[Review] World Splitter - Nintendo Switch

Developed By: NeoBird
Published By: BUMBLE3EE
Categories: Puzzle, Platformer
Release Date: 04.21.21

World Splitter is the kind of game that leaves me really conflicted about how I feel about it. There’s an amazing premise for the game, but that’s blanketed in issues. Issues that mostly come from the character you play as.

In World Splitter, for lack of better words…you split the world. Each level actually has two different versions, separated by the Dimension Rift. The way the stages are formatted are different between the two versions and you’ll need to move the Rift to reveal, or even remove platforms. I love this, I love when games have two different versions of stages or levels and you need to work around that to proceed. Of course, your goal isn’t just to get to the end, you’ll need to rescue these little cute creatures too. If you had to really think hard for just getting to the end of a level, you’re going to think even harder to do this. Lets say you have all of this down pat, try the levels within seconds and without rotating your rift so much. All of this can be done with a friend if you desire.

So this is where my issues come up. The character you play as and the controls in general make the game less fun than it deserves to be. You can jump, but your jump is useless, it’s barely a hop. There is decent length to it, but from a vertical standpoint, it makes me wonder why the developers didn’t just make this a quick dash. I didn’t even realize I was jumping at first. Jumps are also mapped to the A button. This becomes a bit of an issue when at times the controls ask you to use the left stick to move, the right stick to move the Rift, a shoulder button to rotate the Rift, and the A button to jump somewhere. Why not map the jump to L+R and leave the rotation to ZL+ZR? I felt like I was using the claw control scheme at times.

Just going from one end to the other in most levels isn’t typically a big issue. It’s when you try and collect everything and then try to do it under the requisites for Gold ranks for speed and rotation where it becomes an exercise in frustration. It got to the point where I would just try and beat levels and not get too fancy, because I would get screwed over trying to get this last little alien only to fall because of a crappy jump.

Using the Rift to make slopes or elevate is most likely how you’re going to get places. This can be an issue if you’re not exactly precise, especially mixed with the bad jump and trying to adjust things after the fact can just lead to being pushed around or crushed by the world appearing. Levels are single screen, so this means no checkpoints and thankfully no giant stages.

Stages and how they change, especially when more rifts is nice to look at and rather colorful. I wasn’t to thrilled with how most of the game looks, but I love how this comes off. The music is also pretty decent, but does get a tad repetitive after a while. I was pleased to see animated cutscenes upon starting the game however, something I don’t think we get really enough of.

If you’re playing just to complete levels, you’re gonna have a decent time with a creative puzzle platformer. If trying to do a completionist run is your goal, you’re going to be incredibly frustrated at the number of micro-issues that add up. I feel if, of all things the jump was slightly adjusted and I could map where the button for it was, I’d probably have less issues. This really is a neat little creative puzzler, so it’s a shame that it gets dragged down.