We seem to hear about "Zelda-inspired" indie games almost every other day at the moment, but it's not hard to see why so many developers would choose to go down that route.
Take Dwerve, for example, a new dungeon-crawling RPG that takes influence from Zelda: A Link to the Past's questing, exploring, and storytelling. On Kickstarter, the game has raised more than $30,000 so far, meaning that its campaign is already 300% funded with 16 days still left to go.
Now, the team's aiming for a release on Switch. A new Kickstarter stretch goal has been announced today, with a $60,000 target being set for a launch on Nintendo's platform. It's ambitious, but if anyone's going to lap up a new Zelda-like, it'll be the Nintendo fans, right?
You can check out the Kickstarter and pledge your support here if you're interested. We'll share some details below for you before you go:
Dwerve is a Zelda-like action tower defense RPG where you play as a dwarven tinkerer that uses turrets and traps to fight, coming to Windows, Mac, Linux, and, if the stretch goal is reached, Nintendo Switch in summer 2021.
Dwerve tells the story of a young dwarven tinkerer that adventures into dwarven ruins to unearth the lost technologies of the ancient warsmiths: turrets and traps. These are the only weapons that can protect the dwarves from Witch Queen Vandra the Wicked and her army of bloodthirsty trolls and monstrous creatures.
Key Features
- Tactical turret-based combat involves making strategic decisions about which turrets and traps to build and where.
- Upgrade your arsenal with over a dozen turrets and traps, each with its own unique upgrade tree.
- Discover powerful artifacts: an arrow-blocking shield, dashing boots, a bouncing boomerang, a ground-shaking hammer, and more!
- Story-based campaign. Unravel the history of the dwarves and the trolls in a story that features diverse characters and an unpredictable plot!
- Explore ancient dungeons in multiple biomes, each with hidden secrets, mysterious puzzles, and interesting lore!
- Fully dynamic lighting. Adventure through dimly lit dungeons that come to life with dynamic lights and shadows
What do you think? Can you see yourself enjoying this one if it made it to Switch? Are you considering giving the project your backing? Tell us below.
Comments 17
Kickstarter is a piece of crap, but to be honest this game looks really fun and up my alley. The "hand-drawn" animation is really my style. Oh sure, why not. I'll donate.
I’d love a nice tower defence game in Switch, but this one isn’t doing it for me. Graphics need to be cleaner, or less zoomed out maybe.
When I saw "inspired" I thought it would mean "uninspired ripoff" but this looks fun. Not my type of game, but fun. The voice acting sounds solid too.
This actually looks really good. It takes inspiration but is clearly its own thing, hope it comes to the switch
to see this today of all days, with the Hyrule Warriors BOTW edition. great day so far
Zelda inspired started me reading, tower defense had me stop.
Looks lovely, and I love interesting takes on anything TD related. I have a weak spot for TD ever since WC3 Customs blew up there.
Also, this reminds me of "Lock's Quest", one of my favourite NDS games of all times. Definitely going to take a closer look and consider backing, even though I haven't backed anything in years.
@Apportal Why is Kickstarter crap? As long as you make informed decisions as to where you "invest", it can be quite the blessing. Sure, it has it failures, but honestly, most of them feel into the "sounded to be good to be true ... was too good to be true" category.
Need some good traditional tower defense games on Switch. Any recommendations?
Looks really good. I wouldn’t call it Zelda inspired though. If this is then you could argue that almost everything is.
@Ralek85 Warcraft 3 custom maps helped tower defense blow up and invented the MOBA. There's also the world domination games that are still getting traction in Roblox. They were inspired by RISK the board game, but adding some of the WC3 features to it, made it interesting. Simpler than Civ and other 4x games and faster too.
I actually dabbled in a custom map based on RISK before they were a thing. Had a couple bugs so I never released it but then I got to play other people's takes on it. Fun times.
Anyway, TD and MOBA games were my game habit takeaways. Though, for MOBA, I actually still play a WCIII custom map: Battle Tanks (DOTA, the custom WCIII map had the worst toxic players back then).
I also enjoyed Lock's Quest, but I don't think I quite finished it. :/
This game looks better than I thought it would by the headline. It looks to mix the top-down Zelda adventure with Tower Defense in smart and clever ways. Was hoping it was arriving soon, rather than a Kickstarter...
@aaronsullivan I think the matchmaking makes DotA 2 vastly superior to the original. It was such a hassle to deal with all that toxicity, lag, disconnects and what have you.
@Ralek85 Oh yeah, absolutely. I do wish that Battle Tanks map was popular enough to get a standalone game for that reason. There is still a Discord and people are hanging on and keeping tournaments going, but I can’t make the investment in time to be competitive.
Warcraft III was the one game I did the competition thing and actually got into the realm of playing against a top player or two — I was crushed mercilessly while they taunted me with texts, but it still felt like an accomplishment just to swim in the same pool.
But then I began to understand the necessary time and energy commitment, and it could be fun and exciting, but I just can’t put that kind of time aside. The matchmaking let’s me have competitive games with similar experience levels and I do that from time to time.
@aaronsullivan Yeah for sure! I get pretty competitive, too, in these type of games, but there is slim line between a fun diversion and a serious commitment, and the former is more about joy while the latter is more about achievment.
Personally, I miss Enfo the most. Really wish we could get a DotA/HoN/LoL etc. stand-alone version of Enfo. That would be a dream come true.
@Ralek85 I had to look Enfo up and I did try that a couple times, but I think I was a bit lost and never went back to it. Interesting.
@aaronsullivan I don't know, but I imagine it's hard to find a good game, with teammates who know what they are doing and an opposing team that is competitive. Worst of all, most of the versions that existed had a bug that caused a single stun to last forever, which broke the game unfortunately
I am interested, as long as it isn't rogue.
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