Dark Fairy Tale: Dreamland Survivors - Review (PC)
Ooo spooky
Dark Fairy Tale is another entry in the ‘survivors’ genre, that have become very popular ever since Vampire Survivors smashed onto the scene. It’s been developed by BINGOBELL and is currently available on Steam. As a shorthand for this review, I’m going to refer to the game as ‘DFT’.
DFT throws a lot of information at you early on. There are pages of stats, lots of information about mechanics and so on. Although it seems like there’s a lot, it’s actually not so complicated.
The game works like many in this genre do. You start a run, in this case entering a dream, and have to battle through 25 waves of enemies. It’s an auto-battler, so you are in control of movement, whilst your character automatically attacks.
You have three weapons which are independently improved over the course of a run. There is the lancer, archer and caster. One of these is a short range, the other a long range, and the final one an area of attack spell. You move around the map, avoiding enemies whilst your weapon attacks, occasionally dodging if you need too.
How your weapons operate depends on how you upgrade them. There is a priority order in the way they fire off which affects their operation, and this is affected by which ones you’ve levelled up. It’s an interesting mechanic to only focus on a few weapons, but it does make sense in the context of this game due to how upgrades work generally.
As you defeat enough enemies to level up, you will receive an egg. These eggs are the main method of improving your character and defining your playstyle. They have two potential benefits, one from devouring, and the other from activating. Devouring usually gives small stat benefits, such as an increase to overall attack, defence, or one of the individual weapons.
Activating gives a greater benefit, or can do something special. For example, it can provide enhanced stat increases on levelling up, or it can increase your stats a lot more. There are loads of different mechanics at play here, and the way they all interact can be quite interesting. You can only activate a certain amount however.
Picking which eggs to get, which ones to devour and activate, defines your playstyle. You can really change how the character plays by going down specific paths. Eggs are divided into rarity, and rarer ones have even better benefits, so there’s some excitement there in seeing what you can get.
After five waves you enter a challenge room. There’s only one character you play as, Pinocchio, but these rooms offer a way to customise him. You pick a tarot card, which leads to a specific challenge based around that card. Usually, they are some form of survival mission with a quirk, such as a big sun following you around. These change Pinnochio’s appearance and abilities if you then unlock them from the main menu.
Unlocking them requires nightmare points, which are rewarded at the end of a run or accumulated throughout via certain eggs. Accumulating them though increases the enemy difficulty, so it’s a risk/reward scenario. You can then use them to improve Pinocchio and unlock tarots at the main menu, for that roguelike style persistent upgrades.
Okay, that’s enough about the mechanics - how does it all end up? It’s not too bad actually. Once you get over the hurdle of understanding the games systems, there’s a decent survivors style game in here. The main selling point is really that the egg system balances the RNG nature of upgrades in this game with being able to define a playstyle pretty well, you never feel too boxed in to a certain path, which is great.
The art style too is pretty nice, with the sprites being very high resolution and nicely animated. The music though is pretty standard fairy tale style fare, nothing particularly interesting there. There isn’t a gigantic amount of content on offer yet currently though, you’ll see the same enemies over and over, and I don’t believe all the tarots are currently available.
After a few runs you might feel a little bored. The good news is that the developer has stated they are going to support the game following the launch with new content, which is good to see and I hope they do. At it’s core they have got the gameplay and upgrade system down well, they now just need to expand it with more to do and see.
Overall though, at a price on Steam of currently about £3.86, it’s not a bad purchase. If you’re after a new survivors style game, and you like the games aesthetics, it might be worth a look. The game also states quite heavily in it’s marketing that it can be played with one hand, so if accessibility is a requirement for you, this may also be one to look at.
Rating - 3/5
Key provided by Keymailer for the purposes of this review.