World for Two Review
A little over a decade ago, a TV series titled Life After People aired on the History channel. It examined how planet Earth and its non-human inhabitants would react to the sudden disappearance of all of humanity. I was a fan of the show because it explored topics I hadn’t considered, such as the extermination of the many species that rely on humans for survival, such as head lice and mice. It also drove home how, though human infrastructure has continually damaged the environment, the decay of that same infrastructure such as dams and nuclear plants, could do a lot of damage as well. Maybe it’s morbid of me, but I’m fascinated by this examination of the world after the vanishing of the human race. This interest was fed by the release of World for Two last week.
World for Two tells the story of an android built by the last human on Earth to help him repopulate the planet, but not in THAT way. After the one-two punch of a deadly plague and a massive flood, all human and animal life on Earth has been wiped out and trapped the human in his underground bunker. Immune to disease, the android is sent to the surface to operate machinery and gather resources that can be used to recreate the now extinct fauna. As the android rebuilds the ecosystem, they will be able to explore further afield which exposes them to new forms of life as well as new glimpses into the former human existence.
When I first started playing World for Two, I thought that its interest in genetics and evolution would mean the game would be at least somewhat realistic, but I was sorely mistaken. In order to make new life on Earth, players have to start with single celled organisms and slowly move up the evolutionary chain. This is done by harvesting the DNA of animals the player makes and combining it with the barely-explained “artificial genes” produced by a machine in the underground bunker lab. These genes are nonsensical for several reasons, including the insect gene being separate from the beetle gene, there being a gene for the expansive group of “sea animals”, and there being a gene just for carnivores, as if fish, insects, mammals and others aren’t carnivores. On top of that, trying to move further on the evolutionary tree is a total guessing game thanks to the game’s bizarre ideas of what evolved from what. I’m no biologist but I’m pretty sure cats didn’t evolve into foxes, and those foxes didn’t then evolve into lions, who then evolved into polar bears.
Because of this unpredictable path of advancement, I found myself wildly guessing at what needed to be combined, throwing any combination I could think of together, totally abandoning any reason. This was made worse by the limited amount of DNA and genes the player had access to at any one time. Each animal can only have three portions of DNA harvested from it and the genes require surface resources to be created, so players regularly have to stop working on creating new life to backtrack and make old life again. I get the desire to make a puzzle tricky, but this method feels like being given the pieces of several different jigsaw puzzles at once while not being told how many puzzles they were supposed to make and occasionally having to track down pieces that had been stolen. This meant my experience was largely an oscillation between boredom and frustration and rarely having a good time.
Once an animal is created by the player, they will be seen out in the world. If the animal is one that walks on the ground, it will be found there. Otherwise, they will be inexplicably floating in the air.
I’ve tolerated or even enjoyed games whose mechanics and gameplay are subpar so long as they have a good story and writing, but unfortunately World for Two falls apart on that front as well. I don’t think writing is easy and that goes double for contemplative, dramatic stories. That said, World for Two is so sure it’s got some really deep, meaningful things to say and it just doesn’t. There is supposed to be a cloud of melancholy over the entire game because players are more or less forced to kill the animals they create to harvest their DNA, but that easily could have been avoided. It’s not explicitly explained how exactly the android is getting DNA out of the animals, but if its through tissue extraction it shouldn’t be a limited resource. As I said before, I’m not a biologist, but I know that living creatures make more of themselves, both through regeneration and reproduction. Life, in short, finds a way. However, neither of these basic biological functions are represented in the game, ignored in favor of the game’s desire to be mopey. If the game was so set on driving home this perspective, animals should have either created offspring or at least replenished their DNA stores at a slow pace. Then it would be up to the player to decide how hard they want to push for their goal, making the deaths actually meaningful. I have further problems with the game’s writing regarding both the setting and the evolutionary tree, but that would get into spoilers, so you’ll just have to trust me.
Creating is hard, and creating a video game twice as hard, so I never feel good when I have to write such a down review. I know the developers at Seventh Rank worked hard on this game and put their hearts into the message, unfortunately it just hasn’t come together into something I can recommend. I think whichever aspect of this game you think sounds interesting there are probably other games out there that do it better. They might not be as affordable but at that point you’re better off just saving your money.
Don’t buy this game
I hate to say it, but there’s nothing here worth spending money on
