Drop Duchy review

Sorry, waiter, there’s Tetris in the soup on the deck building. As a combination of Roguelike Deckbuilder, Tactics games, and Tetramino tile builder, Drop Duchy is an interesting mashup if it works, and a somewhat nasty experiment if not. It’s interesting to see some of these many genres fall towards a more epic strategic goal, even if they don’t necessarily click properly in place as expected.

You are dedicated to the curtain being over, and you are dedicated to going on the frequently forking paths towards aggressive boss fights. Along the way, you will be hit with an encounter that appears as a familiar Tetris-style tile drop screen. There are special characteristics except for all four characters you place under. Some are covered in forests, some form a river, and most importantly the buildings. A small L-shaped port or a base of 2 x 2 blocks. Some of the smallest are single-tile farms, windmills, or guards. And each has its purpose. Whether it’s the production of resources such as wood or wheat, or a gathering of military forces.

You need them. Because you are blaming not only your military buildings, but also the red enemy buildings. This allows you to control where they land. This means that you can prevent enemies who will benefit from the surrounding scenery. However, sometimes, thanks to the chaotic nature of drop orders, there is no suitable place for the piece to go. This is a mixed game of both careful planning and improvisation with the tiles you have.

Do this until you reach the ceiling of the board. But the only thing that tells the game in Tetris is that he begins a big fight with Drop Duche. The building stage has concluded and a quick uproar continues. You must choose the order in which the units brawl. This is mainly a lock>paper>scissors problem, the archer is stronger than the axemen, the axemen is stronger than the swordsman, the swordsman’s wrecking attacker. However, the vast numbers can be overwhelming, so it’s not a simple case of dunking with the right enemy type. You just have to march your army into one big gang before attacking the enemy, but you have to be careful as a gang of 40 wild shooters assimilates a band of 12 x equipped players to make 52 shooters. An all-out attack with the wrong type of troops can end inadequately.

These tactical tats can feel like they are drying out the movement next to the candid battlefield building. The fight is simple in principle, but it has become so unnatural that it comes with all the battle stages with screen-filled cheat sheets that remind you of the rules of combat. It’s not out of control, it’s a very board game. Part of me wants the military aspect of things to be more streamlined – simply an automatic disassembly brawl. By the time the army was on its head, it was clear that the true brain cuteness of the encounter had ended.

In True Roguelike Metamanner, you collect more cards along the way. These essentially unlock and drop more tile types. The training ground sends extra troops to nearby military buildings. As long as you put enough river tiles, the water fortress will be filled with soldiers. If you can completely surround it with mountain terrain, the old tower will gain a huge number of guards.

Start using these buildings and tiles in a clever combination. The watchtower creates archers on each unobstructed plain around it. Therefore, you can use Wood Clearer’s Hut to cut down adjacent woodlands. This means more shooters. Better yet, if you throw the farm next to these plains and turn the land into golden wheat, the Watchtower will recruit even more bows.

This is the simplest example of how careful placement of terrain changes to increase soldier counts can be key. But there are dozens of other buildings to unlock and grasp, from the money-collecting tax collectors to the guard posts along the river. The prison will soon provide a massive amount of 40 fighters, but if the enemy can gather even a little more men next to it, all of those cowardly prisoners will disappear before the battle begins. ah!

As Tetris’ demon, some things abandoned me. You have the presence of an out-of-brand tetramino shape (single square, small L-shaped) that always feels strange to traditionalists. And now you have to think about the “material” of the shape you are dropping. Forested longboys are not necessarily as useful as longboys made from wastelands. Exposures to Tetris can often be triaged and fixed thanks to the continuous disappearance of completed lines. Here you can’t do it (at least that’s not the power I’ve encountered yet). This means that simple errors and slippery fingers from the drop principality can be devastating, resulting in quick losses or waste of large resources. In Tetris, the feeling of it being fuzzy occurs, but it doesn’t affect the next game. Here, bloopers can be stacked. I have some examples of how I know my run was doomed in the middle of a fight. This can sometimes be a highly offered game.

That’s especially true when it comes to boss fights. These are broken from the usual patterns and flows of other encounters, and most are not well explained. One boss, the dungeon, tells you that you will spit out a soldier-filled mercenary unless you pay the be-funded. However, there is no explanation on how to actually pay that bes to prevent the influx of enemies (you are supposed to harvest resources with production cards – I rarely adopted them as military cards are more useful). Some bosses can feel relied on getting good fortune on drop orders. And if you are fighting the first boss (low wall that limits the playground), heaven will help you.

This faction encourages the construction of larger and larger cities, bringing together enough money, citizens and other resources to bring about early defeats enough to promote later battles. However, it relies heavily on card upgrades. This is a much more tedious process than collecting simpler pieces from the default Duchy Faction. When you play as a Republic, you feel like you can’t use the game’s most interesting tactics. Beating that first boss will become a matter of climbing the tree of progress, shattering the tickbox tasks and looking for ripe fruits that could help them execute in the future.

Oddly, Drop Duchy won’t kill you completely for losing your encounter. Instead, there is the Overworld Health Bar, which loses a healthy amount equal to the number of enemy forces left on the board. Technically rubbing your encounter with 49 enemy ax guys when the final whistle blows with a default of 50 health. Sometimes they fail spectacularly, but it feels a bit strange to stay alive. It is partly tolerant, but for some it may take away some of the central atrocities of guelike.

I have a small mountain of other uncertainties. The pieces can be much different visually from each other (is this little log cabin a hunting lodge, road house, wood, or timber camp?), and the rules text scattered across the messy symbols of the cards can slide your brain to the right without finding a purchase. Also, you won’t be able to read the effects of locked cards in the skill tree further ahead, so plan exactly how you will use your skill points.

Ultimately, Drop Duchy is an intelligent task and is admirable as an example of elevator pitch creativity (“Non-Tetris Deck Building Roguelike?”). The problem has been found, from a design standpoint, that Tetris’ elegance collides with deck building and tactical number one complexity. Drop Duchy feels like he’s trying to force himself into a “infinitely playable” box by adding more to the most infinitely playable games on the planet. Playing novels in Tetris always feels like playing a variation of chess. I love to see it, but in the act of adaptation something is often lost.

Except in this case, many are acquired. Tetris is a game of removal and emptying space. The explicit goal is to have as much empty fields as possible. Some deckbuilders mimic this philosophy. Think about how to kill Spire. Streamline your loadout until you remove cards from your deck, undo things, or flick the same five cards with Himafi effect repeats. Drop Duchy doesn’t do this at all. This is not a subtractive game, but an additional game. Here, cards, coins, troops and numbers all ring out in video game history, like wild ass buckaloos. This approach never makes the game a bad thing, but for me it explains why it opposes the inspiration of the principle puzzle. It’s a smart roguelike for those who love core materials, but not all lined up.