Reviews

• gamedeal user

  May 31, 2022

  I've been anticipating this game for many years, having followed Half Human's development posts for some time--maybe 3 or 5 years? Hard to remember. I've been waiting to play it until the game released and picked it up on release day. While I still definitely think the game is worth a purchase--the art, gameplay, music, and so much of it work so well and are so inventive for the genre--it unfortunately has some minor issues (in my opinion) that have resulted in my putting the game down after about only ~20 minutes of gameplay. I don't plan to refund it because I'm sure updates will continue to improve the game, and Half Human has been transparent and communicative about their game since the get-go. With that said, some of my issues with the game so far are: - You move frustratingly slow. Maybe it feels balanced in combat because you’re not hacking and slashing, but when running around the world it constantly feels like you’re just dragged down or encumbered or something. It's an extremely unpleasant experience to try to get used to. Walking speed absolutely needs to increase. Dashing, which you get in the first few minutes, recharges too slow and doesn't even seem responsive on the Left Trigger, so it doesn't make up for the walking speed. It never seemed this slow in any of the pre-release materials I'd seen, so this was the most instant disappointment. - I'm using a controller (Steam Deck specifically) and placing turrets doesn't feel accurate. I'm often one tile away. It can really detract when you need to do a lot of back-and-forth positioning and resetting towers if you're just a tile off. Now, the game intuitively lets you hold down the button to see a "targeting square" for where you'll place a tower, but the overlap is like 80% on top of your character, meaning you still have such a weird limitation of control on where the tower places. - In lieu of voice acting (which isn't a problem), all the characters make these terribly annoying noises during moments of dialogue that are often just exaggerated sighs and hums and haws. Extremely offputting because it's on *every single* line of dialogue. The character Aerie is especially awful. I don't want to hear constant moaning and whimpering and sniveling. The worst part? There's no voice/dialogue slider for volume. My choices were to disable sound effects entirely or deal with an overload of weird noises. It would maybe be okay if they didn't happen a dozen times every exchange, but at this point I just want to disable it entirely. It adds absolutely nothing to the game, only distraction. - I couldn't find any colorblind mode support. My current plan is to put the game down for another few weeks and maybe pick it back up again after some inevitable post-release improvements/tweaks. If nothing above gets improved/changed, I *still* plan to play through the game, but I really hope some of it gets addressed before I do.
• gamedeal user

  Jun 1, 2022

  This game is unique, and offers a great concept and what has the potential to be a great game, but it under delivers on it's key selling point as a tower defence dungeon crawler... Well there is a solid game here, the slow pacing from the puzzles and the lengthy dialog makes it very tedious to play the game, and with so little progression from the very limited tower upgrades and the fact you can only use 4 towers at a time, you'd be better off just choosing the 4 best towers, then just upgrading them exclusively since it takes a decent chunk of time to max out the very small tech tree for them. I cannot recommend this game for the VERY hefty price tag it seems to think it warrant, maybe for 50% off sure, but there are far more games out there, for cheaper, that deliver a better experience.
• gamedeal user

  Jun 1, 2022

  The combat system is cool, but it's bogged down by the core gameplay loop, which entails running around the map looking for keys, chests, levers, and other various other meaningless tasks designed to funnel you from one combat encounter to the next. There are some minor UI problems, and the sounds, especially the dialogue noises, can be a bit loud and repetitive at times. The controls feel a bit stiff, and the unit collision between the character and the turrets can be wonky at times. The game looks fairly clean/polished, but on the whole the gameplay could have used another pass over before release. I'd say this is a fine game, but the gameplay loop of "run around -> find a key -> open a door -> repeat" just doesn't appeal to me. The walking around feels really bad, given how slow the character moves, especially when the game forces you to backtrack through pointless obstacles multiple times. On top of that, a large part of the combat is simply standing around waiting for your turrets to die, then rebuilding them, since the movement during combat is too clunky to allow for more interesting kiting tactics. Given that this game is quite new, I'm sure some of these issues will be addressed in an upcoming patch. Until that patch, however, I wouldn't recommend buying this.
• gamedeal user

  Jun 1, 2022

  Disappointing. I've seen the demo and had high hopes for this game. Unfortunately, I found it to be very frustrating past around 2,5 hours of playtime. Dwerve claims to be an "action-adventure with tower defence combat". What that means is - they've taken tower defence and removed time to think and strategize. Each encounter becomes a trial-and-error, where enemies spawn from all over the place, surrounding and killing the player. And the only way to win is to die several time until you figure out where to position yourself and your turrets. Often the winning "strategy" is just to run around, trying not to get killed, and spam spinblade / axe turret. The slowing trap seems to be absolutely useless even after upgrading it. And whatever strategic position you'll take after several re-tries, it WILL get overwhelmed regardless, and the combat will go back to "run around and spam spinblade". This would've been fine, maybe, if character's movement wasn't intentionally slow and clunky. Besides all that, the game has nice art style, good sounds and decent music. I've no complaints in that regard whatsoever. However I do find it odd that they try to build lore with war and slaughter, but places, characters and different stuff have silly names, and general undertone is kinda childish. It's a weird mix. All in all, it's not a bad game. Some people may have fun with it. Me, however... I dislike trial-an-error and never enjoy it.
• gamedeal user

  Jun 1, 2022

  A tower defence game with a limit of 4 towers. Poor progression, limited to 6 power crystals or 3 turrets for the majority of the game. Boring upgrades for towers, ex: 10% more damage, 30% chance at 150% damage (yawn). Very little strategy, basically just run around spamming 3 towers down and dodging. Forgettable story that is just a series of fetch quests. Game will often gate you off from back tracking so you can't collect, uncollected health potions.
• gamedeal user

  Jun 1, 2022

  I'm loving Dwerve! Like many here, I've been following the game progress. I also watch Pixel Pete's YouTube. I'm really sad to see the mixed reception as I was hoping the game would be an overnight success, and it still might :) It just got released and sure, some tweaks need to happen. There's nothing about Dwerve in it's current state that could warrant a down-vote imho. If you enjoyed the demo, you're highly likely to enjoy the game. Dwerve's combat and strategy play much like the demo to me. Short hop, strategy encounter, short hop, strategy encounter, story, etc. I enjoy the encounters in larger, more wide-open settings, where you're not locked into a cage-match. I really enjoy this style of strategy/action combat. It's just fast enough for me to get in a pickle and get back out -or- not, and pound sand to try again. You're going to die sometimes. However, the penalties for death are practically nothing, and you're right back into tackling that encounter. That being said, the health/potion/checkpoint systems need some more thought. In their current state, I see little reason to worry about any of them. I just plow through encounter after encounter until I best it. I personally find the walking speed and pacing to be just right. I would remove the cooldown for dashing when out of combat for players who'd like a little more pep between bouts. It may be worth stressing to the player that dashing will allow you to pass through turrets and enemies. This should have been intuitive but somehow it didn't hit me right away. Also, on the XBOX controller, it seems like dash only triggers when I 'tap' the left trigger. If I squeeze and hold the left-trigger, dash doesn't fire. The story is fun-hearted, full of trope, and tres-indie, in a good way. It scores high in my primary hidden-ranking of not being overly interruptive or obnoxious. It keeps you going to the next objective, updates you with some plot, and stays out of the way. As far as pixel-art games go, Dwerve is as gorgeous as you were hoping for. Style is subjective but the attention to detail is not. The in-game cut to the town below and back is just great, loved that in the demo and the real game. I hope to see more of that style of story-telling as I progress, like the Hippogriff encounter. When story is woven into the gameplay it's more engaging to me. I do feel that the turret upgrades are a bit bland at the moment. With only a few upgrades per turret, which I find perfect, each upgrade should really stand-out with unique advantages. Locking players into short but meaningful progression trees where their decisions affect the mechanics of gameplay will really help replayability. I don't have any firm ideas there yet but I might later on. To the Dwerve team, keep your chins up. I know you're going to internalize the constructive criticism left by your fans, learn from them, act on them, and shape an even better Dwerve with updates. I'll come back and update this review when I've put more hours in, but I wanted to give the team a well-deserved thumbs-up. At the end of the day, you did it, Dwerve is fun and it'll only get more fun-er-er as you improve it <3
• gamedeal user

  Jun 1, 2022

  I played the demo and was looking forward to what they could bring after all the feedback. And after all the feedback... the gameplay hasn't changed. Tower defence hybrid games aren't necessarily bad in itself, having played Sanctum years earlier. However, unlike in Sanctum, you have minimal interactions with your turrets, once you put them down, you basically go afk until they break. Because all you have is a single auto attack that only works if you're not moving. Upgrades are also done out of combat at a vendor/workstation. And the biggest issue with this tower defence hybrid, is that you can only place a very limited number of towers down (around 3 so far, look up videos or wiki for more details), probably because the "arenas" are incredibly tiny. You don't get to create your own mazes or make use of the environment properly. Now, both Sanctum and Dwerve suffer from the limit of only allowing 4 towers for you to select from at a time. However, Sanctum has some room for forgiveness, because you also have 3 weapons to use and compliment your tower choice, not to mention multiplayer, which can mean more variety of turrets. But Dwerve is a singleplayer game, without any player controlled weapons (you have a single auto attack weapon), to synergize with. What made me just stop dead in my track and get a refund is the stealth section. A stealth section in a tower defence game?! And it isn't optional either, because if the alarm is sounded, you'll be flooded with a massive, unwinnable horde. The boss battles are actually incredibly boring, because all you do is put down ranged attack turrets then run around and avoid getting hit. There's no strategy or planning. Overall, this game feels like an ARPG without the A, and a tower defence that lacks towers.
• gamedeal user

  Jun 2, 2022

  Was really looking forward to this game, but honestly it got extremely repetitive with little to no change between fights. Place turrets, win fight, progress story, repeat. There is very little tactics in where you place the turrets, just run around and spam them. It gets pretty boring after the first 5-10 fights.
• gamedeal user

  Jun 2, 2022

  I agree its a mix of Tower Defense and Zelda. Unfortunately its very weak with both mechanics. It is extremely repetitive with little to no change between fights. Walk a bit, gates from the ground come up, prepare for the 70th monster spawn in an hour.
• gamedeal user

  Jun 2, 2022

  When trying the demo I saw potential. But when as full game: As a TowerDefense game it is not enough, because your limited to 4 different traps and towers available at a time and you can have at most 3 (later 4) tower constructed/active. As a TowerDefense hybrid it offers too little in ways you can be active/interactive with enemies or towers. All together it results in not having quality or quantity to prevent it from becoming stale quickly. At discount it maybe worth a try, if you enjoy TD games.