Well Dweller Review - A Dark and Twisted Fairy-Tale Metroidvania

Barely Magic Mike

5 minutes ago

5 min read

https://youtu.be/VKxoj6rQHnQ?si=lctWar5xMrnoD90M

On a seemingly weekly basis, the metroidvania genre tries its very best to outsaturate itself, with so many new entries in so little time that most of us probably couldn't beat them in our lifetimes. But no matter how crowded a genre like this gets, a truly interesting game in it is likely to get attention when it's as polished and fun as Well Dweller.

There's not one single aspect of Well Dweller that I could point to and say, “this here is what makes it a standout metroidvania.” Because ironically, everything here is pretty standard for the genre. You make your way across an increasingly sprawling map, unlocking shortcuts to old areas and abilities to access new ones, fighting plenty of enemies and bosses along the way. None of this is new or arguably interesting on its own anymore, but Well Dweller manages to upend any reason to criticize it for sticking to genre conventions by being really damn good in almost every way I can think of.

The story casts you as a bird named Glimmer in a world where birds have gone nearly extinct. Your mother and brothers are seemingly the last of your kind left, with most others having been nabbed by hunters and plucked of all their feathers by an evil queen. You're not really concerned about any of that though - Well Dweller’s narrative doesn't frame you as a hero ready to go out and rescue your species. Instead, your mother, clearly dying to get her birdlings out of the house for some peace and quiet, voluntells you to go on a quest to a hunter's house to nab some food for the nest. Then there's some chasing, some fighting, yada yada yada your entire family is kidnapped, and you better go save them before they're plucked. I won't pretend this foundation is original, but execution is 9/10ths of a concept and the execution here is pretty great. Your siblings all have bizarre and quirky personalities, with plenty of entertaining one-liners to give them some reason to exist beyond quest-giving fodder, and the side characters you come across feel equally compelling in their own rights.

This is the first time I've played a game by Kyle Thompson, developer of other reasonably popular metroidvania games like Crypt Custodian and Islets, but I was consistently fascinated by its specific mix of creepy and cute as an artistic choice. Let me be clear - if the scale between cute and creepy puts cute at a 0 and creepy as a 10, a game like Little Nightmares gets a 9 and Well Dweller gets like a 3. There's nothing whatsoever in the way of overt horror here. But for how colorful and cartoony the character designs are, boss designs and background scenery can take a sudden shift into fairytale nightmares, and it's a duality the game manages with flair. Hollow Knight might be a better frame of reference overall, but even that game feels significantly gloomier than what we have here. Point being - the art style of Well Dweller fully landed for me, and on Steam Deck and Steam Machine the game also shines and runs fantastically well. The soundtrack is also worth a shout-out, because while it's probably a little gloomy to land on my Spotify playlists, it feels like such a natural fit for this world.

But how does it play? Well, frankly, like any other metroidvania you'd expect, and that's not a bad thing. On an Xbox controller, you'll jump with the A button, attack with the X button, and have some novel abilities like shooting a matchstick at a wall that you can then use as a springboard to reach higher areas. But as I already mentioned, execution is everything here, and Well Dweller's great level design does a lot of heavy lifting to make it stand out. The time trials especially, which operate as often 10-20 second gauntlets of platforming requiring near-perfection, feel excellent to get through.

Each biome in Well Dweller feels distinct, with unique enemy types that get surprisingly challenging as the game goes on. It never hits the same level of challenge as something like Hollow Knight though, which for me is a godsend. I've butted heads with the metroidvania genre over stingy checkpoints and painfully annoying navigation woes, and Well Dweller does a great job of avoiding these pitfalls with a reasonable level of challenge and frequent tents that allow you to save, buy items, and slot different trinkets. Trinkets are collectible items that give you passive perks like increasing damage when at low health, automatically refilling your health with one of your limited oil vials when it gets too low, and others that feel genuinely impactful for any given play style. You won't be able to equip them all at once, as each takes up a certain number of trinket slots, which you can expand by finding them in a variety of tricky-to-reach spots throughout the world.

Trinkets certainly help to add a little variety to combat, as do the flame canisters you can kick at enemies, but the combat in Well Dweller is otherwise pretty simple, consisting of little more than slashing at enemies with the appropriate timing. Enemy variety does a lot to make this system feel more complex than it is, as do the fantastic boss encounters, which will consistently require every maneuver in your toolset like a slide that grants invincibility frames, jumping, hovering briefly in midair, or otherwise. But at times I did wish for the combat to have an extra dimension or two, occasionally opting to just skip past enemies rather than engage in every encounter the game threw at me.

Here's the thing - if you've played a metroidvania before, very little in Well Dweller is likely to genuinely surprise you. It plays like a greatest hits album of genre tropes rather than anything truly new. But for as much as I value innovation, there's something to be said about taking a known game design template and executing it to near-perfection. If the frequent backtracking and exploration focus of metroidvanias isn't your thing, Well Dweller presents nothing to change your mind. But if you're looking for a game with rewarding exploration, interesting environments, and a compelling charm that will hook you from its opening moments, I haven't played many metroidvanias that land quite as well as this one, at least not ones with a level of difficulty that doesn’t make me want to tear my hair out. To each their own, I guess. Well Dweller earns itself the Silver Genie Lamp of Approval.

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