Witch cards will drop: Ittle Dew

If you look at my Steam game playing history in terms of hours spent, I tend to gravitate toward somewhat less action-y, somewhat more think-y games but rarely all that think-y. I'm not a puzzle guy, not really, I lack patience. I always have. I do like turn based 4x games; the reason I haven't reviewed many (or any, I'd have to check) ends up with the feeling they eat time like no other. It's kinda hard to write about a game you should probably put a good hundred hours into to get a real feel for what it's like.

I do like puzzles in some games, though. I remember the sci-fi grounded puzzles in Dead Space really fondly. Clearing jams in the artificial gravity unit or life support wings were cool, generally unique ideas. But puzzle games themselves are generally the same thing repeated over and over. Push a block. Push a block. Now, push a block.

Generally, I think the biggest issue is one of general pacing - puzzle games tend to be sluggish and mistake the deliberate pace of the puzzle gameplay with something the game should have at all points in the production. It often feels like half the challenge is not getting bored out by having to slowly shove blocks around a room while your character moves at the speed of a waterborne slug.

Ittle Dew is a block pushing puzzle game. It was done by, previous to, the same individual(s) who put out Card City Nights, which was a pretty fun single player card game. It has the same tongue in cheek sense of humor and shares the same basic art style, albeit in a somewhat different setting than whatever you want to say CCN was in.


I liked CCN, but it was frustrating and in many ways obnoxious, but the one thing I definitely liked was the art style. CCN used Ittle Dew's elements, as it did with other games that the studio or its friends have made. It doesn't share anything else, though, besides perhaps the music and some of the tone to the writing.

Ittle Dew mostly resembles a more puzzle-centric isometric Zelda game. I haven't read online reviews, but basically, I think you'd be safest comparing it to something akin to a Link To The Past. In some ways, it does very well for this, and in other ways the homaged elements are just half-baked.

Visually, it's a smoothly drawn cartoon style game. It isn't pixel art, and there's no pixelated simplification holding it back. I believe the sprites are hand drawn, and the artist is talented at making things pop with personality. It's a very silly game, when it comes to the visuals, with a very child friendly outlook. The music is also quite pleasing, nothing epic or unexpected, but certainly better quality than most indie titles.

The game's writing is very barebones in terms of back story and very pleasant in terms of upfront dialogue. You get a little introduction to each enemy and a little chatter with the shopkeeper, but it's cute and simple. You wash up on a shore and have yourself an adventure. Ittle Dew, the eponymous character, is a young woman (yes, she's a girl) in search of adventure and there's nothing else to talk about in this regard.

The gameplay divides into two basic sections. You solve block pushing puzzles, which includes a variety of the classic 'yes but in what order' puzzles, puzzles involving bombs or enemies and then more portalesque tool based puzzles where you make use of the variety of tools Ittle Dew picks up over the course of the game. This stuff is good, mostly.

I say mostly because it isn't too great about defining what mechanically works and sometimes you reach a puzzle and it's hard to say if you're having a metroidvania moment where you can't progress or if you're just derping on the puzzle. It makes for some really irritating gameplay, and Ittle Dew doesn't divide up the game world in any way that makes this discrete. There's no "fire area" or "ice area" or "water temple"; there's three dungeons you get a singular piece of loot from and then a castle area you're working toward finishing the game in.

Interestingly, you don't need all three of the items to finish the game, with achievements for finishing it with only two of the three. I don't know how this works, since I just sort of slept through the last couple rooms and didn't pay attention to how you could skip things. I also didn't really try to do many of the bonus rooms, as frankly I got kind of sick of the game.

And not finding any before just getting bored with it. In general I thought Ittle Dew was a pretty well-made, but slightly spotty in ways that puzzle games usually are. Sometimes its hard to figure out if you can or should be able to do a puzzle, and sometimes its hard to figure out where one puzzle ends and the next begins. The game does, when you strike a blockade, point out what releases it and it has a vaguely helpful hint window but at times this isn't enough.

Also, walking is way slower than it needs to be - gimme the bike from pokemon, thanks - and the teleporter hub is so indistinct  I never made any use of it. The second element is what falls under the other basic section, and that's the combat. The combat, end of story, sucks. It's very Zelda-like, but imprecise and frustrating. All the boss fights were a chore, though their little introductory cutscenes were cute.

Overall, I had the usual 2 good hours of fun out of Ittle Dew, and then some amount of not quite fun I could do without. There's a bit more content here than I saw, but like I said, I'm not patient. Given I finish the game, I think I'd recommend it, if you like some cutesie block pushing in your life.