The portal has opened.
The World Next Door is a narrative-driven, action-adventure game that follows Jun, a rebellious teen girl trapped in a parallel world inhabited by magical creatures. Produced by Rose City-Games and published by Viz Media, inspired by emotional storytelling and thrilling action, Jun meets and develop friendships with an eclectic cast of characters while uncovering the mysteries hidden within the world.
It was released for Nintendo Switch and Steam on March 28, 2019. Viz Media released a prequel novel
as well.
Tropes present in this work:
- Adults Are Useless: Aside from being completely unseen throughout the game, anyone in a position of authority seems to be completely incapable of getting anything done. They're aware that a human is still on Emrys, but apparently have no ability to actually find Jun. They also seem to be incapable of stopping a group of teens from plundering the dangerous and supposedly important shrines. They do arrest whoever you have on lookout at one of the shrines, but make no effort to go inside where they would find the active party, and the ones arrested are let go the very next morning.
- Alternate Universe: Travel between different worlds is possible in this setting.
- Cool Mask: Jun is always wearing a fox mask.
- The Faceless: Not only is Jun always wearing a mask, she always faces away whenever she doesn't have one on.
- Flaming Skulls: Horace's head is a horned skull with burning embers for eyes.
- Foreign Culture Fetish: Jun was fascinated with Emrys long before she had a chance to actually go there, including having a large collection of masks. Picking certain dialogue choices can really amp it up as she'll geek out over every aspect of Emryn culture and magic.
- Ghostly Glide: Liza does this because she's half-spirit, and she's intangible from the shins down.
- Hybrid Monster: Liza, who is half-devil and half-spirit.
- I Have Your Wife: Liza's girlfriend, Persimmon, was kidnapped by a mysterious group in order to extort Liza into keeping Jun from making it back through the portal to Earth before it closed.
- Interspecies Friendship: Technically the case with all the Emryn characters, since they're all different types of magical creatures, but it's more pronounced between Jun and Liza since Jun is a human from Earth, and they were online friends for months before Jun ever got a chance to go through the portal.
- Limit Break: If you place special runesnote in the proper shape and cast with them, whichever friend you have set up for it will use their special ability.
- Liza summons multiple balls of darkness which home in on enemies.
- Horace casts a powerful fireball which increases in strength if there are more ember runes are on the field.
- Cerisse casts a strong healing spell which has the potential to raise Jun's HP beyond its maximum.
- Rainy puts a magical barrier around Jun, protecting her from damage and status effects for a short time.
- Lux confuses enemies, causing them to attack each other or be unable to cast spells.
- Vesper activates all shock runes on the field, doing more damage the more there are.
- Once Done, Never Forgotten: For Horace, it's the time he set his shoes on fire while playing with a fireball spell. At least if Liza has anything to say about it.
- Speaking Simlish: The spoken dialogue consists of this, similar to Gravity Rush or The Sims. Aki the Newscaster is the sole exception, which was possibly done to make her voice more recognizable.note
- Uncanny Family Resemblance: Siren twins Lux and Vesper look almost exactly identical, but avoid being Half-Identical Twins by having very different personalities and styles of clothing.
- Trapped in Another World: Jun ends up in this situation when she gets held up and isn't able to make it back to the portal to Earth before it closes.
- Your Days Are Numbered: While a day trip is fine, humans can't survive in Emrys for more than a few days.
