Mento's May Mastery '16: Day Seven: Downwell

Downwell

It doesn't seem like it was too long ago when everyone was talking about Downwell, the little Arcade-style vertical (in the descending sense) shooter from Japanese doujin developer Moppin and prolific publishers Devolver Digital. Its release went down well, so to speak. Yet, even though I bought the game close to its moment in the zeitgeist, I never really got around to playing it. I'd already written up the GOTY blog at that point towards the final days of 2015, and probably figured that I didn't need to complicate things with a last-second dark horse entry. Well, May Mastery seems like as good a time as any to finally take the plunge.

Downwell is a fundamentally simple but monstrously difficult game, as is usually the case with any briefly immensely popular "one more try" games (see Devil Daggers for what I believe to be the most recent example of this, unless that role has been supplanted again), in which the player's avatar tumbles down a well with only their rocket-propelled boots to keep them airborne. These boots also fire bullets which can destroy enemies and detritus directly below the player, and the goal is to survive the descent for as long as possible. Specific enemies can also be landed on: the game distinguishes what's deadly from what's safe with a threatening reddish tint, that is all the more striking by the game's otherwise complete lack of color. Add to this a power-up system which the player earns after every stage of the descent, a currency that can be recovered from enemies and destroyed objects and spent on restoratives in stores, and a menagerie enemies with different behavior patterns to memorize.

However, the most important aspect for long-term survival (besides just "get gud") is also one of the game's best (initially) hidden secrets: a combo system that counts the number of enemies slain without touching the ground. Downwell can be played conservatively, moving from platform to platform and letting tenacious flying enemies come to you for a careful and quick dispatch, but playing in such a slow and deliberate manner will not only take you considerably longer but offers more opportunities to make mistakes; with only four HP and scarce few ways to heal or increase that number, mistakes can be costly. Instead, by rarely stopping to look at anything but controlling your terminal velocity with enemy "cushions", the player's gunboots (which replenish after hitting solid ground or - crucially for this combo system - landing on an enemy) and specific pieces of destructible dungeon dressing, you can rush past most of the danger and build up impressive combos that can earn you a lot of cash for restoratives or - if you're particularly good at keeping a chain going - an extra HP or two.

Most of this was, I'll admit, cribbed from watching GameSpot's Mary "Merry" Kish run a dang clinic on the game during a memorable UPF a few months ago. I didn't go back to check for the details, since I do want to approach these games as "freshly" as possible, but I think I recalled enough to ensure my first few playthroughs were slightly less painful than everyone else's. While reaching stage 2-3 after an hour's work is probably not super impressive, I do feel like I've got the hang (time) of the game if nothing else. At this point, it's acquiring the necessary level of skill to survive for longer sessions through practice: once you start hitting that terminal velocity and things whiz past at unimaginable speed, the game's not the easiest thing to maintain control over.

Ultimately, Downwell doesn't seem like a game that I'd want or should play for hours at a time, but rather for a few minutes every day so I can better appreciate the gradual improvement. I don't think it has the staying power that other non-RPG "roguelites" known for their difficulty might have - Rogue Legacy, Spelunky and The Binding of Isaac, to name but three, all have a lot more going on under the surface in their respective downward journeys and more to discover as you play, die, play, die and play again. That isn't to denigrate Downwell, however, or even suggest that it was attempting something similar; it's every bit in the spirit of the Arcade games of the 70s and early 80s, short of spending a quarter for every attempt at the well, and it's no mystery to me why it became as briefly popular as it was. (Is, I really should say; if it's a flash in the pan, I figure it's a really deep, deep pan. One that would put Chicagoans to shame.)

[Addendum to the Transistor coverage: I did eventually beat the game. I only had about half an hour and a half-dozen more fights of Transistor left after where I stopped yesterday, including an underwhelming final boss fight and an ending that... well, I can't really describe the tone of it without revealing too much, but I'm not sure I was happy with that either. My overall views on the game haven't changed though: Transistor ekes out its own distinct path as a linear, story-driven "action-SRPG", for better and worse, and while the combat was patchy in areas I can find no fault at all in its presentation, between its gloriously neon environments to its soulful music. The Transistor really needed to talk less though. It put the "words" in "sword", that's for sure.]

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