Dewdrop Dynasty

It's pretty good

After a bit of a delayed launch hiccup, it's here and it's glorious!

AMAZING GAME (best I have ever played)

great game

Really cute and fun Metroidvania with cozy graphics, smooth control and interesting mechanics. Reminds me a lot of Haiku the Robot and Lone Fungus - two brilliant indie classics in the genre. I enjoyed my time with it but there are a few things that absolutely need addressing ASAP in order for it to truly reach its potential. Right now, I'd say it was a mostly positive experience for me but not a phenomenal one. 1) Dying means you lose drops (the main currency in the game). And there's absolutely nothing you can do about it. Of all the possible death mechanics that are available, this is 100% my most despised one. Both Hollow Knight games catch some slack for their corpse runs mechanics but at least they allow you to pick your currency back; Haiku has these banks that can store unlimited coins; Dewdrop Dynasty goes the "♥♥♥♥ you, you better not die" route which is really, REALLY not fitting for a Metroidvania IMHO. It reminds me (negatively) of Kingdom Shell that has the same issue. This is especially frustrating against bosses where you are forced to just watch your drops slowly bleed away as you keep dying over and over again. Awful feeling. 2) The custom map pins are not nearly enough for the size of the game. And I don't mean the "types" of custom map pins, I mean the quantity of different pins that you can place on the map. I ran through the maximum allowed number of pins in just the first 2-3 zones. So I had to keep removing old pins and remembering where they were. Until at a certain point I didn't even have any pins left that could be removed. Beyond frustrating having to backtrack and wander around for 30-60 mins trying to figure out where your point of interest was because you had to remove the pin about two hours ago for something more important. 3) The firefly quest feels genuinely pointless. First of all, there is no indicator how far along you are into the quest - you can be one firefly away from completion, you can be 30 away. The shop NPC doesn't tell you ♥♥♥♥, just collects your current fireflies and that's it. And for such a massive quest (I assume it's massive since I found and returned over 20 and I still didn't finish it), the reward being some stupid hat.... really?!? C'mon now, is the game trying to troll you? Not only are you not receiving continuous rewards at certain points while returning these fireflies (like you normally would in such long collecting quests) but the grand reward at the end being some useless cosmetic... No. Just no. You need to do better here, Goodgis. 4) The teleport system is just barely usable. All the zones having only a single teleport that connects to a giant hub makes it so that it takes a massive amount of time to go from point A to point B when you're backtracking. There should really be a late game ability that allows you to freely teleport between the flower save points, the current system is just needlessly tedious. 5) Finally, and this isn't necessarily a must but rather a suggestion that I feel very, VERY strongly about - introduce something late game that allows you to see the collectables you've missed. Similar to how Ori 2 does it: long delivery quest with an awesome reward that lets you view everything you've missed on the map without having to consult with an outside guide (which doesn't exist as of writing this review btw). I can see in the ingame menus that I have some missed collectables and the map percentage clearly indicates I have more stuff to find... But I have no clue where!! So anyway, these minor (and not so minor) flaws aside, I think there's a really solid game underneath. The world and level design was great, all areas felt unique and interesting, enemies and NPCs were entertaining and boss fights were awesome. The shoot-ground-to-jump gimmick actually works great and it only gets better once you unlock more and more abilities that play into it. I believe the price is more than fair for the quality that Dewdrop Dynasty presents and I would give it a narrow recommendation. But I would really like to see some of the aforementioned flaws being addressed in future updates. The game is good; but it could be great.

Very fun, I really enjoyed the difficulty as it forced me to actually focus for some boss fights but overall I really enjoy the game!

The good news is I think what is wrong with the game can be fixed. I feel bad for not recommending since I've followed a little bit of the dev on youtube and this guy poured a lot of passion and hard work into this. The artwork is right up my alley. The pixel art is so nice to look at. its a unique element. The player mechanics are creative and have potential but the repetitive enemies make things get old fast. I quit playing after the first boss because it was way too hard. It would be nice if the dodge mechanic were a little more responsive right when you press the button for example. I saw someone else mention that the world felt empty and takes long to traverse and I agree. I think the first levels can be shrunken down a tad. I will definitely come back to try again after some of these are fixed or I would download on my switch and play on easy if it were available for things like waiting at the airport and stuff.