Hatchwell

Really satisfying little dungeon crawler/puzzler that checks my number one box: It's cute. You can buy a ball to throw to your pet/familiar/friend. Just the right amount of challenge/puzzles/mazes, and tricky bosses.

If you are shopping for a cute fluffy Zelda Link to the Past clone.....you found it here. But it isn't perfect....not even close. The game fails to explain a lot from the beginning. I have money to buy goods now, and have no idea what anything does. The controls are confusing to get in and out of the menu since you have start for a restart/quit menu, and then R bumber for menu where you will find inventory and settings. Settings...really? Then to save you have to go into the R bumper menu than hit L bumper. It is so poorly planned you will sit there just trying to remember what menu to go to and how to navigate them. The pet aspect is a cute...gimmick. In the end my pet feels more on a liability than useful. In fact in the first dungeon I shed no tears when it was out of health. Aggressive style should be renamed to suicidal. If you are going to have an AI partner...give it some brains. I've seen chairs that are smarter than my pet. But the biggest problem is that nothing is really explained. Have fun figuring out how to beat the first boss on your own. Actually let me put it into perspective: currently only a little over 50% of people have the achievement for beating the first boss (50.3% to be exact). In other words....you and a friend buy this game, and then look at each other. One of the two of you will not even bother to pass the first dungeon. The sad part is that this could have been good if it had tutorials and a better partner AI...but it doesn't. I guess it didn't hatch too well...afterall.

Cute game

An excellent indie dungeon adventure game! Fun dungeon puzzles, challenging boss fights, cute story (kind of reminded me of LOZ: Link's Awakening). Plenty of optional loot to obtain. Probably my favourite part is the all the different options for your animal companion you can choose right at the start of the game. I picked one of the dogs the first time I played but for my most recent playthrough I chose the duck :)

Cute little take on 2D Zelda!

If you like the classic Zelda games, you'll feel right at home with Hatchwell. Insert yourself and a pet as the newest member of Hatchwell. You'll begin your story on a cheerful day full of mischievous pets, and soon find yourself in the thick of troubling developments... Will you rise to the challenge? Save the day? Or... Overall, this is a good indie game. Definitely a lot of good stuff happening here, with an interesting story that takes place in the span of one looong day. It's an easy recommend as a worthy Zelda-esque experience. Not very ground breaking (except for the pet combat!), but left a good memory. I will also note the developer quickly responded the next day and patched issues immediately, even months after its original release. First class service! Here's a quick breakdown of pros and cons: + Boss battles + Cute nostalgic pixel art + Variety of NPC expressions in portraits + Pixel art used in an unusual and very tasteful way, showing the scene around you during cutscenes; rather than focusing on the main subjects + Variety of items to find + The story is interesting + Characters were entertaining and fun to talk to multiple times + Having a pet added life to the adventure, and picked up items + Wide variety of enemies ~ Music is quite decent, but short at times and loops often in some cases if I recall ~ Dialogue at times had awkward English, but overall just fine. ~ Enemies with few exceptions were very straightforward to kill, just use your sword ~ No mana system, so spamming items is fine ~ It's a small world after all ~ Could have used a little more optional lore to fill in the gaps of this interesting world - Game mostly too easy on default heart drop settings + plentiful healing items + forgiving death - Pet interactions and story involvement were minimal. - Pet commands take up an item slot. - Pet AI limited, and occasionally dumb (ie; rushes into a spikey enemy that the pet cannot attack, and take massive damage very rapidly D:) - A few of the larger dungeons can be tiring when searching lol; though the map really shines in these cases - Not a lot of explanation on the evil you face?