WELCOME TO MY MIND

Indie Game Spotlight: The World Next Door

We’re back with another Tumblr fave this week for our Indie Game Spotlight. We’re talking The World Next Door. In this game, you play as Jun, a human trapped in a parallel universe full of magical beings. The gameplay is one part visual novel and one part puzzle-battles. Several Youtube commenters have described it as “Tumblr: The Game.”

Who’s answering the Q’s and their role on the team?

Hi, I’m Corey Warning, and I’m the Director of The World Next Door. I dreamed up the original concept with my partner, Will Lewis, and character designer Lord Gris. I also did some of the writing, and was in charge of hiring people more talented than myself to make the game look, sound, and feel great.

Congratulations on the successful release of your game! How has your journey been from being nominated for awards to releasing a versus mode?

Thanks! I’m really proud of how it all came together. For most of the team, this was our first original game, and everyone worked really hard for the better part of 2 years to make it happen. With the Versus Mode update, the game is sort of in this “evergreen” state, so we’re mainly looking for opportunities around porting and localizing for different languages now.

Where did the idea behind The World Next Door originate?

The original concept was to make a “dungeon-crawling dating sim” - but our friends at Kitfox kinda beat us to it with Boyfriend Dungeon. During the early stages of development, the narrative shifted into something more of a coming-of-age story. You play as a character who is completely out of her element and needs to rely on a group of teenagers she just met in a life or death situation.

How did anime and manga inspire The World Next Door?

Our publisher, VIZ Media, was involved with the project from the very beginning. We knew we wanted to create something that would resonate with their fans and the indie games crowd, as well. Being huge fans of anime, manga, and indie games, it was a fairly painless starting point. On top of series like My Hero Academia, we also took inspiration from games like Oxenfree, shows like Stranger Things, and even podcasts, like The Adventure Zone while creating The World Next Door.

The World Next Door combines gameplay elements such as visual novels, roleplay, and puzzle solving. What else can we expect from the game?

Many visual novel games let the player create their own character, so one challenge was figuring out how to create a game that would appeal to fans of the genre while having a set player character. We felt that having Jun, the game’s protagonist, wearing a mask would help players put themselves more in her role. It was also important to us to have players make lots of dialogue choices (for the big moments and little moments) so they always feel in control of Jun.

Figuring out how to contextualize puzzle battles into all of this was probably our biggest challenge. We started by looking at games like Tetris Attack and Puzzle League, but things quickly evolved from there into something that looks more like Match-3 Bomberman. At some point, the idea of creating matches that cast spells at enemies on the board came up, and that was the major turning point for combat. Everything really fell into place after that.

The World Next Door is your latest project with VIZ Media but you have also collaborated with others on projects such as Hiveswap and Cartoon Network Game Jam. What has been your experience partnering with such great brands?

Before this project, Rose City Games was operating more as a support studio. We would partner with teams to help them get their games out the door, or work with a bigger company with less experience in the games space to make something really cool happen. We’ve been extremely fortunate to collaborate with so many talented people up to this point, and wouldn’t have been able to make The World Next Door without everything we learned along the way.

What kind of humanoid monsters can players expect to meet?

Demons, Beasts, Drakes, Spirits, and an ancient race known as Elders all reside in the parallel world of Emrys. In this world, Earth and Emrys have been connected by portals for as long as anyone can remember, so the twin worlds are just a part of daily society. They share technology, culture, and fashion, so there’s a familiarity to this magical realm.