Find a way to escape a parallel world with the help of your non-human friends and a bit of match-3 puzzle-solving.
The World Next Door
Rose City Games
Price: $14.99
Platforms: PC, Switch (reviewed)
MonsterVine was provided with a Switch code for review.
In The World Next Door, Earth is connected to a magical world called Emrys by means of a portal that opens once a generation. When the portal opens, a handful of lucky individuals travel to the other side to spend the day in another world. You play Jun, a human teenager who gets a chance to visit Emrys. However, you don’t get to play through her first day there. Instead, the game picks up that evening, when Jun and her friends stay at a magical shrine too long and miss the closing of the portal, stranding Jun on Emrys.
Getting Jun home becomes the group’s major goal, because humans can’t survive for more than a few days on Emrys. It’s also illegal, for unclear reasons. The two worlds have a friendly relationship, open communication, and a day each year when people cross over, but it isn’t long before the police are searching for a human and the main characters worry they’ll be arrested if caught.
“Dialogue choices, the ability to choose a few friends to text each day, side quests, and occasional bonus missions all help flesh out the world and its lore, which has a lot of interesting points.“
They notice a link between the shrines and the portal, and so they begin visiting each shrine to see if they can get Jun back home. Shrines are filled with monsters called Grievances, which you fight by matching magical runes. Combat is basically a match-3 puzzle game, with a twist: you can switch any two runes at any time. Different runes have different effects, so you’ll want to set up the spells you need to defeat your enemies. If an adjacent match has been set up next to the runes you use, they’re “empowered,” making the attack stronger. Because of this, you’ll want to plan out your moves instead of frantically matching every group you see–although later enemies can use runes as well, which forces you to act quickly. There is also an easy mode in which Jun doesn’t take any damage, in case you’re having trouble with the combat or want to speed things up on subsequent playthroughs.
When you aren’t in a shrine, you’ll be interacting with other characters and performing side quests. Emrys is very Earth-like, with humanoid characters and the general sense that it really is just “the world next door.” Dialogue choices, the ability to choose a few friends to text each day, side quests, and occasional bonus missions all help flesh out the world and its lore, which has a lot of interesting points.
“The World Next Door left me a bit baffled about its ending, but it did have some nice moments along the way.“
However, although the plot veered in some interesting directions, the end of my playthrough left major plot points untouched. Since it had only taken a few hours to complete, I started a second playthrough. The developers said The World Next Door had multiple endings, so I picked different dialogue options this time around. Unfortunately, aside from changing a few lines, I got the same result. For my third playthrough, I gave up on following the late-game plot direction I was most interested in and instead picked the other major choice–but once again, the ending was largely the same and didn’t address the loose ends. The World Next Door left me a bit baffled about its ending, but it did have some nice moments along the way.
The Final Word
The World Next Door implements a nice twist on match-3 puzzles for its combat system, and it presents an interesting world with a varied cast of characters. Unfortunately, the lack of cues for different endings, requirement to start the game from the beginning each time, and lack of variation across multiple playthroughs drags down the initial charm if you’re trying to see the full story.
MonsterVine Rating: 3 out of 5 – Average
