Dawnfolk Review (ben)
TL;DR: This game is absolutely fantastic - I don’t usually gravitate towards city builders but this is so engaging and relaxing (without being too easy), I highly recommend giving it a go, regardless of your genre preferences. I’m obsessed.
A truly engrossing, unique, highly replayable roguelite city builder and resource management game that I simply cannot stop playing. The steam achievements are tied to challenges that give you in-game rewards, so you're incentivised to tackle these and rewarded for doing so. It's deep without being overwhelming, and the story mode introduces all of the mechanics at a very nice pace whilst also providing a lot of fun whilst going through each of the levels and going for the optional achievements. It's super relaxing, but provides a real challenge if you're looking for it and want to take on the more difficult challenges, with satisfying sound design, animations and pixel art.
I can see myself playing this one for many many more hours; I've only finished the normal difficulty story mode and a few optional achievements in about 8 hours taking it slowly, and I've barely scratched the surface of what this game has to offer. I can't recommend this one enough, huge props to Darenn for solo-developing this gem (in Godot!)
Pros:
- Highly replayable
- A lot of gameplay depth but not overwhelming
- Satisfying sound design
- Beautiful chunky pixel art and fluid animations
- Loads of achievements and challenges that give you in-game rewards
- Cute and wholesome dialogue, with some surprise references
- Super relaxing, but provides a real challenge if you want it
- Lots of things to discover; mechanics are explained but plenty is left to discover on your own
- So much (very fun) content for price
Cons:
- A few minor bugs (which I'm sure will get patched soon)
- Mini-games can get a little repetitive after playing for several hours straight, maybe some extra mini-games would help to keep each run fresh
Things to note:
- I've only played with controller, as recommended, which I use for most games, and it works very nicely. It doesn't have mouse support at present though (only controller and keyboard) so worth noting if you were expecting to use your mouse. Edit: One day later, and the dev updates the game to add mouse support. Amazing!
- It's made by one person, please don't forget that when creating forum posts; the dev seems very committed to this game, and I'm sure bug fixes will come in time, but please keep this in mind - this game is an astounding achievement for a single developer.