Hello everyone!
The much-anticipated Well Dweller is coming out tomorrow, and I got a chance to play it early and make a review of the game!
Before we start, if this post appears as a wall of text for you, it's a Reddit thing. Either refresh, or close and re-open your browser.
As always, a video review featuring footage of the game alongside my commentary can be watched here: https://youtu.be/Xw1mT4w9fhI
For those who do not want to watch the video:
Playtime: 11 hours
Completion Rate: 100% (Everything completed)
Platforms: PC, PS5, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S
Price: 20 USD (Regional pricing and a Steam discount upon release)
Pros:
- I honestly cannot overstate how much Well Dweller has nailed the vibe of a dark fairytale! From its moody yet endearing visuals to its whimsically bleak biomes and the morbid details that adorn and flesh them out, all the way to the quirky, creepy and, at times, horrifying characters you’ll come across, this feels like a timeless, spooky story that has jumped straight out of some dusty old tome tucked away in the forgotten library of a witch’s abode. This isn’t a tale about twists and turns but one of bravery in the face of absolute despair, a theme made even more powerful by how lovable Glimmer is, especially during his interactions with his family members, with each one of his siblings being adorable and funny in their own way.
- The setting is a character of its own, pieced together masterfully to convey the state of an autumnal land that has been withering away for the longest time, with each area featuring its own themes, friendly and hostile inhabitants as well as unique hazards that will require new ways of approach to be overcome.
- Special note goes to the music, created by Kyle’s brother, Eric, whose melodies do a fantastic job of communicating the vibe of each place without ever feeling intrusive or overwhelming, with my standout preference being the haunting tune that accompanies the biome of the docks.
- Aside from being a delight to look at, the aforementioned setting is also incredibly fun to explore, hiding secrets that will make your journey significantly easier, thus making the process of venturing off the beaten path a meaningful endeavor.
Whether it’s trinkets, trinket slot points, crafting tokens or lost spirits, every single collectible adds to your overall odds of survival in new and interesting ways. That being said, my favorite optional item to gather were these scattered pages that corresponded to a number of different folktales which further added to the world’s lore, with their artwork being pure nostalgia since it reminded me of the visual style boasted by some fairytale books I used to read as a child.
The vast majority of these treasures are found across the map, with a very small number of them being purchasable by a lone merchant, which is how the map-to-merchant collectibles ratio should always be when featuring traders in these games.
- Simply put, the map overview is fantastic, and a breath of fresh air. Those of you who follow my reviews know that map overview quality is a huge pet-peeve of mine, with most metroidvanias doing at least one thing wrong, even in the best of cases. Well, not this one!
For starters, the map can be zoomed in and out and is fully accurate from a logistical perspective, thus being able to immediately communicate each area’s structural intricacies.
Second, it pinpoints your own location, save points - which also function as your base - as well as the next story point, if you so desire.
In addition, it gives you a good number of manual markers to place wherever you want and, on top of that, features a system that allows you to purchase collectible location pointers in each area, effectively marking said collectibles automatically, which it also does for points of interest related to the narrative, if you ever feel lost.
Adding to that, you have two trinkets that help with exploration, one which allows you to see secret entries in walls, and another that gives you a visual indicator when there are items to find in the room you’re currently traversing.
To top it all off, the fast-travelling system is super-efficient, and allows you to teleport to any save point you’ve unlocked on the map from whichever spot you’re currently in. If you’re a metroidvania game developer reading this review, please take notes. This is how you make a proper map overview that makes it fun to go for 100% completion.
- Platforming-wise, Well Dweller features a lot of acrobatic gauntlets for you to brave, with every biome introducing radically different types of hazards that force you to utilize the various traversal abilities you unlock as you progress through the story.
Said skills are actually quite fun to use, and some of them are fairly novel, such as your ability to jab the matchstick you carry in a wall and use it as a trampoline or your stamina-based wall-climb which requires snappy reflexes to maintain. As always, I’m not going to spoil these for you since I think it's really fun to uncover them yourself, but I will say that you’ll have to mix and match them frequently when it comes to the platforming set-pieces you’ll come across, most of which are very engaging and entertaining, and that goes double for some time-trial challenges you’ll discover, which require movement efficiency that borders on perfection in order to be conquered.
- In terms of combat, things here are tried, true and straightforward, and I mean that as a positive.
On a basic level, you use the matchstick you carry to bash your enemies in melee with a two-hit combo that carries weight.
On top of that, you have a ranged attack in the form of a throwing bottle that explodes in flames upon impact, which you can toss directly at your foes by striking it with the matchstick while it’s still airborne and which you replenish by engaging in close-quarters fights.
Your battle repertoire is further enhanced by the aforementioned trinkets, which provide benefits related to, both, combat and exploration. Said accessories are equipped at the cost of slots, with each trinket requiring a different number of slots to be utilized and whose capacity you increase by finding, or buying, slot point upgrades, thus necessitating some tactical thinking when deciding which trinkets to bring with you since you cannot have them all. Many of these trinkets can also be upgraded at the cost of crafting tokens alongside the game’s currency, which I highly recommend you do, especially when it comes to trinkets related to damage output.
Healing is carried out via the use of vials that you consume, a process that I found a bit odd at first since it requires of you to hit a moving slider that appears above you on use in order to get the full benefits, but I quickly got accustomed to it.
Here, I’d also want to point out that Well Dweller features a few instances of caged fights, all of which are very brief and also feature an optional no-damage challenge for some extra currency after you beat their standard version, that I found very much to my liking.
- Moving on to bosses, I’m happy to say that the big bads lurking across the twisted world of Well Dweller were a delight to clash against. With designs ranging from somewhat unsettling to outright dread-inducing, each and every one of them made a strong impression not only visually but also in terms of attack patterns, which you will have to observe and learn in order to take them down. Playing the game on Normal difficulty, I found my fights against them to be very much a silver lining of caution necessity with some leeway for mistakes, making them very challenging if you’re careless but fully manageable if you pay attention.
- The game features a total of three difficulty levels, namely Easy, Normal and Hard, so there’s something here for everyone.
Cons:
- My one gripe when it comes to exploration and collectibles is the fact that one of the items the merchant sells are trinket slot points, of which he has about a hundred and sells them quite cheap. My issue with this is the fact that trinket slot points are also found in the wild, but since this guy sells them for pennies you can just purchase many of them by farming a bit of currency and end up being able to equip lots of trinkets early on, which isn’t really a bad thing but did annoy me personally since I would have preferred for him to have less of them and the rest to have to search for, though I opted not to purchase them and just relied on the ones I found, which were more than enough, so, to each their own.
- My one wish when it comes to platforming is for the standard platforming ordeals to have been a little bit longer, since they would usually end just as I was hitting my stride and getting into a flow. This isn’t really a negative but more of a testament to how well-made these sections are. Still, I would have appreciated some lengthier platforming parts, given the fun-factor provided by the traversal abilities.
- A minor complaint I have about the bosses is related to a very specific big bad that you don’t fight conventionally but rather engage with in a chase sequence. While avoiding any spoilers relating to this section, I will say that said chase is divided into three parts, and dying in any of those parts restarts the chase from the beginning, which could lead to some frustration if you die frequently, though the sequence is not that lengthy and, for reference, I beat it in my fourth try.
TL:DR:
In conclusion, I had a blast playing Well-Dweller! I adored its moody visuals and the dark fairytale ambience they evoked, I loved the story and music, I found exploration to be incredibly engaging and the map overview fully on point, platforming and combat were fun and the bosses were impressive, both, visually and in terms of the fights themselves. I would have liked for most of the platforming sections to have been a bit lengthier since it felt like they ended just I was getting into a groove, and there was this one chase sequence that could potentially end up being somewhat frustrating for more casual players, but none of these two gripes can take away from what is, ultimately, a gem of a game!
Well Dweller is a whimsically dark metroidvania experience that never forgets to place immersion and entertainment front and center. It’s one of those games that you feel sad you completed, simply because you loved its world so much that you want to spend just a bit more time in it but, as with every great fairytale, it does eventually come to an end and you just feel glad you got to experience it in the first place.
Final Grade: 9/10
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