WORLD SPLITTER Review for PlayStation 4

The puzzle-platforming genre is highly saturated with inexperienced developers. Finding one with genuine, unique innovation is a rare occurrence. But World Splitter, developed by NeoBird and published by Bumble3ee Interactive, attempts to break that mold, creating an easily digestible complex experience that scales in difficulty with the player’s own capacity for puzzles.

World Splitter follows a bug-like space explorer that crashes their ship onto an unknown land. Mysterious creatures swarm the ship, stealing various ship parts and then running off into the wilderness. If the game didn’t have the style of Angry Birds, it might’ve been a terrifying experience. But you don’t play World Splitter for worldbuilding.

The game’s hook is the manipulation of a mechanic dubbed: ‘The Rift’. The Rift manifests as a straight line that cuts across the screen of the game. On either side of The Rift is a different formation of the level. The player can move The Rift, revealing new paths, and carving new ways to get to the level’s objectives. This, combined with simple platformer mechanics, creates opportunity for several layers of complexity. Players can rotate The Rift to reveal opportunities that wouldn’t be available at other angles. They can cover terrain with The Rift, then lift it over that terrain to create an elevator that pushes them up by the slowly revealed platform. From the get-go, it’s easy to see just how far the game can push its mechanics to entertain casuals and veterans alike.

World Splitter combines this puzzle complexity with small, digestible levels to create a mobile-like gaming experience. It does this by containing levels to around 3 objectives, and only necessitating the player gets to the other side of the screen. Completing the level gives you a quick review of how your performance stacked up against the goals of the level, but you’re never forced to do more than you want to. You can take all the time you want to, or speed to the end of the game. This sort of quick, accessible gameplay is usually attributed to mobile games, and I found a strange disparity between my expectations and the gameplay itself as I experienced World Splitter on the PS4. It didn’t help that the simplistic menu design between levels consisted only of a few icon buttons.

Playing it, I thought for sure that World Splitter was adapted from a mobile game onto console but that wasn’t the case. It felt like the developer maybe intended to release on mobile, but then pivoted to console later in the development process. This isn’t a complete issue, but the setting of a game’s installation should be aligned with its gameplay. Had World Splitter been released on mobile, I would be able to run a few levels while on a commute. This just feels like a missed opportunity and a pivot to maybe charge more money.

Although I have no problems with the gameplay, I felt there was a missed opportunity in story elements to justify the $19.99 priceline. Other console/PC platformers, like Hollow Knight or Celeste, can boast beautiful worlds and narratives to go along with their game. Unfortunately, World Splitter, with its mobile game-like qualities, commits to a simple cartoony style and never really innovates beyond that. These fleshed out experiences are an expectation of games that fully make it to console and players will definitely notice the difference. This is another weakness I’ve found in its choice to commit to console rather than mobile. When I sit down on my couch to play a console game, I am fully ready to be immersed in both gameplay and the world containing that gameplay.

I enjoyed World Splitter for what it offers: smart puzzles, and easily digestible gameplay that has the opportunity to expand. But I know a lot of players will be put off by the price it’s published at, and what they’ll be getting for that higher price. I recommend World Splitter to anybody who enjoys the puzzle platformer genre and has the spare cash to splurge on an indy-game with an interesting premise.

6/10

Check Out the World Splitter Launch Trailer:

World Splitter is available for $19.99 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC via Steam. For more information about World Splitter, visit the developer’s official website.

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