The Dwarves

The game is at once lighthearted in it’s art and humor, but also unsettling and sometimes wincingly violent. The dwarves are fun to be around. I wanted to see more of what they had to say and then take them into battle to put their mallets, axes, and great-weapons to use against the Crowd AI. Fun Factor doesn’t overcome the game’s issues, but it certainly helps mitigate them.

Between the rocky difficulty curves, the linear progression, the forced petty choices, and insta-death penalty for veering away from the dictated plot—everything in The Dwarves made me feel like I had no real control over my journey across Girdlegard. I lacked any real agency as a player, and even for a short RPG adventure, that sucks.

For everyone else, stay far away. This story is told very well, but it’s ultimately a generic save-the-world story that’s been done a thousand times before. Everything but the gameplay seems to have been given love and care, which is especially ironic considering that this is a video game.