The pixel art here is beautiful. The landscapes all have their own vibes and each is very well-made. Because New Wirral is a place between worlds, there are elements from other realities sprinkled throughout that make it really feel like its own unique space. There are electrical junction boxes on poles, British telephone boxes, plus switches and levers littered throughout the world. Some of these aspects make their way into the creature design as well, which really helps sell the hodgepodge of ideas that this world exemplifies.

Beast design is strange, but feels at home in this world. There are crabs with traffic cone shells, walking fish tanks, djinns coming out of glasses of wine and a literal bullet. You can carry a team of six creatures and I always had a hard time choosing because of the plethora of options here. One of my favorites was Scorchfyre, which is basically a fire dog wearing vintage aviator flight goggles. He’s adorable, look at him!

The game has a surprising amount of mechanics as well, not just in the battling either. World navigation opens up as you collect more creatures. They give you powers to traverse the world to reach new areas. For instance, catching the bullet creature allows you to dash and break obstacles. This upgrades your movement substantially, making exploration faster, but they also have a fast travel system. You can fast travel from your map screen to any train station on the map that you’ve visited. This allows for full freedom for exploration as you can easily teleport to a safe location if things get dicey. You’re incentivized to explore every inch of the map and you can tell the developers put a lot of effort into the world design as a result. Traversal usually includes pressing buttons and pulling levers, but the power ups you get from capturing creatures are what really makes it fun. 

You can tell that battling was given a lot of the development time as its systems are really deep, without feeling too complex. There are many different types of creatures such as plastic, fire, astral, poison, wind and so forth. Many interactions occur based on common sense, and the first few times you see something happen, the game will explain the mechanic. Here’s an example, if you hit a wind type with a fire type move, it will create an updraft and that will then block further moves from hitting the enemy for a few turns. This is one of many interactions within the game and others follow a similar thought process, but there are a lot of them. Luckily you are given reminders of the type interactions for the first few times you see them, so I never felt lost. Some mechanics are more impactful than others though. If you use an elemental move on an astral type, it will gain increased AP generation. AP (Action Points) are used each turn to attack and each beast gets two per turn. Stronger attacks cost more points and some weaker attacks are free. It’s a system that is relatively easy to get the hang of if you’re fighting in one on one scenarios, but this game is always a two versus two. You and your companion fight side by side against wild creatures and other people. It can be a bit daunting at first, but I got used to it pretty quickly given my experience with the genre. There is one more mechanic to battling that adds an extra layer. That is fusion. Essentially you and your partner fuse creatures to become more powerful. This lasts until the end of the battle or until your HP bar reaches zero. This powerful mode is balanced by a meter that charges this ability. You may not have it available for every battle, unless you manage it well, so it's important to only use it when you really need it. The fused creatures look really cool too!