You can tell yourself it's for the good of the robospider all you want, but your greed drives you to mine so deeply into the Wall that when the mechanical arachnid's proximity alarms blare, you're too far away to return to its aid. 

Sure, you need the resources buried behind the Wall's vast brick exterior. You need the weapons hidden in its caverns. You need the item upgrades clutched in the skeletal grip of the dead adventurers that came before you. But you could have started your journey back to the robospider sooner. You didn’t have to tell yourself, “Just one more block.” Now there’s no way to get back in time to operate its defensive cannons against the incoming wave of demonic bugs. When the spider explodes and your roguelike run up Wall World’s vertical biomes ends, you’ll only have yourself to blame.


Wall World is an unexpected fusion of ideas. You spend half of the game in a take on Missile Command, firing flak cannons, 12-foot stakes, and homing missiles at swarms of monsters in a desperate bid to protect your robospider, your mobile base and only means of climbing the endlessly tall structure that gives the game its name. The other half is a take on Manic Miners. You leave the pilot's chair behind, don an exosuit, and drill into the Wall, breaking open mineral veins with your laser, hoovering up the resources, and bringing them back to the spider’s cabin to purchase upgrades for your equipment. It’s a strange fusion but a successful one. 

It's in the sense of tension between these two modes where Wall World comes alive. The monster waves spawn periodically, and if this ever-incoming threat destroys your robospider, then your game is over. But you can't simply stay in the gunner's seat because you don’t receive any loot for killing enemies, and each wave is more powerful than the last. To keep pace with their growing strength, you’ll need to upgrade your equipment. You must leave the spider’s cockpit behind to mine in the Wall. And, the deeper your excavations go, the farther you'll have to travel back when the enemies inevitably arrive.


A bar on the bottom left of your screen indicates when an attack is incoming. Keep a wary eye on the timer, and you can leave the coalface and get back in the gunner's chair in time to fight off the next wave. That option is always open; all the information you need to make sensible decisions is available. But it’s hard to resist the allure of the mines. Every block you destroy may reveal a mineral vein or an item that will strengthen your defenses or abilities, such as an automated drone, a block-shattering earthquake generator, or a shotgun that would be perfect for taking out the swarm of flying monsters that destroyed your mechanized arachnid on the last run. It makes for an addictive cocktail of need and greed.

So, yes, you could leave in good time, or you could take one more sip and break apart that last block to see what's hidden behind it. The choice is yours, but the clock is ticking. And you’ll only have hubris to blame for your next game over. Wall World is now available on Epic Games Store.