Dewdrop Dynasty

It's pretty good

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

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.

Watched devlog I'm sure the game will be great

Now i only have 1.9 hours and only defeated 2 bosses but a quick bad review is needed. It is a mixed game for sure. The game is very polished in the art department everything have life and is nice to look at. The story is ok very simple premise. Thats kinda it the animations are nice and art is good and game design is relatively good but there are some bad things. First off the price which is 20 bucks. It is not worth 20 bucks the game isn't. Maybe the time spent on it is but the game is not. It is a short metroidvania that is like 5 bucks more expensive than HK and is only like 8 hours I think and might be shorter. Now Hollow knight is a game that has been released for almost 10 years. Dewdrop dynasty has been in development for like 5 probably and there is less content and some stuff that isnt there that should be. Like controller support anyone like me with longer fingers and bigger hand sin general will feel strain after an hour of playing and games like this should be played with a controller anyway. There is no in game controller support and you cannot ma things to mouse button so no shoot on your mouse. The game also has small things like not being able to look up and down in a platformer making blind jumps you cannot see. Also wall jumping kinda sucks don't know why there isnt coyote time and why no one playtesting this game didn't bring it up but there is none so you must be hold in the direction of the wall to wall jump which sucks. The MAIN issue is the price like I said it is not worth 20 bucks there is too little content for 20 bucks. You would rather underpay for content than overpay but in this state 20 bucks is not worth this. It very much surprised me that it was 20 bucks and not a reasonable 10 bucks. In a economy and time where indie games are praised for their price this one missed the mark and I think that is the biggest issue. Fun game tho now go drink water.

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!

great game