As an amateur creator, sometimes your best doesn’t make the cut. For instance, with each video I have edited, my work improves and sets new standards of quality for myself. However, compare these videos to established YouTubers or anyone with a following, and my lack of skills becomes all the more evident. This is not to say my work sucks. Maybe it does. I kind of dug a hole for myself here. My point is we don’t compare a kindergartner’s finger painting to an art major’s final gallery. It’s unfair to the art major.
World for Two feels like its developer, Shinichi Nishimori, poured everything he had into its production. It’s beautiful and imaginative, and other games should aspire to match its level of polish. Despite the love devoted to this game, it struggles to be actually enjoyable, whether that is a flaw in Nishimori’s vision or the result of him making this game largely by himself. With a few more opinions and developers to hash out World for Two’s gameplay and design, it may have been a greater product, but as it stands now, it looks amateurish compared to other games of its ilk.
What is it?
World for Two basically plays like Doodle God. Those unfamiliar with Doodle God might know its original inspiration, Alchemy. If you haven’t played Alchemy, I imagine it’s a lot like World for Two.
In World for Two, you are an android created by the last human alive. All other creatures have gone extinct, and it’s up to you to populate the world with new species. You begin by harvesting crystals which allow you to produce archetypal genes, and you start with combining two “primordial genes” to make a simple amoeba. By splicing genes with samples of DNA, you’ll spawn new creatures which will begin to inhabit one of four environments. You’ll produce small critters at first and eventually work your way up to larger beasts.
You’ll have to do some legwork to continue your experiments. Once you create a new creature, you must visit it in its environment to retrieve its DNA. If you’re extracting a specific animal’s DNA for the first time, you must complete a simple matching game in which you combine two strands of DNA. Red nucleotides go with blue ones, and yellows pair with greens. After this, you can collect three samples of DNA before the creatures dies and evaporates before you. Normally, a blood sample could provide a sufficient DNA sample in the real world, but World for Two likes to tears chunks off, just to make sure they got everything.
You have access to only one environment (the Bog) at the beginning, with the rest becoming available as you produce more unique species. Different crystals can then be harvested from each biome, opening up more genes for you to manufacture and combine with DNA. In the course of this gameplay loop, you’ll glean information about the world and story by interacting with the scenery, killing animals, or talking to the scientist. It’s like the circle of life from the Lion King but bleak and pixelated.
What’s good?
- Nishimori has crafted stunning pixel art. The backgrounds are specifically gorgeous, with the Bog treating you to spiraling vines riddled with thorns. Each animal features a unique color scheme, and later, you’ll encounter new takes on various mythical creatures. It would’ve been nice if the backgrounds and designs contributed to a larger lore, but alas, they’re just eye candy.
- Although some of the DNA combinations ignore all logic, World for Two helps steer you toward successful matches without giving away any solutions. Most importantly, it keeps track of your incorrect guesses. You can also peek at a book which features an evolutionary tree of sorts which shows which animal DNA can still be manipulated to produce a new creature.
What’s bad?
- Most of the gameplay feels like unnecessary busywork. You click a button by a tower to collect crystals. You harvest DNA with that same button. The DNA minigame is nothing more than a multiple-choice question. The meat of the game is figuring out how a mouse becomes a beluga whale, but you’ll spend most your playtime running and tapping A to gather materials in order to enjoy the fun part.
- The fact that harvesting DNA kills your creatures not only results in more busywork but undermines your goal to repopulate the world. As I mentioned before, each animal yields three copies of DNA and then disappears. If you want to keep the animal around, you can only harvest two DNA samples. If you waste those samples in incorrect pairings, you need to recreate the old animal (plus any creatures needed to make it), go harvest its DNA, and then return to the lab to try again. Due to how monotonous this process is, keeping animals alive is a needless luxury, and your environments may remain as barren as they were at the start. If animals could regain their DNA over time, this issue would be largely mitigated
- Even with all of the needless padding, you’ll quickly reach the end of World for Two. I chose to keep one of each animal alive, so my playtime of four hours may be a little longer than other playthroughs. Of that time, I maybe spent 90 minutes actually puzzling out which combinations to make.
- If the story was a creature, its DNA would be a combination of science fiction clichés and half-hearted philosophies. Our android makes fleeting observations during its journey, questioning the meaning of life. It doesn’t come to any major epiphanies, and while it can question where we go after we die, it quips that religion is beyond its understanding. The ending adds the prerequisite drama needed to slightly tug at the heartstrings, but it’s easier to predict the ending than determining how a lion is the evolutionary ancestor of the polar bear.
What’s the verdict?
Shinichi Nishimori didn’t commit any grave sin when making World for Two. It’s competent and largely harmless, and I imagine it’s a better fit on the smartphone where it had originated. It’s also monotonous and lacking any substance. When other solo developers have made the likes of Return of the Obra Dinn, Undertale, Stardew Valley, and Axiom Verge, I can’t excuse World for Two’s failings.
That doesn’t mean Nishimori couldn’t build on his concept. In fact, World for Two is the type of game that would be perfect to dissect for my “I Can Do It Better” video series. Doing that, however, would involve me creating a video on my own, and that’s just a tad too meta right now.
Arbitrary Statistics:
- Score: 5
- Time Played: Over four hours
- Number of Players: 1
- Games Like It on Switch: Doodle God, Scribblenauts Mega Pack