Well Dweller review

Undoubtedly, Kyle Thompson has a recognizable style. 2020’s SHEEPO was a combat-free metroidvania that had you borrowing creatures’ navigational abilities. 2022’s Islets asked you to fix it’s fragmented world, befriending inhabitants along the way. 2024’s Crypt Custodian shifted the action to a top-down perspective, where a recently deceased cat named Pluto used a broom to clean up the afterlife. All three of them were agreeable adventures where the emphasis was on exploration rather than punishing mistakes.

Unsurprisingly, Well Dweller follows this same approach, with a world that’s just a bit darker. Here, cuddly animals and goofy conversations share the screen with rotting ruins, wild hunters, and fiendish monsters which feels fitting given our daily news cycle.

A Literal Glimmer of Hope

You play as Glimmer, a small bird who lives with his family inside a skull at the bottom of a well. Birds have been hunted nearly to extinction by a Cruella de Vil-style queen who wants their feathers for a completely excessive royal gown. After a food run ends with a hunter following Glimmer home and capturing his mother and siblings, the plucky little bird grabs his matchstick and goes after them. Largely, Dweller’s revenge story is told with just the right amount of melancholy. Whenever things flirt with getting gloomy, a mouse, frog, or some other eccentric shows up and injects a bit of humor with some playful dialogue.

If you’ve played a metroidvania or three, you’ll quickly recognize the game’s structure. Here, you’ll explore an interconnected map, spot some unreachable paths, and revisit them once Glimmer has learned the right trick. That kind of ability-gating is pretty standard, but Well Dweller elevates the age-old formula with near-flawless responsiveness. As such, running, jumping, sliding, climbing, and gliding all feel fluid and flow together pretty seamlessly. Pleasingly, harder jumps rarely feel cheap, while touching spikes usually drops you back on safe ground instead of making you repeat an entire section. There are optional trials if you’re looking for more of a challenge. They’re generally short enough that another attempt doesn’t feel like a chore.

Returning to Your Roosts

Undoubtedly, movement feels rewarding and it’s helped by a few cool features. Once Glimmer gets the slingshot, he can launch the matchstick into certain walls, where it becomes a temporary springboard. Glimmer can jump onto the matchstick and leap from it for extra height before retrieving it and firing it into another surface. This turns the matchstick into a rather cool traversal tool, letting you bounce between walls, clear spikes, and reach ledges that would otherwise be inaccessible.

Each region adds new gimmicks that range from bubbles, wind currents, moving platforms, or disappearing surfaces. Pleasingly, the light puzzles are easy to understand so you won’t get stuck and feel like a bird-brain. Instead, The challenge comes from pulling off the technique needed to get past them rather than guessing what the game wants. That keeps things enjoyable even when several abilities have to be chained together.

Getting around Dweller’s kingdom is easier than in many metroidvanias. There’s a convenient mini-map, while the full map switches between a simple room layout and a more detailed illustrated view. Additionally, custom markers help you remember suspicious walls and unreachable ledges. Fast travel is pretty generous, as well. Once unlocked, it lets you warp directly from the map to any tent you have found instead of bird-walking back to a station. If you’re stuck, you can buy hints that reveal the next objective or mark any missed collectibles. This removes some of the frustration from getting lost, and keeps you from excessive backtracking.

Enemies, You’ve Met Your Match

Combat is both fair and responsive. Mercifully, it largely shirking the precision dodges and parries that have dominated the subgenre. Glimmer can smack enemies on the ground or in the air, slide under danger, and fire his matchstick from a distance. Flaming oil bottles can be tossed toward enemies or swatted through the air like Molotov baseballs, adding some timing to the straightforward fighting. Healing also involves a bit timing. Using an oil vial brings up a meter, and landing the cursor in the highlighted area restores health while granting a temporary attack boost. Best of all, enemies signal their attacks, often with brightly colored warnings. Both keyboard and controller can be used, although a gamepad feels better once the platforming becomes more acrobatic.

Trinkets augment Glimmer’s abilities by enhancing his slide attacks, changing the behavior of flaming bottles, revealing secrets, or even providing defensive bonuses. Limited space initially means loadouts require some tough decisions. That changes later, when you can acquire or purchase enough slots to equip nearly anything worthwhile. Glimmer becomes powerful, but combat also grows just a bit repetitive. While movement evolves across much of the adventure, his basic attack routine largely stays the same and I found myself longing for a bit more variety.

Frustrations Are in Short Supply

Boss battles might be a bit contentious, especially if you’re accustomed to a sturdy challenge. Most of these showdowns look fantastic, with storybook backdrops juxtaposed against grotesque creatures. The best fights use Glimmer’s moveset and turn arenas into platforming courses. A few encounters become chase sequences, while another uses stealth, which helps break things up. Still, on the normal difficulty setting, many of them will fall after only a couple of attempts, and several attack patterns can seem similar. Three difficulty settings and a selection of assist options keep things approachable, but anyone expecting Hollow Knight-style punishment may find these fights too tame.

But that gentleness is also part of Well Dweller’s appeal. Largely, the game strives to reduce the annoyances associated with the metroidvania, letting you concentrate on combat and exploration. Many of its ideas gel together quite well, with Glimmer’s matchstick serving as a weapon, health indicator, projectile, and temporary platform. Some might argue that combat needs more nuance and that tougher bosses would have been welcome. But largely, Kyle Thompson understands the allure of finding a new route and the enjoyment of seeing where it leads to. Few metroidvanias make getting lost feel this inviting, so if you appreciate the genre, this little bird could use a new home.

Well Dweller was played on PC with review code provided by the publisher.