Indie Impressions: Dawnfolk

[00:00:11] Welcome, welcome one and all. It is a very special episode of Indie Impressions. It is me, Jake, and I am talking about this game called Dawnfolk. Folks, this is an awesome game. I'm really excited to talk about this. But before we kind of get into the nitty gritty details of the game, I'd kind of like to discuss a little bit about it and why I am doing this episode on it.

[00:00:38] Dawnfolk is a game that has been on my radar probably since the beginning of the year. It just looks like a really fun city builder. I actually really like city builders, even though I don't get to play them all that often. Or just that I don't. I'm a big fan of City Skylines. I played a lot of SimCity growing up as a kid. But yeah, let's kind of talk about Dawnfolk a little bit.

[00:01:03] It was developed by Darren Keller, who is a wonderful person. And I had the opportunity to chat with him a little bit. And he gifted me a code to the game. So just to be upfront, this was gifted and I'm doing a review just on the game for the show. And I was super pleasantly surprised. And what's kind of funny is the thing that caught my attention, first and foremost about this game was the title art. It is just really gorgeous to look at.

[00:01:32] But yeah, so this is a solo development effort. Darren has shared that he's a former Ubisoft employee and wanted to make a game. And this is a in this is the game. He has advertised this game. It has a main campaign, which will take you seven to 10 hours. I found that to be super accurate. Right. This game recently came out. It came out on February 13th.

[00:01:59] And I had the opportunity to play it slightly before release, but I finished it after release. And here comes the episode a week later. Yeah, Dawnfolk is just a really, really good time. And hopefully using kind of the formula that I typically do, breaking this game down, talking first about the art direction, then the narrative.

[00:02:21] And finally, the game design, you'll get some good insights as to kind of what this game has to offer and what really made it stand out for me when it comes to similar games. So first and foremost, let's talk about the art direction of Dawnfolk. Dawnfolk. This is a minimalist pixel art game, and I'm a big fan of this.

[00:02:46] But at the same time, if you are a longtime listener to the show, you know that I I really strongly believe that you need really good, solid character portraits to kind of help introduce like player imagination into minimalist pixel art, because I mean, it's minimalist. You really need to fill in the gaps with your imagination. It is kind of cool to see how people recreate things from a zoomed out view as well.

[00:03:12] One of my favorite kind of examples of this from recent games is is the llama that you ride in Arco. But what makes Dawnfolk look really good is this will be no surprise to longtime listeners is the color palette. But just really rich tones, really well executed borders on all the different sprites so you can see things really clearly. And there just is so much character.

[00:03:38] And there's this really wonderful charm, especially with the animals in this game. Oh, my gosh. Whenever I found like a wild flock of sheep or cows or horses, I just kind of lost my mind. They look really good. There are other animals in the game as well, too. But there's just so much charm baked in this. I'm actually really impressed that this minimalist pixel art has as much personality as it does. I do think that just like really sharp choices when it comes to color palette and spacing.

[00:04:07] So this is like a tile based game. And I think that actually plays in its favor really well because it makes it makes everything so easy to see and to dissect and to identify really quickly. And so I think if you're going to go for a minimalist pixel art style like Dawnfolk, being able to have things that are quickly and easily identifiable is this makes that pixel art that much clearer.

[00:04:35] Right. Because sometimes you'll look at pixel art like this and things kind of just seem a little muddy. But yeah, just a really beautiful looking game. Despite there really not being character portraits, there really are only two to speak of. And this is what kind of blows my mind about it is that your imagination didn't really need the character portraits. Not like you would in other games with this art style. And yeah, it does help that it's a city builder.

[00:05:02] So you're not like dealing with a ton of NPCs. But I mean, even so, I don't know, just really well executed. I really liked the music in this game. I thought it was really pleasant. And then one of our Discord members who great friend of the podcast, friend of the show, somebody who I talk to quite often, Slugcat Stew. He and I were talking about the game and he had mentioned the audio design.

[00:05:31] And I kind of I didn't realize it at the time until he said it. I was like, holy cow. I actually love this audio design. And the thing about this is like it's just like these really fun. They weren't beeps and bloops because they're not electronic. They're like all organic. And I'm fairly convinced without asking that pretty much all of the sounds or a bunch of the sounds came from Darren Keller's mouth.

[00:05:57] And what I mean by this is like there are a bunch of minigames in here. And some of the minigames involve like catching little pixels as they come across the minigame screen in a jar or a bottle. And when they drop. And so, for example, you need to catch wisps of light. There's just a sound design of bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop. And it's so endearing. It really plays into the charm of this game.

[00:06:23] Different sounds for all sorts of things that you encounter for the different ghosts. Like each tile you hover over it and it has like this this wonderful audio cue. And so, again, I think just like kind of the depth and charm that went into the sound design of this game just really elevate it. Right. Really makes it so everything is crisp and easy to identify. And this is crucial.

[00:06:48] And I'm going to talk about this with game design because this type of a game and like all city builders can throw a lot of information at you. And so the trick is getting your mind kind of prepared to handle a lot of information simultaneously. And so we'll get to that. Right. But art direction, super stellar. I think it's one of the biggest cells of the game.

[00:07:11] Um, you're the first NPC that you encounter who is sort of your companion throughout the entire journey is Louer. I'm assuming my French is really bad. Um, but it ends the same way the word fleur ends in French. So something along those lines, Darren, I apologize for mispronouncing this name. Um, this is one of the few character portraits you see.

[00:07:34] The very first, I think, comparison you're going to make is with, um, Calcifer from Studio Ghibli's Howl's Moving Castle. Um, but you know, wonderful, good NPC. And we're going to talk about that now. We're going to transition into discussion on the narrative. I think, uh, this is probably where my criticisms, criticisms of the game are.

[00:07:59] I would say that thematically and in terms of like the broad zoomed out narrative arc, this is a really wonderful game. There's a lot that I liked about it. However, the main campaign is broken into eight different levels or scenarios that you need to get through. And as you do so, you're doing it with Louer, your companion. And you, Louer doesn't really know where they came from or what they do.

[00:08:27] And so a lot of this narrative is about discovering what, uh, Louer is and what their goal is and why they can accomplish the things that they can, why they have the abilities that they have, et cetera. And I got to say, um, the moment to moment writing, I felt like was fine. It's serviceable. You as the player are really just kind of, I don't know.

[00:08:52] You're really just kind of a wall for Louer to voice their thoughts, which I don't think is a problem. It just feels a little odd. I feel like you're just kind of being talked at while somebody else is like experiencing this narrative arc in this journey. Now, I don't know if there's, I have any like good suggestions on how to do this better because I don't know, you know, I'm not a game developer.

[00:09:18] I just think sort of from a writing perspective, the game kind of sat awkwardly between including the player, like in player voice as having some sort of role narratively and what's happening in the game versus like, I don't know.

[00:09:36] I think it would have been a little more comfortable if you just simply played as Louer, like if you just totally role played this game versus like just this listening to one sided conversations and being directly addressed. Right. It's so I think you can interpret this as like a way of breaking the fourth wall. And I think that's kind of I think that's fine.

[00:09:56] And you are supposed to be working like somewhat in, I don't know, as a companionship, but it just didn't quite land for me. And I think the repercussions of that just made for like a lot of Louer asking questions out loud that you don't necessarily have the answers to as they're kind of on this journey of self discovery and like self empowerment. So, yeah, I just think the storytelling was odd.

[00:10:24] And then there are eight levels and it's just a little uneven in pacing. Some levels really just felt like, hey, we are going to help this community here, you know, get back on their feet. And other ones would be like these big, heavily like heavy narrative implications, big lore drops, if you will, just kind of scattered about. So, I don't know. My two main criticisms would be the writing is awkward because you're being talked to without any real ability to respond narratively.

[00:10:53] And I do think it maybe would have worked better as some type of role playing game, perhaps. Maybe that would have been awkward, too. What do I know? And then the other thing that I mentioned here with the pacing of the story kind of feeling a little off. But going back to what I really liked about this game, I think it's really uncommon that you have a city builder game.

[00:11:20] And city builder games are just like intrinsically tied to resource management. But to have a game that thematically discusses quite openly what resource management is and why that's important.

[00:11:37] And my favorite part of this game, probably overall, but especially narratively, where what I kind of called to be micro events that would take care of where you did have choice in terms of like, okay, so for example, one that cracked me up, just because I got it a lot and I only accomplished it, I think once. It's like, oh, rumors are that there is a druid in this forest.

[00:12:04] Which path will you take to try to find them left, middle or right? And so it's randomized and you just kind of hope that you pick the correct choice there and then something will occur. Or another one that happened frequently for me was like, you see two bears in the wood. If you were to hunt them, you could get a lot of food for them. What do you do? Do you hunt them or you just kind of leave them be? And you would make a decision and there'd be specific consequences with both decisions in there.

[00:12:34] Some of these micro events were just really simple. They were kind of one and done. Some of them, if you didn't address them or you address them in a specific way, they would have consequences and they would reoccur. And you might find the key characters from that micro event again and you'd have new choices to make. And I'm being purposely vague because there's a lot of them in here. And there are some that have that I was just really shocked by in a really good way.

[00:13:03] And like, oh, my goodness, that was super impactful what I did or what I didn't do. Right. So those micro events, I think narratively were my favorite part. And kind of coming back to this sort of awkward conversation that you have with Luerr, it almost made me wonder, like, if there was another way to incorporate that character, rather have them talking at you a bunch, but have them kind of pop up in these micro events as you're going along,

[00:13:31] I think would have been really cool. I don't know. I just thought that those like little tiny short stories scattered throughout each of the levels were so much fun. And a lot of really good Easter eggs. I would say I was very pleasantly surprised with how a lot of those micro events turned out. So, yeah, narratively, I think Donfolk is maybe a bit of a mixed bag.

[00:13:57] But I think if you zoom out, Luerr's story is a really compelling story. And I'm avoiding talking about spoilers. I'm going to go through this a little vaguely. But I've already mentioned that it's a story of self-discovery, of self-empowerment. And I would say self-fulfillment. And I think the game handles those themes really well.

[00:14:19] And I just kind of when you discover who Luerr is, it has really cool implications for what resource management means in the game. And so, yeah, thematically, I think that was the best part is that this game really intelligently spoke about resource management as a necessity that is much. And I think about this a lot, right?

[00:14:43] Because in my research at the university, I think a lot about how people's perspectives on nature change their behaviors and how people write about those and why certain artistic expressions of nature are the way that they are. And so resource management is a topic that people like to avoid. Because with resource management, it means, hey, me as a human, if I want to survive, I need to consume resources.

[00:15:12] We can't ignore the fact that I need to consume resources. Yet a lot of times in the environmental humanities, in universities, we talk about consuming less resources or better, more sustainable ways of consuming resources, which obviously I'm all for. But we typically talk about that on the macro level and not the individual level. And what I loved about Dawn Folk is that it discusses this on a community level.

[00:15:39] Like if you are building a city and you need these kinds of resources, what do you do to get them? What is the ethical way to do that? And I think it's displayed just extremely well in these micro events where you can trigger specific consequences for the different communities that you run into. This is a fantastical or fantasy world. So you run into orcs and dwarves and elves and the choices that you make impact those communities.

[00:16:09] And it impacts community relationships based on how you manage your resources. And I love this. I want this more in city builders rather than it just kind of being like citizens react to how a mayor does something. Right.

[00:16:24] This game is much more about, well, are your actions actually overthrowing or disrupting sustainability and sustainability, not just in an ecological sense, but in terms of relationships as well, too. Very cool. Really, really liked that. I want to see a lot more of that. So very well done, I would say, in Dawn Folk. Okay, the game design.

[00:16:52] We're getting into our final category here. Oh boy. Like this game, I am so grateful that it has more than a campaign because this game is super fun. It is super addicting. And it's funny because I streamed my entire playthrough of the campaign in two different streams here. And a lot of people like on my Twitch channel, they are, we're working and lurking, right?

[00:17:21] Usually they're at work and they're just kind of listening. So they're not always watching what I'm doing, but they'll glance over when they have a chance to. And it's funny because as I'm playing through Dawn Folk, I'm kind of thinking out loud, talking through my different decisions as I'm trying to balance these resources and accomplish different objectives.

[00:17:39] And I had somebody in the chat just say, I love listening to this because if I had no idea that you were playing Dawn Folk, I would have no idea what you're saying right now. And I thought that was just super funny because, and it speaks to the game's design in that this game manages to throw a ton of information at you. But you get to process that information in really interesting ways.

[00:18:05] And the game just never felt like super overwhelming with systems or anything. And it's just really delightful and easy, like very intuitive to get into the flow state of how this game plays out of like, you know, there's just a few, there's just a handful of resources really that you are concerned about. It's like four major resources plus the science resource, which allowed you to upgrade specific buildings in your town. So you're balancing the four resources in a way it kind of feels like Settlers of Catan.

[00:18:36] You need to spend resources to make resources in other ways to maybe smooth over relationships with the orcs or maybe go fight pirates or whatever it is. And so you're constantly balancing these resources. Levels are in different scenarios are kind of designed around like what happens if you really need a ton of this resource, but this map doesn't really provide a lot of this resource. How do you make that balance? What happens if this one resource is in abundance, but if you harvest it, you are causing a lot of problems.

[00:19:07] Otherwise, like how do you balance these types of things? Do you play aggressively? Do you play passive, like a pacifist in a passive way? Like, what do you do? You know, and I just love that the game has a lot of breadth there. I'm not doing a great job of explaining like the moment to moment gameplay, but essentially you have a bunch of tiles laid out and most of the you have entire maps. And I want to say that the grids are like 30 by 30 tiles, something along those lines. Maybe it's 20 by 20.

[00:19:35] So they're actually not that huge once you get into a level and deeper into like completing your objectives, but they're mostly shrouded in darkness. And so one of your four major resources is light. You need to spend light in order to uncover more tiles so that you can expand your objectives. And light becomes extremely precious resource. I felt like out of the four.

[00:20:03] So it's like light, people, food and materials. Light was the one that you needed because there would be these micro events where you need to spend light, big chunks of light, like immediately. And if you don't, it could have like severe consequences on your city. So that was one resource that was always on my mind. And then the other three resources were kind of this juggling act of like, OK, well, I have a surplus of people right now or I have a surplus of food. What can I do?

[00:20:32] What city or what buildings can I invest in to get these types of resources, et cetera? And so essentially what you're doing is you are playing these different buildings and you can play them next to each other with different synergies. And you're trying to increase because this has a day cycle, like how many of that resource you get per day in days tick through relatively quickly. And I think for most levels, I think I beat them all around like 200 days, which was maybe 30, 40 minutes of play time.

[00:21:01] So a day cycles through relatively quickly. And every day you get plus or minus whatever your resource is currently at. So like early game, let's say you're on a map where it's really hard to get food. Maybe you're only getting plus one food per day, but you're getting plus five materials per day. And so a lot of the kind of calculating you're doing as a player is, OK, what buildings do I need to buy with my surplus of materials so I can get more food?

[00:21:27] And if I have enough food coming in at a steady rate, then I can finally spend it this way. Or like one objective that was quite common was like paying a type of tribute for some reason. And so it's like, oh, no, I'm only at like plus four food and my other materials are like plus 10 per day. What can I do to get that plus four food up to plus 15 so I can pay this food tribute or whatever it is?

[00:21:53] And so it's a lot of balancing between what buildings cost, what type of currency. And then how can I kind of boost these daily rates? And there are lots of different micro events that are going to prevent or boost those different rates. And so you just have to be judicious in all of these decisions that you're making.

[00:22:15] So as much as I love the micro events for the narrative, I also really love them for the gameplay design because it made for it really, I think, reduce the amount of moments where I was just kind of sitting there like, what do I need to do? Right. There's always something to react to. And just for clarity's sake, when you're playing this game, you can play through each level on normal or hard. I played it on normal. I would, let's see, I think if you're a seasoned city builder, you got to play this on hard.

[00:22:45] If you were new to the genre, play it on normal. I felt like I went through each scenario with very minor snags. But I found that to be just super delightful. It's what I wanted. It's what I needed at the time. Other things to kind of spice up that moment to moment are these mini games. So I mentioned this, but when you are collecting resources, oftentimes you will have to play a mini game.

[00:23:10] And this will either give you like a bonus increase to how many resources you gather. Or if you were like under attack, it would mitigate the damage or resources that you spent when you had like a negative micro event happening. I thought that these were a great way to mix up just mechanics in the game and to create better pacing.

[00:23:34] The mini games very much play out, I would say in a similar, like it falls under the umbrella of the mini games that you play in Undertale. Now you're not like moving an item necessarily through a really common mini game is like if you're hunting deer, you would have a bow and arrow and you can move it left to right at the bottom of screen and a bunch of deer would run across the screen from all directions. And you're shooting arrows at them and trying to hit all the deer.

[00:24:01] So I guess mini games feel a little bit more like Oregon Trail and less like Undertale. I thought they were great. They were super quick. I think if these mini games had been any longer, they would have felt like they were starting to drag. And as you got further into each level or scenario, the mini games would get more tense and they would get longer. I think that was a really smart decision.

[00:24:25] So there was pacing in terms of the mini game length and like severity of punishment if you don't play them well. But yeah, I mean, they're simple. They're really intuitive. You just you just play them. And I there's actually an option to get an upgrade where the mini games are played for you. And I never picked it because I never felt like the mini games were a stumbling block or distraction.

[00:24:51] As I was kind of making my way toward toward each objective in the game. There's a lot. I mean, I think I've covered the game design fairly well for what happens in Dawn folk. There's a bunch of stuff I don't want to talk about because like I'm just kind of talking about it vaguely like micro events because I really don't want to spoil some of these micro events. Folks, if there's if you're going to take anything away from this review, it's at the micro events, micro events, micro events, right?

[00:25:19] Like they were way good and they think it was a super important characteristic that makes this game unique and easy to identify and just added a lot of fun gameplay. So that's what I'm going to say there. But the beautiful thing about Dawn folk is that it has beyond this campaign, right? So you can kind of earn this meta currency. It's blue light and you can spend it on all sorts of things in the main menu. You can unlock different modes. You can unlock different secrets. You can unlock different settings.

[00:25:50] From what I understand, though, from what I saw, none of the accessibility settings were hidden behind the blue light currency. I'm just talking about different settings. Like changing different colors, for example, of different layouts. It's something that you can unlock. I love this. I love this because it was just like more ways to engage with a really tight gameplay loop. And I've barely touched any of the optional modes in this game.

[00:26:20] But holy cow. I mean, it took me probably six hours over six hours, maybe like seven hours or something to be the campaign on normal mode. But folks, you could easily get 30 hours out of this game. You could get more hours out of this game. This game makes me think it doesn't play quite like Dorf Romantic from last year or two years ago. But it's one of those games. It's got a really tight core gameplay loop. It's easy to get addicted. It's easy to understand what's going on.

[00:26:48] It's easy to get sucked into the game flow. And you could just get tons and tons of time out of Donfolk. So finally, what I like to do, we've gone through our three categories, is who I recommend this game for. I recommend this game for people who love minimalist pixel art. You're really going to enjoy this. I recommend this game for people who like city builders.

[00:27:13] I especially recommend it for people who are new to the genre because normal mode was not that punishing. But there are definitely modes if you are a seasoned, you know, survival city builder player. There are modes in here that are going to wreck you. And so there's stuff in here for you as well. I also recommend it for people who just kind of want it for people who like Easter eggs and little secrets.

[00:27:40] This game has a bunch of little things in these micro events that you will just take away with you. And you'll walk out of the play session and be like, oh, man, that was really cool that happened. I was really grateful that I streamed this game because it was cool to chat with people and be like, dude, this was really cool. The thing that just happened right now, that was a cool thing in there, you know. And so this game is incredibly polished. There's a lot of heart and soul that went into it.

[00:28:09] So I highly recommend it. I highly recommend that you pick up Dawnfolk. From what I understand, it is currently available on Steam. And I believe it runs really well on Steam Deck. And there is a recent update where you can play mouse and keyboard. I don't know. This plays incredibly well on GamePad. I think if you like controllers, you're in for a real treat here.

[00:28:33] This would be also somebody else who I recommend this game for is if you like city builders, but you prefer controller, Dawnfolk is going to be the one that really works for you. Folks, thank you so much for listening to this review. Thank you again, Darren Keller, for the gifted key so that I could play this game. Yeah, go check out Dawnfolk, a wonderful game. I would really appreciate it if you consider supporting the podcast or a Patreon.

[00:28:59] Around $3 a month gets you to the Indie Pass tier where you can hear lots more reviews right about 30 minutes long that I'm doing about the indie games that I am playing. I've talked about where I stream. I love streaming indie games. Please give me a follow there, twitch.tv slash chipdip18. I'm there streaming four days a week, currently Thursdays, or excuse me, Tuesdays through Fridays. So please check me out there. Please support in some way. Follow, like, subscribe.

[00:29:27] Please support Dawnfolk as well to support more indie games. So folks, thank you so much. And until the next episode, take care.