World For Two – Review

Our Rating: 7.5/10

World for Two immerses gamers in a recognizable yet foreign ideology right from the start. You are an android creature generated with fascination in mind but still submissive to assist an elderly scientist. According to the scientist, the world is on the verge of extinction. Devastating floods have washed out mostly all lifeforms, and he assumes he is the last human left.

He can’t go out to save the world because he’s too old. So he built you to do it for him. Your mission is to employ a network of canisters all over the world to produce Starflame, an organic building material. You can print out genetic traits using the Starflames. The scientist’s network operating system produces simple lifeforms that can gradually restore life to an uninhabited territory.

Extracting DNA from the new life will enable you to combine components. This allows you to generate fresh and unique life forms, recharging the world in the process. When the android departs, however, the scientist realizes that there must be something underneath the surface.

What else is there to do?

Aside from the living creatures and Starflame regions, there are many relics and residues of a world that has suffered. The android observes with some concern but no intense investigating (at least, not at first). The android notices everything from destroyed arcs to shattered gravestones, wrecked sculptures to deserted cabins, and slowly starts to see and feel more.

I’m not sure how off-putting the former element of World for Two (come from mobile and Switch) will be for gamers. You win this game by determining which mixtures of synthetic genes and DNA will result in new organisms. A pikaia DNA strand was mixed with a fish gene to create a coelacanth, for instance.

When you combine a coelacanth gene with another fish gene, nothing emerges except the lost chromosome and DNA. You’ll have to get more Starflames from the canisters (which take a long time to produce) and more DNA from the creature to try once more and begin something new. To obtain DNA, you must first determine the proper synthesis for the animal’s existing strand.

The lower part of the window has a handy chart and it’s pretty straightforward. Green to yellow, blue to red, and don’t mess it up. Nevertheless, you could only extract DNA from an animal 3 times before it perishes. Each time you do so, the animal will die. So, to summarize: experimenting when it comes to combining things to create new things, followed by a cooldown while you wait for more things to attempt again.

Mixing and Matching

It can be aggravating to have to keep trying to fall short with World for Two. Especially since Nishimori tried to broaden the experience by not stacking everything on top of each other. Two blue Starflame canisters, for instance, are about four full windows apart in the opening area (the Bog). Extracting these Flames entails sprinting to one, grab it, and then sprinting back.

You must travel to another area and run between those canisters if you’d like the color of Starflame. Squids, ants, scarabs, sharks, and other animals, like all animals, move around continuously. So you’ll never see them in the same spot twice. Furthermore, given the complexity of existence, you end up combining Starflames a great deal to create multiple genes and combine and pairing animals from diverse ecosystems to generate different animals. This can be a bit overwhelming, especially if you have the patience to go all the way to four realms.

The game, on the other hand, tackles this in several ways. Combining two of the same animal to create a new animal is an easy way to ensure you don’t run out of DNA. Although it appears to be a cheap method, doing so ensures that you always get one DNA back after huge cultivation. Additionally, you will have another animal to extract from. A fast pass map scheme is also available. This allows you to jump straight from any position back to the lab or the center of another ecosystem. It does not solve the problem of distance between certain objects, but it is useful.

Animation and Audio-Visual Quality

World for Two is also a sensory experience, which we cannot overstate. The graphic aspect of the game is out of this world in terms of stunning pixel art. They had a hand and devotion to the development of previously unseen areas. I loved watching the sunset across the sky as day gave way to night and then rise once more. Something I wouldn’t have expected if I hadn’t stopped in the woods.

The reflection of the android in the water is an unexpected bonus, as are the clouds softly moving all across the sky and the depth in the arid desert and tundra wasteland. Greater details and structures jump out at you as the narrative starts to change and you start to see an even stronger science fiction element to it.

The android starts to feel empathy as you witness the shark go belly up or the mammoth breaking down as life departs its form, thanks to the death visuals for each animal. Death is grief that even animal life can comprehend, and the gravity with which they express this through this medium is incredible.

The audio is also lovely, and we’re curious to know if the designer did it all by themselves. There’s a stunning level of detail in the music landscape, from the simplistic piano melody that hovers through the laboratory to the crisp chimes of the icy world, from the soothing steel drum-style of the wilderness to the synthetic melancholy of the forest. I’m surprised I’ve never heard of this game before because it depicts so much heart and love in such a simple medium.

Final Thoughts

World For Two exemplifies why the Nintendo Switch prevails and why there are legitimate instances in mobile gaming that should be celebrated. The PC (via Steam) edition of the game is also just as good. Though it has flaws, such as several very repeated motions and gestures, there is a gratifying element in the way the story is written and the predictable but still heartbreaking ending.

The inclusion of a special chapter zero after the game to understand much more about the scientist and how the universe came to be is intriguing and must be a centerpiece for anyone who enjoyed the game. This unusual exercise in compassion, exploration, transcendence and the value of life and sacrifice comes highly recommended. In a nutshell, World for Two is a story about love.