All Walls Must Fall is currently available on Nintendo Switch. The game is a direct port of the 2018 PC version with the same name. In pure form, All Walls Must Fall is a tactical game with time travel mechanics added into the mix.
The Wall hasn’t fallen
All Walls Must Fall is set in Berlin. The year is 2089 and the famous Wall is still standing firmly dividing democratic West-Europe and communistic East-Europe. You are a bad-ass super soldier dressed in cyberpunk attire who has to prevent the world’s downfall from a nuclear bomb. For over 100 years time-traveling agents from both sides have tried to be one step ahead of the other. Your agency has found out the exact time and place that caused the nuclear bomb and you are tasked to return to that point and figure out a way to stop the bombing from happening.
Let’s go clubbing
A gay-only nightclub in Berlin is where it all went down and with small pieces of intel offered by your agency, it is up to you to go and discover. Getting into the club might already be the first hurdle. You can go straight into the door but you’ll have to get approval from the doorman. Choosing the right conversation path might get you in with not too much fuss but it might also result in a fight right from the start. When this happens, the game changes from being an exploration game to a tactics game inspired by X-com like mechanics. The game imposes a grid on the floor and actions are taken turn-based.
Each taken action results in counter actions taken by your opponents. Some actions “cost” more time so your opponents could use that extra time to get the upper hand. Using your environment to dash towards cover and taking time to plan out your next move will get you further in the game. If you happen to make a mistake you could use the time-travel ability to undo your steps and try a different approach. Using this ability can’t be done endlessly so think wisely when you’re going to spend your resources on this OP tactic.
Hacking and other abilities
Exploring the club and trying to get information out of combat is necessary but also costs TR or Time Resources. Being sparse with these could be beneficial. TR is used for abilities in All Walls Must Fall. At the start of the game, you already have the ability to hack doors and drone terminals. Hacking doors offer a more stealthy approach through the club. Hacking drone terminals could benefit a battle greatly because these drones have a bigger range of attack as opposed to you and really hone in on their target without having to worry about taking cover.
After each mission is done you get the chance to go to the shop. Here you can heal yourself, buy secondary weapons or switch out your primary weapon. Upgrading your health or your weapons will greatly benefit your chance of getting through the next level. If you’ve been saving your earned points from previous levels you can also gain new abilities to have even more options. One ability gains you the option to return in time but this time it’s only you who is affected by it. This can be used to undo incoming damage but still leave already killed opponents on the floor.
Next level
In All Walls Must Fall you gain replay the same night at the same location at the start of each level. Each time you’ve gathered new information to prevent the Nuclear bombing from happening. With each “restart” the nightclub is procedurally generated offering a different layout each time. At first, I thought this was a nice idea to keep the game interesting but eventually, the gimmick wore off and resulted in a feeling of redundancy.
Conclusion
All Walls Must Fall probably worked better on PC than it does on the Nintendo Switch. The camera control feels very clunky and often got in the way of me enjoying the game. The gimmick of time travel and procedurally generated levels offers fun and excitement from the start of the game but wears off a bit too fast, to be honest. For the price of this game, you can’t really go wrong so fans of the turn-based tactical genre might give this one a try.
