Hatchwell

[b] 2 MINUTE REVIEW: [/b] https://youtu.be/XTFrIGnAiDE --------------------------------------- TL;DW: Worth every penny and a "must have" for people who love Legend of Zelda,it's a lot of fun and follows the Zelda formula quite well. Only complaint I have is the music is too repetitive and can get a bit annoying, but it's not too big of a deal breaker.

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 :)

Interesująca gra. Twórca poprawił kilka rzeczy po moim zgłoszeniu. Gra się lepiej.

- 2D 젤다류 게임 - 텍스트량이 많지 않고 어려운 단어도 안나와서 언어 압박 없이 플레이 가능합니다. - 최종보스가 살짝 뇌절이지만 전체적으로 무난한 게임입니다. - 50퍼 할인에 사면 적당할 듯 싶습니다.

It perfectly captures the vibe of the old Zelda games! And you get a dog friend.

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?

I just didn't really find it all that fun. It is cute, it is well-made, but ultimately it feels that terrible combination of non-stop backtracking and map consultation. Eventually I started to realize that the "game" is just really me remembering what part is next, what little mini-puzzle I haven't had the "thing" to get past, then getting past it. Then there's another thing you can't get past, and you back track suuuuuuper far to push one block you couldn't before for example. It's is a lot of fun, it's is very charming, for the first couple hours. Then the bloom falls off the rose and the monotony sets in. As much as I like about this game, I found it really just a time waster and didn't give me a rewarding feeling. I'm stopping early just after the mine-cart switcheroo part because playing makes me feel exhausted.

Zeldalike with some good bits that are ultimately overshadowed by persistent UI/UX and flow of play problems. Good - Some creative ideas e.g. for bosses, puzzles, and usable items Bad - Very little exploration - Lots of missables/loseables. Missable quests (due to timing), missable upgrades/bonuses (from quests and minigames and planting seeds), expensive items that are lost without warning, e.g. the 200gp pet ball is lost if it lands in the wrong place when you throw it. - Despite the lack of exploration, there still manages to be a surprising amount of backtracking -- just within a given dungeon. The dungeon design isn't actually bad, there's just a lot of slow time wasting, especially when e.g. you happen to not take the door with the key in it right away, etc. - The game doesn't autosave. This is good given all the missables, but it's also bad, because we're all used to Zeldalikes autosaving, so it's hard to remember to do it manually all the time; and that means when you actually miss/lose something and have to reload, you're potentially going back a half hour. - If your pet ever has a good use case, I never found it. This also compounds the sidequests being uninteresting since so many of them give dog treats as a reward. - Your sword swing covers basically a 90 degree quadrant on your front/side. This is to be contrasted with every single other item, which works straight in front of you. So you have to approach enemies a bit oddly sometimes to use your sword. Mostly this isn't a big deal, but it starts to feel like a handicap any time you're in a cramped map space, or sometimes even on bosses (which mostly have a very brief window where you can hit them for damage) - Moving is fine on its own, but combining it with attacking feels very awkward due to the long pauses (where you are still) before and after attacking - Roll is mostly great and helps speed up movement, but if you bump even slightly into a wall, you richochet backwards enough that you are very likely to take damage if there are enemies (or spikes) around. - There are some weird hitboxes that feel unfair, especially on bosses. For example, approaching the 3rd boss from the front, you can get in their face without taking contact damage, but approaching from behind, you take contact damage when you are like 15 pixels away from touching, which is the opposite of what you'd expect given that the boss is a lot taller than you. - A few less significant weird UI choices - to switch pet modes you have to go to the menu, equip an item, exit the menu, use it, then swap your items back to normal. Needlessly complicated versus just an in-menu toggle. Similarly, to save, you go to the menu, press "map" (why that button? who knows), use the regular buttons to save and confirm, then have to press "menu" (not cancel) to exit the save options.

A neat little Zelda-like that's a bit rough around the edges. It could use some QoL additions, the music is blah, and the boss battles were frustrating at times with their RNG. Overall though, it's a charming action adventure with a neat little story(if a little generic) and fun gameplay.

Cute game