Some thoughts on 'World to the West', the standalone followup to Teslagrad

I've had some time to play World to the West [Steam, GOG], a 3D follow up to Teslagrad where each character has some unique ability.

Disclosure: Key provided for me.


To start off with a note: You don't need to really know anything about Teslagrad to enjoy World to the West since the story is standalone, so don't let that put you off. You should try Teslagrad anyway though, as it's a rather good game.

As far as the story goes, it's nothing amazing, so don't go into this if you're after some story-heavy adventure game. The twists it does have, you generally see them coming, so it's much more about the puzzles surrounding you and the journey you take in solving them.

In World to the West you play as one of four characters, where the game repeatedly switches between them. It gives the game a bit of a weird pace, to have multiple little stories going on but it works. Eventually, they do all manage to meet up as their stories converge.

Each character, as mentioned above, does have a set of unique abilities. You will at times need to utilize multiple characters to progress through a puzzle. Still, even throwing that at you I didn't find it particularly difficult. It's really fun though, clever in the design and the characters are enjoyable to play. I particularly liked the character who whips creatures with her scarf and ends up controlling them. Especially fun controlling those adorable little bouncing foxes, although I killed far too many of them misjudging jumps.

Even though you eventually have all the characters, there's no party system. Instead, you need to select a character once you reach a totem. I didn't really like this system at the start, but once you get further in you understand why it's needed due to how the story progresses.

One section of the game had me backtracking with very little do on the way back, it felt like utterly pointless padding, but thankfully that didn't happen too often. Still, if you're going to force someone to backtrack, make it truly worthwhile.

I'm happy at the fact that they kept the cartoony look, as too many end up going the pixel art route which to me feels a bit tired at times. After growing up with pixel art, I much prefer to see smooth colourful presentation like found in World to the West.

The Linux version is flawless! It looks good, runs smooth and works perfectly with the Steam Controller.

I've been really enjoying it and if you like simple adventure games with puzzles that may require a little thinking, then you might want to check it out. It captures a Zelda-like feel with its own spin due to the use of multiple characters and I think it's well worth a look. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.