If you missed out on Wall World, it’s definitely time to remedy that. The first game released in 2023 and snuck under the radar of most players. It’s a unique fusion of active tower defense, mining and combat that is both grindy and fun and for the couple bucks it sometimes goes on sale for, it’s an excellent buy. Wall World is also an interesting science-fiction story and while the plot is minimal for much of the game, it’s still a solid story that just really gets going by the end of the first game. Now developer and publisher Alawar is back with the sequel, Wall World 2 and it’s available on consoles as well as PC!
Wall World 2 starts right where the first game left off. In fact, there’s a synopsis of the plot of the first game if you want to just skip straight to the second game and some spoilers. For those of you that had to wait a few years, this is a welcome refresher however. Very basically, the remnants of humanity are surviving on a mysterious wall, mining resources and eking out lives as the Zyrex slowly kill off miners one by one. On top of that there’s the Leviathan, a giant beast that attacks on the wall, slaughtering wholesale. Eventually you can defeat it but at first you’ll definitely want to get the heck out of there before it shows up. You now have access to a town here you can buy a host of upgrades as well, and your spider robot / tank can also enter the horizontal caverns, opening up the way to new biomes, enemies, and treasures that just might save humanity…if you’re lucky and tenacious enough.
But the story serves as more of a backdrop to the gameplay in Wall World 2 because this is first and foremost a game of survival. Each time you leave the safety of the town, you’ll have to choose a mission now. Fulfilling the goals of the mission nets you a bunch of cash and resources if you’re patient, but you’ll also have to fight through waves of enemies. Just like the first game, Wall World 2 splits your time between tower defense and mining, though the Zyrex and other dangers are now in the mines as well as outside. There’s a timer constantly counting down to the next Zyrex attack while you’re mining. Killing enemy spawners accelerates the timer. Once the timer gets to the next face, a chime sounds and the enemy waves start rolling in almost immediately and attacking your robot spider tank. You start out with a slow-moving mounted machine gun to fight them off but upgrades will make you faster and more powerful, matching the growth and strength of enemy waves. Fighting them off gives you more time to fulfill objectives and once you’ve done so, it’s time to bug out before the leviathan comes and wipes you off the map, so you’ll have to call for an extraction…but the enemies will attack while you’re waiting!
Even within the mines, challenges are harder now. In addition to hunting down resources with the wave timer ticking down in your periphery, the mines themselves are now infested with Zyrex who you’ll have to fight to get to the resources and relics you need to survive. Simple mining missions become much more complex when your mine runs dry and the next one is filled with enemies. Your exosuit is particularly weak to start the game off too, so fighting them off will be a challenge at best and deadly at worst if you’re not paying attention. You’ll also have to watch that timer because getting back to your spider in time can be a challenge if you’re in too deep. A handful of the mines have teleporters in their depths if you’re lucky and you can plan around those but it’s definitely not every mine that has one and by the time you get back to your spider, you could have taken some pretty hefty damage if you dilly dallied too long.
Fortunately, just like the last game you can add permanent upgrades to your spider and your exosuit that help with all these events. Your exosuit can be modified to run across horizontal surfaces, hurtling through mines to return in time or to get deeper before the timer drops too far. You can also modify your health, add weapons and armor, and a host of other modifications that will help you survive the increasingly difficult levels. The spider is the same, with modifications available for a variety of weapons, armor, and frames that will have you absolutely dominating enemies as you jet across the landscape launching rockets and cutting the legs out from under the Zyrex. Many of the more powerful spider upgrades come from blueprints however, and to get those you’ll need to complete missions. That means going to the bar!
There are three areas in the town. One is the main shop where you’ll modify your spider’s armaments. The next is a weapon shop where you’ll buy weapons and upgrades for your exosuit to help you survive the perils of the mines. The final building you can enter is the bar. In the bar you can talk to patrons who have missions for you to complete and you’ll also be able to buy drinks. While expensive, the drinks come with one-time bonuses for your next run up the wall, allowing you to modify your attacks, defenses, resource gathering abilities and more. If you’re struggling to come up with funds or make it through a tough mission, having a nip at the bar is just the thing. Sure, you can permanently boost your digging abilities and strength for huge cash and lots of resources, but you can also boost with drinks, allowing you to bridge the gap while you scrape together the funds. Every major stat can be modded with drinks, making them a valuable resource. Missions are just that, new missions on your biome map that usually pay out in blueprints or other unique items. Missions tend to be more challenging than most of the regular stages. The first one we got was to find a catbot that was lost in a mine and it showed up on the map with a difficulty of “insane”.
Difficulty is a little bit strange in Wall World 2 however and insane equated roughly to hard, “hard” levels are analogous to medium difficulty and “normal” rated levels are easy. Once you figure this out, the levels aren’t quite as intimidating. At first, insane sounds like you wouldn’t want to be bothered and it’s easy to assume that it’s an optional mission, but once you’ve tried your hand at a few different quests, you’ll find that even the optional missions are well worth your time. When the final tally comes at the end of a mission, all the mining you do and all the relics you find add up for cash totals. Be careful though because if you use up key materials bolstering your spider, they’re not available to spend back in town. That means that you have to decide whether you can survive with a weaker spider because each time you start a new stage, your powerups are back to square one like a traditional roguelike. It’s incredibly frustrating if you get cornered in a few mines that are weak in resources too, but you’ll need those upgrade materials for long-term survival.
Finish up a biome and you get some additional story elements as well, opening up a whole new set of missions to try and some new materials to further upgrade with. Don’t worry, you can go back and play any mission you’ve previously played (excluding bar quests) so if you skipped an upgrade path and need to go back to it. You’ll have to anyway since you simply don’t make enough money or gather enough resources per run to maximize upgrade paths. That means grinding levels for the resources you need and it’s where Wall World 2 slows down somewhat. If you’re smart and save up immediately for spider shell upgrades and power up your digging abilities, you’ll be able to complete replays significantly faster however and it isn’t as bad as it seems. At first, replays are a bit of a slog though and it takes a number of hours to really learn how to blaze through mines. While the game is advertised as procedurally generated, what you’ll quickly find is that certain stages have familiar layouts or a set pattern of familiar layouts with your save. It might be that the stages are generated procedurally but during our time with Wall World 2, we found a number of stages that had mines with identical layouts or a random selection of 2 or 3 identical layouts when we went to replay them. That made things a bit more repetitive but it also really sped up resource gathering, letting us get back to the main game faster.
While you manage the gameplay loop of defense, exploration, and upgrades, you’ll be treated to some excellent pixel art visuals in Wall World 2. The retro style and inventiveness here is off the charts and the environments you’ll explore through are very cool. Each biome has different land, weather, and even a few different monsters, keeping the game relatively fresh and the town area, while small, is very cool with a neon-drenched cyberpunk vibe that fits well in the dark cave-like wall city. The juxtaposition of high tech weird creations and bizarre monsters is both compelling and creative and aside from the requisite grinding, the visuals never get old in the game. The GUI in the stores could use a bit of adjustment and the spider upgrade menus are particularly weird, but honestly, you’re only using them for a bit. It’s just a shame they weren’t more crisp and streamlined because we found that you could get stuck in the menus here and there while selecting pages or different areas of the engineering menu, the only glitch encountered in our playthrough.
Audio is a different story however. The music that accompanies Wall World 2 is fantastic and the roaring of beasts as the waves trigger is suitably terror inducing, causing a spike of icy fear when you’re too far away from the entrance to get back in time. The various tracks of the game fade into the gameplay admirably and complement explorations, rising for key events and battles and taking a backseat to exploration and mining afterwards. However, some of the sound effects are particularly irritating. The constant pounding of guns during defensive waves is tedious and drowns out the music and other sound effects, only getting worse as you upgrade. The same goes for your drill and your guns within the mine, creating a constant droning that eventually gets on your nerves because it never really stops. You can’t stop firing or drilling at all and because of that, those sounds tend to override everything else, which slowly becomes more irritating over the course of the game.
There are a couple of minor flaws with gameplay as well here that could use improvement. One directly related to audio is the drilling and gunfire. Since you can autofire and your weapons run out of charge, you’d think it would make sense to set them to fire non-stop. Wall World 2 has no autofire binding however, which means that you’re constantly holding down either the ZR trigger on the Switch or the GL or GR bindings on the Switch 2 pro controller. Either way, you’re not letting go of that button at all, which slowly leads to hand and finger fatigue. Worse still, during the Zyrex waves, you’ll have to hit R1 to fire missiles once you get them, forcing you to let go of the machine gun button even though both can be fired at once. Ergonomically, Wall World 2 is a mixed bag at best, forcing you to balance both sticks for movement and targeting while never letting go of the firing triggers. You’ll have to do this a lot too as you’ll have to repeat levels over and over to grind up your power levels and upgrade both your exoarmor and spider, something not every player will have patience for.
Wall World 2 is an impressive game with noticeable upgrades from the first game that make it more fun to play and more compelling. It has a few minor design flaws, but for an indie game, it’s still a spectacular achievement and remarkably fun as well. The pathway you take to power up and progress is entirely up to you, the semi-randomization is well-done, and while losing your in-wall upgrades is frustrating at the end of each mission, it doesn’t really impact gameplay much once you start to get powered up. Wall World 2 surpasses all expectations with an interesting story, creative designs, and a solid gameplay loop that will keep you hooked the whole way through. At only $14, it’s well worth your time and this isn’t an experience you’re going to want to miss!
This review was based on a digital copy of Wall World 2 provided by the publisher. It was played on both Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2 in both docked and undocked modes where it played equally well. Wall World 2 is also available for PS5 and PC on Steam and Epic.
Nate Van Lindt has been a gamer since the days of yore (aka Commodore 64), and has played a bit of virtually everything out there. He's also an avid comic book collector, both vintage and current, and reads a fair amount of sci-fi and fantasy. On top of that, he watches a fair number of movies and TV shows as well. Oh, and he has a family, a full-time job, and lives somewhere in the urban wilds of Southwestern Ontario, Canada, foraging for old video cables and forgotten game soundtracks.