World’s End Club (Switch)
World’s End Club is a heartwarming, feel-good tale about the end of the world. While having the fate of humanity hanging in the balance can certainly be a bit of a downer, the twelve 12-year old kids who make up the Go-Getters Club are a bright spot in this game that you might technically call a puzzle platformer, but considering over 80% of it consists of story scenes, it might be better thought of as an occasionally interactive visual novel.
When you start World’s End Club though, you might find the idea that these kids would get along rather preposterous. While on a school trip, the Go-Getters Club witness a meteor strike Tokyo only to find themselves waking up in an underwater theme park. Forced to play the Game of Fate, all of them must complete a task if they wish to be the only one to receive a key to escape their situation, their tormentor taking things a bit further as the task you’re meant to do is found on the wristband someone else is wearing. With some tasks mutually exclusive with plenty of chances for both deception and cooperation, the Game of Fate could make for an interesting social deduction game if the participants were all real players. Here though, it’s actually a bit of an unusual prologue, characters acknowledged as acting out of character and its importance in the grand scheme of things takes a long time to be properly explained. The Game of Fate section is rather short ultimately and may just exist because the game’s developers felt pressure to include some psychological high stakes competition since two of the writers, Kotaro Uchikoshi and Kazutaka Kodaka, previously worked on the Danganronpa and Zero Escape series that heavily feature such concepts.
It is actually when the game shifts to its new ideas that World’s End Club really begins to chart its own course and show what works best about it. World’s End Club is mostly an adventure across Japan to see what happened to Tokyo, the Go-Getters Club fearing they might be the last humans on Earth after they emerge from the Game of Fate. Not only are entire cities abandoned, but monstrous animals and hostile plant life now stand in their path, the trials testing the group’s resolve and their friendship as they end up in high pressure scenarios. While they will bicker, get angry, and sometimes make rash choices, the thing that really makes World’s End Club worth paying attention to are the kids and their relationships.
The kids in the Go-Getters Club are a mix of personalities, and while they all feel like they can fit into a tidy box at first, their interactions with the other characters give them the extra layers of depth and appeal that can help win you over even with character archetypes you might not otherwise find appealing. While you spend most of the adventure as the entirely quiet Reycho, the rest of the characters are happy to speak their mind and with so much of the game’s time spent on giving them opportunities to talk, you come to know them quite well. Nyoro initially appears to be vapid fashion girl, but as she talks you learn she’s actually intensely interested in science, many of the characters you journey with surprisingly gifted youngsters. The tiny Chuko has a fiery temper that leads to overreactions, but she doesn’t push into outright mean territory since it’s easily identified as a cover for her insecurities and inability to be honest with herself. Mowchan is perhaps the weakest of the bunch because the chubby boy is almost always boiled down to jokes about him wanting to eat, but he can also muster up some of the game’s genuinely funny moments when it instead pulls on the other personality traits they sometimes touch on like his unrequited crush.
The chemistry between the kids is also one of the game’s best sources for humor and drama, and watching a girl or guy you know is crushing on the other slowly push towards opening up or aiding the one they like adds an adorable layer to what can sometimes be a struggle to survive in this seemingly empty world. The character designs are already cute and charming, but the voice acting definitely pushes things even further as each character feels like they can better come alive since the performances can balance things out. Chuko for example could have been grating if you couldn’t so easily hear she was guarding her true thoughts, but then you have characters like Jennu whose cool confidence when speaking helps her stand out as a mature guide and makes it even rougher when you see her fracture under the stress of a moment. With plenty of chances to just see the kids talking and getting along as they camp out for the night or talk about what the next city on their cross-country trip is known for, it’s not hard to get sucked in and feel like a member of the club yourself as you start wishing the best for your traveling companions.
The actual plot unravels rather gradually and perhaps gets twisted around over itself a few times, especially when it dumps huge subversions of what you thought you understood back to back in the later portions of the story. Ultimately you can piece together something cohesive enough despite the game sometimes presenting multiple ways to interpret an event until finally the truth comes out, and that is why having the more grounded character moments be the major focus works so well. You know early on the often rude Aniki has something that’s turned him so cold to the others despite it being clear he does care, and a story like his is easier to follow alongside other little personal issues characters have like Tattsun feeling like he’s looked down on for always following the rules or Kansai’s brashness in trying to be a leader instead making others not really accept him. Everyone in the group supports each other on some level and won’t let a member’s problems destroy the group, but the adventure forces them to confront their problems and grow to be able to overcome the very unusual situations they find themselves in.
World’s End Club is sadly not just focused on writing the best story for a delightful if troubled friend group, the game breaking away from the ample story scenes and sweet interactions to place you in some side-scrolling platforming and puzzle segments. While Reycho is the one you’ll play as most, you’ll get time as the other members of the group, especially when circumstances separate them. This is important because most of what you do in these sections actually ties to unique abilities the kids unearth at key moments that test their character. An abnormal awakening allows the kids to tap into often supernatural powers, Reycho’s powerful throw a bit mundane compared to things like Chuko getting the power to breathe fire, Mowchan turning into a ball of iron, or Jennu being able to walk on ceilings. The best part about these powers is perhaps just the fact they inevitably come with a good degree of focus on that character for that segment of the story, putting their issues at the forefront and putting them in some peril that necessitates an incredible power to emerge from within, but they do unfortunately come with some gameplay, and World’s End Club almost sabotages everything with how rough the interactive segments can be.
World’s End Club has enemies, a few boss fights, and puzzles to solve using the powers the Go-Getters Club unlock, but even the simple ones can run up against things like fiddly hit detection or the unfortunate choice to have any hit you sustain lead to an instant pace-breaking death. Dying will usually just make you reappear a bit before whatever killed you to try again, but seeing the Game Over screen because the game didn’t register your power’s use well can be irritating, especially in the moments where it’s likely to happen again and again. Some powers like Nyoro building a walking bomb require a moment of standing still and yet you’ll be given little room to do it as an enemy comes towards you quickly, or maybe Mowchan will be running away from something that can break through his iron defense but you need to ride a geyser that doesn’t always launch you upwards properly. It becomes easy to dread interactivity with any sort of stakes since you can’t really rely on your powers to do their jobs even if you seem to be doing everything right. Some powers are definitely more cleanly implemented than others and the puzzle solving works a good degree better when it’s about figuring things out rather than avoiding danger, but it really does jeopardize the experience because those irritating moments aren’t really counterbalanced well by any standout moments when you are in control of the characters.
World’s End Club’s tale of friendship is incredibly strong and potent though, and luckily that 80-20 split between plot and play doesn’t mean 20% of the game is annoying or obtrusive since some of it doesn’t push itself to be something it apparently can’t execute well. The awakenings are at least satisfying narratively and the game’s soundtrack can sell it’s emotional moments superbly to get you excited or soften your heart with a moment that’s sweet. Interestingly, the story can branch based on moments where you’re asked to make a decision between two possible paths for the group. In another touch that may be the lingering expectations of the game’s writers influencing things, you’ll actually play out every possible choice in order to unlock the true ending, but despite it not being the best fit for the story in a few ways, it does mean you get to spend more time with the cast and see them in different situations that can endear them to you even more. It can almost feel like the game realizes its weaknesses the closer to the actual ending you get as it starts to put its writing forward more than its action, the heart behind it all doing so much to save what could have been a wreck of a game if it had decided to dwell on its weak platforming segments even more.
THE VERDICT: Getting to experience the heart-warming journey of the Go-Getters Club can feel like crossing a rickety bridge, there always a bit of fear you’ll be thrown into a gameplay section where some simple fundamental piece of a puzzle or action lets you down a bit. Stick it out though and World’s End Club provides far more of what it excels at, a well-voiced cast of delightful friends grappling with charming youthful concerns on top of an overly intricate plot. You spend enough time with them you want to see them succeed and get along and World’s End Club knows most of its time should be spent on developing the bonds between the cast to help them work their way into your heart too. While it would definitely work best as a visual novel, World’s End Club’s story of hope won’t let some technical problems get it down for long.
And so, I give World’s End Club for Nintendo Switch…
A GOOD rating. World’s End Club is not the game for you if you need a video game to have engaging interactivity, and you shouldn’tt come into it expecting the guys behind Danganronpa and Zero Escape to put on an encore performance for their tales of despair and death. World’s End Club definitely isn’t entirely cheery, but this game’s young cast are mostly here to make you smile as they grapple with their situation and their feelings. If not for its heavy and often complicated plot about what exactly is happening in the world, it could appeal to a younger audience who just wants to see a group of fun personalities get into strange situations and learn more about themselves and their friends through such trials. Some characters are more complex, charming, or amusing than others, but it’s the group as a whole that really shines brightest because it is composed of such varied but surprisingly complementary characters. The drama never gets too intense because they’re too young and more importantly, they do value their friendships deeply, and while there is definitely some impactful moments of peril or doubt, you can’t help but get invested in helping this batch of buddies survive this trying situation. Beyond the easy suggestion of just fully diving into the story as its only draw, World’s End Club either could have used a good deal more polish or kept its puzzles and battles more humble in scope. Already it can feel like many of the moments where you utilize powers are there as some part of a character’s ongoing personal journey, but another possible fix would be removing how annoying Game Overs are. They don’t punish you much so grinding things to a halt for a screen you’ll come to loathe ends up the bigger punishment because you just want to try something again that maybe should have worked already. Either some actual durability on the cast so they can take a hit or two or just a far quicker reset after an error would do wonders for making these portions easier to push through. Of course, suggesting just better action or puzzles is an obvious fix, but some would work well enough in a game that wasn’t inconveniencing you for minor failures or struggled to even get the basics down.
It’s sad you have to push through some weak but thankfully quite manageable portions of gameplay to experience the delightful story of the Go-Getters Club. World’s End Club does feel like a game that is struggling a bit to figure out what it wants to be, so while it can write out characters going through such issues rather well, it ends up nearly missing out on becoming what it deserves to be because it never overcomes its faults fully. It’s not like you’re miserable when you’re doing tepid puzzles or rubbing against a technical issue though, so once you’ve overcome that little trial, you can get back to the characters you’re here for: a lovable bunch of varied personalities that will have you feeling the full gamut of emotions as you just want the best for these people who you get to know so deeply they could practically be your friend too.