Drop Duchy is when Tetris and Deck Builder make what happens when they give birth to a baby and decide to raise it as a medieval ruler. If that hybridization doesn’t catch you, what if I said it was one of the smoothest and most accessible deck builders I’ve played?
I started this game late on a Wednesday night and the next day at 8am was planned at my drama school.
After completing the tutorial, I settled down to play a round or two, and after a little later I checked my watch and played for 2 and a half hours without realizing it.
After work continued in the evening, I either were ready for the next 8am start, or I would go to sleep to get another round, or my principality was calling my name, just like my multiple alarms the next morning.
It’s not as complicated as it looks
You start with a principality, one of three factions alongside the Republic and Order, and the principality is an expert in agriculture.
Each step on the map consists of either collecting resources, fighting enemies, or visiting builders. These offer different mechanics, from college to traders, from each building to offering new cards to healing hit points.
Once you enter either a neutral territory or an enemy territory, the main game begins and drops resource blocks, buildings, or enemies onto the map. It will be Tetris style.
Depending on where you place each block, you can create different synergies, and the round continues until you use all the blocks or hit the top of the board.
You then enter a Rock Paper Sisser style battle system, which allows you to choose which buildings will attack enemy buildings and in which order you will maximize damage.
For example, if you have a heavy attacker (characterized by x), it will first send to a light enemy (characterized by a sword) and deal 50% damage.
When all military buildings are attacked, the battle is won or lost depending on whether the enemy is still there. Next, pick up the Resource/Pride Relic and move to the next stop on the map.
Watching all this play with nice, heavy animation and sounds is just as satisfying as clearing Tetris’ lines.
While it may seem very complicated on the page, the game does a good job explaining mechanics and you can always revisit the tutorial if you’re stuck. However, once you enter the flow, the full game takes about an hour, pulling away the synergy and creating a chain.
Let’s synergize!
An early example is when using timber, farms and watchtowers along with some forest resources. The wood turns the wood into plains, the farm turns it into farmland, and then the watchtower gains three extra ranged attackers (featuring several arrows) for each farm square.
Watching all this play with nice, heavy animation and sounds is just as satisfying as clearing Tetris’ lines.
Overall, the graphics, music and sounds are all refined with great colors, bright colors, and each resource and building has easy to recognize features.
One thing the game hopes to add future updates is more animation between blocks. Perhaps the farmer’s wheelbarrow from the nearest forest to the farm will have to travel across the river on a boat to make the kingdom more lively.
Also, there is some kind of reaction between the blocks, but when the four are placed together the river turns into a lake, while others have no response, the mountains protrude next to the forest, making it seem like they are different from everything else.
Move the tree of progress up
Between runs, you have the option to upgrade your progress tree with currency collected from completion of metamissions, such as getting a certain amount of food in the game or not placing military buildings in rounds.
These provide new cards that will be added to each deck pile in the future. This will form new strategies and even new mechanics such as religion and technology can further increase the depth of the game.
However, it warns new players to read the progress tree and make sure it takes time to understand what the new mechanics add to the game rather than upgrading everything at once.
When I unlocked the river, I lost the next run. Suddenly there was a new environment that was not ready.
If these new mechanics are unlocked in sections, they would prefer to potentially be hit bosses or win a run, then make sure they have enough time to understand the first group of the system before another layer is added.
If you want to try a little more, you can unlock cards that will grant money when enemies finish a game with no spares.
However, these new systems allow for more synergies and choices regarding which resources to focus, giving experienced players a deep, rich veins of my content.
I reserve my judgment
The game has different difficulty levels, each modifying different attributes to execution, from the cost of mercenary to whether enemy units can be placed in spares.
The reserved block is another Tetris mechanic. This allows you to keep it later if you don’t want to place the blocks right away.
However, you can also place enemy units in a spare, essentially removing them from the game, and provide a safety net against some of the more powerful cards.
If you want to try a little more, you can unlock cards that will grant money when enemies finish a game with no spares.
Boss battles fight at the end of each act, changing gameplay in a unique way, from the wall constricting beings to the traps of military buildings added by keeps. These will tense the final battle. Because one wrong move can spell disasters throughout your run.
UI confusion
Currently there are some UI issues that I wanted to iron during the early access period. In other words, like the symbol of a fire, the combat system’s lock paper scissors are placed in a triangle.
The time I had to rearrange the three tip blocks in my head had to understand them depending on whether I was thinking about an attack or the enemy was frustrated.
The cards also have some explanations you can do at once to clarify them. A stable horse is one such example.
It recruits “three light attackers” between each space and another building. But what it doesn’t mention is that if no other buildings are nearby, no scores are added.
These types of small confusion have been lost because so much happened with new cards added and I didn’t understand the mechanic until I watched live. A small video/image tutorial of each card’s effects is also useful.
The game currently has “unknown” compatibility with steam decks, but I’ve played a few rounds. It all works, with excellent resolution and modifiable control schemes available.
Close Thoughts:
Drop Duchy is a great addition to the deck building genre with Tetris hybridization that works smoothly on all other systems in the game. If you like a relaxed but challenging game, look at the watch and it suddenly becomes 2am, Drop Deuch is definitely on your radar. I’m looking forward to what this team will do next.
