Disclaimer: I Kickstarted this game.
Dwerve has an intriguing premise and great art, but didn't quite come together for me.
The basic gameplay is sort of like tower defense, but you place the towers yourself and they can be destroyed. It gets pretty hectic, as you fight off waves of enemies and that is where things kind of break down for me. Most of the time I wanted things to be a bit more strategic, but even the turrets that let you do interesting things are hard to use because you don't have much time to plan and execute a strategy. The game would be much easier but more entertaining with some sort of tactical mode to pause and place your turrets.
Dwerve has a lot of turrets to unlock over the course of the game, and they are fairly different, but the upgrade system and limited number of equipped turrets means you are far more likely to invest in your early turrets and use those all the time anyway. This is a pretty major misstep, since switching up turrets to match specific challenges seems to be the intended playstyle. I think this basically makes the core game loop too repetitive and solvable.
There is some awkwardness to the controls (a couple of hold inputs and contextual actions) that make things feel pretty loose, unfortunately. The menus and dialog boxes also broke fairly frequently for me while navigating them with a controller.
There is an overly involved story here that I didn't get much out of. It is mostly a backdrop to give you objectives for each level, but these are often very similar (find some number of items to destroy, collect, or activate in each level). By the end the places I was going and the things I needed to do felt very contrived and unrelated.
The story (and the game itself) just goes on for too long, with too many chaining objectives you are working through. Cutting about half of the story beats would have made for a more compelling narrative.
Dwerve's visuals are really great. The characters and enemies are cute and expressive, easily differentiable despite the relatively small sprite size. Character portraits are also a highlight, they are very detailed and well-done, while clearly matching the lower resolution field version they represent. The environments are also varied and interesting throughout.
The game uses mini-icons to convey what enemies are about to spawn, but unfortunately it is pretty hard to actually identify them on the fly and react to them (again, a tactical mode would help here), so it feels pretty underdeveloped.
Dwerve has a great premise with its unique take on tower defense, but doesn't do enough to make the gameplay shine. I still had an ok time playing through it and enjoyed the visuals the whole way through, but was definitely feeling the length and repetitiveness of the gameplay by the end.
Dwerve has an intriguing premise and great art, but didn't quite come together for me.
The basic gameplay is sort of like tower defense, but you place the towers yourself and they can be destroyed. It gets pretty hectic, as you fight off waves of enemies and that is where things kind of break down for me. Most of the time I wanted things to be a bit more strategic, but even the turrets that let you do interesting things are hard to use because you don't have much time to plan and execute a strategy. The game would be much easier but more entertaining with some sort of tactical mode to pause and place your turrets.
Dwerve has a lot of turrets to unlock over the course of the game, and they are fairly different, but the upgrade system and limited number of equipped turrets means you are far more likely to invest in your early turrets and use those all the time anyway. This is a pretty major misstep, since switching up turrets to match specific challenges seems to be the intended playstyle. I think this basically makes the core game loop too repetitive and solvable.
There is some awkwardness to the controls (a couple of hold inputs and contextual actions) that make things feel pretty loose, unfortunately. The menus and dialog boxes also broke fairly frequently for me while navigating them with a controller.
There is an overly involved story here that I didn't get much out of. It is mostly a backdrop to give you objectives for each level, but these are often very similar (find some number of items to destroy, collect, or activate in each level). By the end the places I was going and the things I needed to do felt very contrived and unrelated.
The story (and the game itself) just goes on for too long, with too many chaining objectives you are working through. Cutting about half of the story beats would have made for a more compelling narrative.
Dwerve's visuals are really great. The characters and enemies are cute and expressive, easily differentiable despite the relatively small sprite size. Character portraits are also a highlight, they are very detailed and well-done, while clearly matching the lower resolution field version they represent. The environments are also varied and interesting throughout.
The game uses mini-icons to convey what enemies are about to spawn, but unfortunately it is pretty hard to actually identify them on the fly and react to them (again, a tactical mode would help here), so it feels pretty underdeveloped.
Dwerve has a great premise with its unique take on tower defense, but doesn't do enough to make the gameplay shine. I still had an ok time playing through it and enjoyed the visuals the whole way through, but was definitely feeling the length and repetitiveness of the gameplay by the end.