Downwell

 
Developer: Moppin    
Steam Release: Oct 2015
Hours Played: 5.9
Similar To: Freedom Fall / Super House of Dead Ninjas / Vertical Drop Heroes HD
Rating: 3/5 Parsnips

GAMEPLAY
Your typical action platformer has you traveling from left to right but, like Super House of Dead Ninjas or Vertical Drop Heroes, Downwell has you plummeting downwards. As you fall and collect gems your job is to ensure that you reach the bottom without crashing into hostiles such as bats, frogs, snails, slugs and slimy blobs. Most enemies follow a general pattern of movement or have little quirks that make it necessary to be always working out a strategy for attack. Apart from the deep-coloured enemies, your foes can be stomped on to take them out of action while most - apart from the heavily armoured snail (which has to be crushed from above) can be obliterated with a satisfying crunch from your beautifully chunky-sounding weapon which likewise fires down. If you collide with an enemy without a feet-first stomp, you lose a life.

BALANCE & PACE
Unless you select the unlockable boulder playstyle, which gves you six lives, you'll start off with four. There are safe-spots or little caves which give you breathing space as you descend and these reward you with things like extra gems, extra lives and weapon upgrades. Successfully complete a descent and you get to choose one of three random abilities to make your next run even more delicious. With the idea being to gather as many gems as possible and/or to descend as deep down into the well as you can (whilst unlocking characters and palettes with gems) the game packs an almighty good punch. This is thanks largely to its responsive controls and the firm but fair movement of your character as he smashes and pounds his way to thumping victory.    
 

PRESENTATION & DESIGN

With a 16-bit aesthetic of three colours (red, black and white by default) Downwell is done darn well. Menus are few and displayed in plain text and deal with the basics while the home-page and leaderboard screens are likewise kept simple. You zip around these menus selecting things like: Playing Style to change your character which offers subtle changes to things such as movement or number of lives; Palette which offers a different colour scheme, and Stats which shows your "best-of" high-scores to things such as most gems collected or furthest level reached. A decent fuzzy soundtrack rocks out to a funky chiptune with pleasant wibbly-wobbly keyboard accompaniment while meters show lives left (top left), gems collected (top right) and bullets left (white rectangular strip on the right). These get replenished almost instantly when you're at rest.  

PROGRESS SYSTEM
On starting the game, your character sits beside the well before leaping in. You choose one of the five unlockable characters before you're taken to your first level. At the end of each run you are shown a series of stats that inform you how you got on. Gems, kills, level reached etc are all recorded and shown. However, to view your all-time best results you'll click on the Stats option from the main menu screen. Here, you can see the furthest level reached, the most gems you've collected, your longest combo and (if finished) your fastest time. Each attempt teaches you new things about the game's quirks and consequently the different tactics you might try next time - and this is what generates the "one-more-time" call that resounds in your head at the end of each run. 

CONCLUSION

Downwell is a blisteringly chunky game that feels great to play. It's the crackling gunfire, smashing stomps and sheer satisfaction of it all that feeds the addiction and adds to its charm. Additionally it's one of those games that makes you feel like a boss when you dispatch enemies with the flourish of a master and as it all comes together beautifully. This is down to the well-implemented physics of your movement and the resounding sound of guns blazing and enemies splattering around you. With the refreshing price being as low as the mobile version it is no wonder that this cracking 16-bit title has garnered such overwhelmingly positive reviews from steam users. The developers did damn well with Downwell.