - not getting to experience the whole story. Skipping dialogue already read worked smoothly, which is sometimes an issue for some games, but not this one, so another plus! Love the ending tracker, made it so easy to replay the endings I liked. Of course my favorite and most anticipated route was Dethiral, scary, powerful and devastatingly hot woman, what else could you ask for in a love interest to be honest. While I loved her character, I felt like her story could have been fleshed out a bit more. It felt a little rushed, which made her ending less satisfying for me. Big spoiler ahead but in her route [spoiler] we never find out the whole reason why she is the way she is. How she got her powers or lost her ability to love. And we never see her problem resolved - retrieving her heart - despite many hints. Was really excited when I got bad romance end that maybe the time loop would result in a "good" good romance end, but even in that ending, you're not able to be with her and she doesn't love you back. Unfortunately, it just implies another time loop, which makes her route just a tragedy. Not exactly what you hope for in a Dating Sim genre game. [/spoiler] Quite a good game though, besides that, I enjoyed it, would recommend still.