Worldless offers a mysterious and beautiful world to explore - it’s a shame about the combat

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SHOULD I PLAY WORLDLESS?

Give this one a miss. Worldless has some ideas that are neat in theory, but frequently end up feeling like they were implemented by someone unfamiliar with the concept of video games. Particularly aggravating is the combat, which stops the game’s free exploration for a stodgy back and forth turn-based battle system. Combine that with frustrating traversal puzzles in which errors drop you back to the beginning, and this beautiful abstract trip turns into a slog that just isn’t worth making. For a better version of this experience, try Gris instead.

TIME PLAYED

I’ve played a few hours of Worldless, which has been enough to see about half of the game. I’ve explored four of the interconnected zones and unlocked the air dash, the ability to sprint across the water, and a mystical bow and arrow power, as well as many of the nodes on the skill tree.

WHAT’S AWESOME ABOUT WORLDLESS?

• A beautiful world to explore. I loved Worldless’s visual style, which is expressed mostly in its strange and abstract world. As the game opened, I saw that my planet was just one of countless worlds where two galactic forces were doing battle, as one attempted to completely consume the other. My planet, on which the game took place, seemed like a ruined world, with crumbling structures overgrown with glowing plant life gave way to mysterious subterranean caverns where water from the surface poured in to form underground lakes and waterfalls. Above, I leapt between delicate arches and gables searching for new clues about how to save my lonely, dying world.

• Cool abilities. As I played, I found and unlocked new abilities for my spirit warrior character: eventually, I could airdash and run across the surface of water. Each new zone I explored had a new traversal ability to find, and these new powers allowed me to return to previous areas and access places that had been unreachable before.

• Fascinating setting. Worldless takes place amid some kind of galaxy-level struggle, in which reddish energy has swept across space to consume every planet tinged with blue. I haven’t figured out what either of these forces truly are yet, but a strange, skeletal being that seems to live in the darkness has occasionally appeared to provide clues—although frequently, it only raised more questions. It seemed to be as confused as I was. In any case, it’s a compelling setting for an artsy game, and I was curious to learn more not only about the planet I was exploring but about the wider conflict as well.

WHAT SUCKS ABOUT WORLDLESS?

• Combat. This was a deal-breaker for me. Fights in Worldless operate as skill checks: To pass certain points, I had to defeat a creature guarding the area. Fights unfolded in turns: One of us would start by making a series of attacks as the other defended, and then we swapped. While I was on the offensive, I tried to find chains of magic, ranged, and melee attacks that would exploit the creature's weaknesses. On defense, I had to choose which type of block to use and carefully time them to catch the enemy’s attacks.

I could see why this might have seemed like a good concept initially: I could do cool combos and juggle enemies, and eventually unleash powerful upgraded magical abilities. In practice, though, it just didn’t work for me at all. The fights brought all the fluid motion of exploration to a grinding halt, since I was stuck in a static view until they were over. Attacks and blocks both wind up feeling like janky quick time events rather than proper duels. Often, I ran into creatures too powerful for me to defeat until I had unlocked additional abilities or found a new power to use, but there was no way to tell whether I needed a new upgrade or if I was just bad at the game. In a game like this, I should have wanted to seek out new things to fight, and instead I didn’t want to fight at all.

• Frustrating traversal challenges. There were parts of the critical path in which I had to fling myself between boosts hanging in huge open spaces, and any error would result in a fall, not to my death, but to an area far below where I had to begin my ascent all over. It always felt like lost progress, and when it happened, I would just want to close the game instead of trying again.

PLATFORM TESTED

PC, via Steam