Over the weekend, I spent some of my spare time dipping back into Drop Duchy, a Tetris-inspired puzzle-roguelite by Sleepy Mill Studio that initially launched back in May of this year (you can read the full review if you’d like to know more).
After reading about the game’s latest 1.2 update and the paid-for DLC that landed alongside it, I figured I would take another look and play it as it is today.
Finding my feet and The Tribe
The two new factions are called The Tribe and The North, respectively.
At first, I refamiliarized myself with the game by trying the original starting faction, and then once I’d found my feet again (and fell at the new Act 2 boss) I moved onto The Tribe.
These folks landed in the first DLC back in August, and they have an interesting Celt-inspired mechanic where you must position stones, or cairns, around a central stone circle, to boost your effectiveness.
It’s a great faction to use if you enjoy focusing on careful placement and building synergies – something that Drop Duchy does well as a whole. I quite enjoyed the new play style offered by The Tribe, but I was also eager to see the final faction and so quickly moved on to…
The North folk
The second and newest faction is The North. These folks have an interesting raiding mechanic, which changes the way you approach resource gathering, a fury mechanic that charges as you take damage, and a unique approach to combat.
In a normal game, if there’s a battle, it’s between the combined might of both forces. When playing as The North, each of your military units must battle another directly. Any that are left over can pillage the resources that have been gathered by any production units in play.
It’s an interesting change of pace for sure, and I quite enjoyed this divergent combat system. It was particularly useful in the more complex battles where there are lots of units in play.
The free bit
The standout feature that has been added in the free 1.2 update is probably the undo button. This is a very player-friendly move and it does take a smidge of pressure off, moving Drop Duchy more firmly into strategy territory than ever before.
On top of that, there’s a new unlockable Ascension mode, with modifiers to tinker with and special cosmetic rewards for those who want to go deeper into the different factions and their mechanics.
Throw in everything above along with some fresh bosses (one for each act), new units (unlocked via the tech tree), a dozen different cards for use across the game, plus a bunch of minor tweaks – and you’ve got a chunky injection of content to work through.
If that sounds of interest to you, Drop Duchy is out now on PC (Win), via Steam, where you can also find patch notes for the 1.2 update and links for the DLC.
