World for Two Reviews

I'd hate to give a small indie game bad press, and it's especially pointless so long after its release, but I would say the game was an oddly lopsided experience. Summary TLDR up top - this is a visually beautiful art project, with a timeless theme of death and rebirth that is handled with a soft touch, very PG vibes. Unfortunately, the game misses many opportunities to do storytelling and immersion, and does not utilize the strengths of the video game medium to the fullest. (Note - this review contains spoilers for the whole game, including credits scenes and Chapter 0, the post-game prequel section. The game takes about 10 hours to finish, less if you use a guide. Also this game is several years old, from July 2021.) **** Pros - the devs WORKED HARD on the visuals, including the animations of the animals and the people. The several layers of backgrounds necessary to achieve the parallaxing effect work great. The day and night cycle lighting changes are STUNNING. Extremely simple controls - 3 face buttons for yes/no/menu, and d-pad only. All animal deaths are actually avoidable if you build every single one up from an amoeba, but that WOULD kind of be missing the point of the themes... Hah, there's a challenge run idea there! The animals' death animations are also skippable, just press the 'examine' button again after the bar fills. I didn't learn THAT until much later! Cons - UI needs a bit more QOL polish, such as telling the player how many artificial genes they already own in Items when going into Item Printer to make more, and displaying the name of the artificial gene in the Items menu, to help the player learn the names. Perhaps a recipe book of failed experiments? It was definitely appreciated that after one combination fails, the android remembers what it was, and tells 'herself' not to do it again. Getting 'natural energy' gems back from a failed fusion would also have been nice as a consolation prize, but I found it entirely unnecessary; I had hundreds of unused gems of all colors by the end of the game, and nothing to really spend them on, since the later-game gene purchases were not any MORE expensive than the starting ones, really... The heart HP icon could have had a bit more thought put into it. Simply draining it directly straight across to the left is a bit too simple, and not really readable enough, imo. Perhaps a diamond-shaped chunk for each third? One for each top-section of the heart, and one for the bottom? That could burn counter-clockwise like LOZ:BOTW hearts? Unless that might be too similar and invite copyright issues... -Controls can be a bit TOO simple. When attempting to Extract DNA from animals in the Winter Ruins area, the android will often remark on the architecture instead, because she is standing close to an examine point. This could be remedied by making 'extract DNA' be a different button than the 'examine' button, which would be used for collecting crystals and investigating points of interest in the environment. Winter Ruins area can also hide animals from the player's view, because of the giant O-shaped rocks in front of the android at times. I think being able to use the d-pad to select which animal in the visible area you wish to extract from would be a nice compromise for especially crowded areas, as happens late game. -No sound effects. Other reviewers have mentioned this - it IS very odd, once you notice it. -Day/night cycle is visual alone, does not affect DNA extraction or natural energy gathering or anything else, as far as I could tell. -Missed opportunity to actually clean up the environment, and make it look like the Store Page's official image! I was looking forward to seeing the Bog with clean air and water :( -A sea turtle in the desert just looked too out of place. I think there needed to be one more biome, sea-focused, on the right of the Bog, that would be accessed after Desert and before Ruins. This would also make a neat little 'two sapient species per biome' round number for the final collection of 10. -The option to switch to orchestral soundtrack is only unlocked after the main game is completed, which is both a good encouragement to continue, and also an encouragement to stop playing, if you don't like the synth music, which I did not. It felt disrespectful to the devs who worked on the music to have turn off the sound entirely and play something else over it... I recommend the Hollow Knight soundtrack. It's similar in being a 2D visuals-focused game that does 3D parallaxing backgrounds. But HK has combat and precision-platforming, so it is much different. Honestly, I feel like it would be best for a new player to have the ability to unlock both Chapter 0 and orchestral soundtrack at the start - perhaps with a microtransaction of 100 yen or 1 USD roughly. That might be controversial, but it's entirely unlockable thru in-game grinding, and this game already has its soundtrack in 2 pieces as DLC, that doesn't feel out of character for this particular game. -Steam Achievements are a little buggy - sometimes I got achievements to show up a bit early, and many times, they would not show up until I made another animal AFTER the one that should have triggered the achievement to pop up. I did get every one, as of review time, and only had to grind after seeing credits for the 'place 150 & 200 animals' achievement. **** Story - Very simple. Reminds me a lot of "In Other Waters" which is another non-violent sci-fi story with a female protagonist doing biology fieldwork, just that one's set in space. The android you play as here only gets one or two moments to narrate her own actions between when she starts out newly born, and the final hour when she makes the final wish come true. I feel like the android could have had more dialogue lines prior to the big finale, and that would have helped her feel more developed. The collection of altars needing specific genes to activate makes SOME sense gameplay-wise, to demand, and then reward, completion of the evolution tree. It makes zero sense story-wise. Why would they be there? How do they work? Who built them? Were the non-human sapient species present before the disaster? Chapter 0 said nothing about THAT! The android bringing two infant humans out into the restored world to raise them felt VERY DANGEROUS - I left several T-Rex's in the desert! There are giant squids and giant jellyfish just floating thru the air out in the Bog! There were only those two children made, so what happens after 20 years? Were they the last humans, or did they have their own children? Or use the lab's machinery to make more children the way the android did...? Visuals often took precedence over story logic, for example, the abandoned house can be walked into, examined in one spot, and then is never remarked upon until the post-game credits scenes. Missed opportunity. On the other hand, the secret second lab fits much BETTER into the story, but the oddness of having to Item Printing to make a Repair Kit, go back in and pick up a memory device, both of which are only used once in the whole game... Why not have the other lab have a lock of 'pay 200 of each gem type' or something? And the pile of notes be someone's diary, instead of have the clunkiness of having the android tell the player exactly how to interact with it? When it TOO was not used again at all in the game? But do note, those notes on biomes and gene limitations were GREAT to find, that felt like a well-rewarded secret, unlike the little empty house in the forest. Makes me feel like that section either wasn't intended to be there originally, or is a remnant of the devs' plans to expand the story and world that didn't materialize in the final product.