There is a particular trap that many visual novels with a romantic component can fall into. Put two attractive (usually anime-style) characters together, sprinkle in some flirting, add a handful of blushes and awkward shenanigans, and suddenly everything else becomes secondary. Just like many others before it, The World Well: Blood of Caro could very easily have gone down that road, yet it doesn’t feel like a romance VN pretending to be a dark fantasy adventure. It’s a dark fantasy adventure in which a believable chemistry is created between its two protagonists as they try to survive a dangerous world steeped in conflict.
In the world of The World Well, Vampires rule, and ‘Caro,’ which are vampire/human hybrids, are hunted and treated as less than human. The first of the protagonist duo is such a Caro, which is why she doesn’t even have a name. She is simply ‘4’. An escapee from the clutches of her master, she lives like a scavenger and bounty hunter, while carrying plenty of baggage from her past. Soon she’ll meet Noma, a resistance mage with her own secrets and motivations, and their meeting will begin a journey that gradually expands from a relatively straightforward, “humans-versus-vampires” quest into something grander.
Political intrigue, forgotten history, robots and time travel, a bizarrely shaped archipelago of continents. The setting has enough detail for anyone who enjoys digging into lore but doesn’t demand memorising an entire encyclopaedia to enjoy the story. Initial chapters tend to be a bit more exposition-heavy than they should, in an attempt to explain some important aspects in-depth. Add some awkward phrasing and typos, and it sort of prevents players from following the story as comfortable as they could otherwise.
Fortunately, the developer is already fixing localisation issues, and once the story stops explaining how the world functions and starts focusing on the characters, everything becomes noticeably better. Note that there are yuri elements here. Quite a lot of it, in fact. There are affectionate moments, awkwardness, attraction and thoughts that make it abundantly clear where it’s all heading…but Blood of Caro isn’t simply a yuri visual novel, as this aspect never consumes everything around it. For starters, the relationship between 4 and Noma is handled with considerably more patience than one might expect. Not only do they not immediately fall into each other’s arms, but 4, being the distrustful, opportunistic survivor that she is, makes Noma’s life quite hard.
It’s only once they spend enough time travelling together that the two heroines begin to gradually learn about one another and eventually develop a much deeper bond. Again, yes, there is romance, but it benefits from the adventure itself, because every danger, argument and revelation gives the relationship another layer. You don’t watch two characters fall in love in a schoolyard; you observe them do so while they try to brave a hostile realm and solve all kinds of problems. There are vampires to worry about, political conspiracies, and plenty of people that are more than eager to harm the girls. Their connection happens because of these experiences.
The whole thing has a kind of road-trip quality. That means that sometimes things take their sweet time to move on. It also means that the world feels like somewhere the protagonists are actually travelling through rather than a collection of forgettable backgrounds. Additionally, a thing that immediately separates this from the vast majority of VNs is how cinematic it feels. This isn’t simply a succession of character portraits appearing on screen while they exchange dialogue for several hundred lines. There is a stupendous amount of dynamic camera work, CG animation, environmental presentation and even a couple of 3D cinematic scenes. Characters are still static, but the scenes frequently change perspective and important moments are presented with extra visual direction.
None of this means that this suddenly becomes an action title. It remains fundamentally a visual novel where one reads line after line of text, supplemented by a bunch of – hopefully – pretty pictures…but it is a visual novel with a lot more interest in staging than the genre’s most conventional examples. The atmosphere can also be quite strong during certain moments, with the game managing to combine grimness and style with…err, style. It’s also not relentlessly miserable either. There is humour scattered throughout the journey, along with quieter character moments that prevent the story from becoming an endless parade of misery, romance, or comedy.
The approximately 12-something-hour length feels appropriate for what Blood of Caro is attempting. There is enough time for the partnership (and more) between 4 and Noma to develop naturally, for the world to reveal its secrets and for the adventure to have a beginning, a middle and an end. That’s especially important for 4 and Noma. Their dynamic needs room to breathe, and the game seems comfortable allowing them to be awkward, funny or simply pleasant company for one another before throwing another existential crisis at their heads. Are there moments that might make you want to search for the skip button? Yes, but time mostly flies by very pleasantly.
Choices and branching conversations provide additional reasons to revisit the story, and the relatively compact length allows trying out different routes. Things don’t really change that much, but different choices do reveal different perspectives and hidden information, something which gives each step of the journey far more importance than simply choosing whether your protagonist wants to kiss or not kiss another character. There are certainly things to polish, particularly the English localisation, how the pacing sometimes stumbles, and how it sometimes finds it hard to remain being an emotive journey and suddenly becomes a wordy political thriller with many names and events that don’t always stick to memory – and yet remains one of the finest examples of a visual novel.
