Little World Escape Review

It’s awesome how the relatively democratic nature of the App Store introduces players to new games and creators they may have never encountered. However, it can also lead to promising ideas getting out there a little before their time. While it pulls players in with captivating concepts, Little World Escape ultimately pushes them away with antagonizing, undercooked execution.

In Little World Escape players help guide an astronaut hopping from planet to planet. With its focus on high scores and tiny colorful planetoids, the space exploration experience is much more Super Mario Galaxy than Eve: Online. Players can run left or right on the rotating spheres and jump once the rocket icon appears. However, soon devilish little aliens emerge from the surface and chase players around the rocks, so waiting to jump is a luxury spacefarers can never afford. By reaching further edges of the cosmos and collecting more stars along the way, players unlock achievements and new planets of different shapes and sizes for future runs.

Unfortunately a combination of poor design decisions turns Little World Escape from the pleasant planet-hopping adventure it could have been to a stressful exercise the rivals Flappy Bird's difficulty. First off, successful jumps require immaculate precision. Players briefly stop before leaping and their trajectory is always completely straight, but the planets they’re standing on never stop spinning. So players must then make the right adjustments, because veering even slightly off course leads to death. There’s barely any helpful gravitational force to pull them to safety.

On its own, that wouldn’t be so bad. In fact, it probably would have added some needed depth. However, while that mechanic calls for more methodical play, the frantic alien pursuers completely contradict it with hurried chaos. Since players can’t outrun these faster foes, they are pressured to jump as soon as possible to survive - often anxiously waiting for rocket icons that inexplicably show up late. And of course, because jumps must be perfectly timed and aligned, the resultant forced, split-second decision-making creates constant frustrating mistakes. It’s hard to stay motivated and want to improve when so many fundamental parts of the game feel like they are actively conspiring against you.

Little World Escape's saving grace is that its core idea is salvageable. It could probably be fixed by just changing a few values and loosening a few time window constraints. But right now, unlike gravity, players won’t be drawn to it.