Tower defense and storytelling come together in the 2D RPG dungeon-crawlerDwerve,where players take on the role of a dwarven warsmith. Players must venture across a beautiful but treacherous realm and battle with trolls and all manner of monsters to protect the kingdom from the Witch Queen Vandra.Dwerveputs a unique twist on some of the features typically found in many tower defense games, so to appeal to many kinds of gamers whether they are used to tower defense strategy gameplay or not.
Things are looking exciting forDwerve,following its positive reception following its release on Steam last year. It’s also due for release on Nintendo Switch in Spring 2023, among otherSwitch releases coming soon. Game Rant recently spoke with developer Percy Legendre IV about the inspirations behindDwerve’s creation, its stand-out mechanics, and what the future holds forDwerve.The following transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.
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Q: So how did you get involved in the game industry?
A:I feel like a lot of game developers start off as a gamer of course, and you just play games that you enjoy, and as you’re playing them, it inspires you to want to make your own worlds and your own gameplay mechanics. I remember playing games and being like, ‘oh, I wish this game would do this’ or it would function a little bit differently. And so, you know, that kinda inspires you to make your own games.
Q: Do you see making games as making improvements?
A:Yes, improvements, but also like just different directions as well. So for example, with our gameDwerve, I playedZelda, and of course, I playedOrcs Must Die. And I’m like, ‘whoa, it’d be really cool if you mash these two things together.’ So stuff like that.
Q: Where did the idea forDwervecome from in terms of gameplay and/or art style? Were there any key game inspirations? You’ve already mentioned Zelda.
A:Yeah, absolutely. So, some of the first games I played were like on the Nintendo or Super Nintendo and Game Boy. So,A Link To The Pastwas a big inspiration both in terms of gameplay and art style.Dwerveis a low-res pixel art game obviously inspired by NES and SNES titles.
In terms of gameplay, we really wanted a fantasy adventure, likeZelda, but of course, it has tower defense elements, so those are inspired byOrcs Must Die,Dungeon Defenders,and other games that have experimented with mixing tower defense with RPG or action, and presenting something newer.
Q: You mentioned Orcs Must Die. Is it fair to say thatDwervehas some similarities to games like Orcs Must Die with the ability to wield weapons and set traps but from a top-down perspective?
A:So yes, but it is also quite different fromOrcs Must Die. InOrcs Must Die, what’s nice about it is that it has a build phase and an action phase. So during the build phase, you take your time and you’re planning, you’re building your turrets, your traps, and then during the action phase, you’re shooting crossbows and swing swords and whatnot. Now inDwerve,there is no objective you’re trying to protect. There is no build phase. You are the objective. So, when enemies spawn, they’re coming after you and you’re defending yourself.
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Now the second critical difference is that withDwerve, while you do have a boomerang and a hammer, it’s not really an action game. So Dwerve himself with a boomerang functions more as an extra turret. Like when you stand still, you may throw your boomerang, and if you’re stuck or surrounded, you can use your hammer once in a while to knock the enemies back.
But at the end of the day, you’re relying mostly on your turrets. So, in the middle of combat, you’re repositioning your turrets. You’ll recall them to get your Power Stones back which you use to build turrets, and then you’ll replace your turret with a new turret as waves of enemies change. You’re doing all this tower defense strategy all in the middle of combat. It’s a high-intensity strategy experience.
Q: So how did the idea ofDwerve’s main story and characters come about, like the protagonist Dwerve and the witch Queen Vandra?
A:Yes, so obviously it’s inspired heavily byLord of the Ringsof course. But the core storyline with the plot actually came kind of from the mechanics themselves. For example, we’re like, ‘alright, we want a tower defense game where you play as a character, and what should this character build? And okay, if they build towers, it can’t be actual towers because that’s kind of big, right? And then we’re like, alright, we’ll make them turrets.’ That kind of makes sense.
And then ‘we’re like, alright, well, fantasy races. Dwarves.’ They’re known for crafting. They’re known for building stuff and technology and well, we’ll make you play as a dwarf. And then you come from a dwarf faction. And then what should the enemy faction be and then it’s like, well, trolls live in mountains. So you know, we kind of just snowballed from there. And then we came up with this world and it kind of all just kind of came together, but it really started with the gameplay.
Q: So how did you come up with the name Dwerve?
A:It was really mostly a play on dwarf or dwarven. We just really wanted to hear the name,Dwerve,and invoke the word dwarf and crafting, mountains, fantasy, and all those things associated with it. And of course, when you see our store artwork and our box artwork Dwerve is front and center. He’slike ourMario, you know, so we really wanted to push him and his personality, his character, in terms of when people see the game that we want them to think dwarve and dwarves crafting.
Q: Dwervehas had some really positive reception since its release on Steam last year. So what things do you think the community has been enjoying about the game so far?
A:Let’s see, so the first couple of months were just like fixing bugs and responding to feedback, improving the balancing of the game, but thankfully around Autumn, we really started on different new content. So, in November, we released Classic TD, which is a traditional tower defense game mode. So this one has an objective and it has a build phase. The enemies go along a path, so it’s a lot more traditional, which it’s kind of fun to see - okay, here’s this unique thing, and then kind of go back and be like, ‘okay, well, here’s how it would be if it was a more traditional tower defense game.’ So, a lot of players really like that new game mode; it’s kind of like a yin-and-yang kind of experience.
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And then we also recently added a world map, so you can go back and replay levels and see this is prettypixel art with waterfalls and mountains. It really helps with the immersion and replayability of the game. Right now, we are working on adding mod support to the game, so you will be able to modify the stats and sprites of Dwerve, of turrets, of monsters. I know people are probably thinking about a level editor – maybe, that’s on our wish list, but that is a lot more work. But the point is, we are still working on the game.
And of course, the biggest thing that will be coming later this year is consoles, so a lot of people are looking forward to Nintendo Switch. We also are hoping to release on Xbox and PlayStation as well. So we still gotDwervetasks ahead. We’ll be working onDwervefor a while so people have a lot to look forward to.
Q:Dwervehas got some fascinating mechanics like picking up and moving turrets, which is quite different from the fixed turrets of many tower defender games and the traditional ones you were talking about. What was the thinking behind that decision in terms of player experience?
A:I guess let me elaborate more on the mechanics for people that are unfamiliar with it. So inDwerve, you’re building a fixed number of turrets at a time so maybe for the middle of the game, maybe three, later on in the game about four turrets, but you basically have this resource called Power Stones. And there are actually two types of towers you could build: floor traps, which cost one Power Stone, and actual stand-up turrets which cost two Power Stones. So, with, let’s say six Power Stones, you can build up to three turrets or six-floor traps, and of course any combination thereof.
So, in the middle of a battle, enemies may be coming from one direction, and then all of a sudden, they’re coming from a new direction, right? So you’ll need to recall your turret to get those Power Stones back. You’ll run over and you put your turret somewhere else, or maybe the type of enemy changes and you want to pull a turret back and place down a new one.
For example, maybe you’re using a crossbow turret to shoot atincoming troll grunts, but then maybe shielded enemies come out and arrows are bouncing off, so you need to pull that back and replace it with something else, say the flamethrower turret. And you’re doing this all in the middle of combat. Like I said earlier, there’s no build phase.
So it’s a very high-intensity action strategy kind of experience very much, quite different from traditional tower defense gameplay. But my partner Peter and I, we really wanted something different and we love strategy, and we just kind of want to mash that tower defense action-strategy experience together.
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Q: Another interesting feature is the ability to stack traps and create trap combinations. What do you think that adds to the experience? I saw somebody put a spike trap next to one of the spinning ones.
A:So trap synergies - that’s very important to the game. The game has 15 turrets and traps, so there’s a lot of variety. For example, we have a harpoon turret that can pull enemies into pits, or like you said synergies - they could pull them into your spinning blades. We have a punch turret to knock them backward. There’s a flamethrower. There’s a tesla turret that shocks enemies. So what you find yourself doing is mixing a lot of these. For example, you may put a tar trap down to slow enemies and thena row of spike traps, and they’re walking slowly over the spike traps so they take more damage.
Another good one is using the zap trap with the mortar, so the zap trap will stun them in place and then the mortar shoots a mortar that explodes. Normally, enemies are too quick, so the accuracy is poor unless you slow them or stun them. And then, like I mentioned earlier, the harpoon you can use to pool enemies into like, a spinning blade.
There are lots of synergies, and what’s cool is each turret has its own upgrade tree. You start off kind of basic, but then they get kind of more and more powerful. And then the synergies also kind of lean into each other further. That becomes a lot of fun. So yeah, lots of upgrades, lots of towers, and lots of ways interesting ways to synergize the turrets. It’s funny, we’ll be watching someone play and we’re like ‘whoa, I never thought about that - that’s really smart.’
Q: Yeah, it’s funny when that happens. It’s up to players to upgrade their traps, but I guess it’s also up to them to figure out which ones work best in these synergies, like you say, and maybe some of them might be more effective than others.
A:Yeah, our game really encourages experimentation. So right before any major battle is what’s called Sla’s Workbench, and that’s where you swap out your turrets, where you get upgrades, and you can sell upgrades for like a full refund and try new ones. So, we really want the player to just, like, experiment with turret combinations and upgrades and just see what’s fun for them and then try those out in the battles.
Q: Would you say that the turret combination is one of the things that makes the game unique from other kinds of turret-based games, by having these combinations?
A:I think so. Sometower defense gamesare really stats based. WithDwerve, ours are very tactile, like how I was describing earlier, you’re punching, you’re pulling. They have a chakram turret with a blade bounced off the walls. The tesla turret electrocutes, it can go around corners because it chains from enemy to enemy. So we have physics fun, visual tactile-based turrets, and I think that makes the combos a lot more interesting.
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Q: What do you think the open-world kind of setting ofDwerveand the level-by-level progression adds to the experience for players as they move around the map?
A:Yes. So just to kind of clarify, it’s not as open world asA Link to the Pastor whatnot. But we tried our best to make each level feel open, so some levels are a little more linear. For the most part, for most of our levels, you have options. you’re able to kind of just wander around and just explore and defeat the areas as you’d like.
So we wantedthe world to feel immersiveand the best way to do that is to give the player options. Some of the levels are entirely open when you just kind of wander around and explore and find things. So that I think really helps with the immersion of the game. A lot of people like myself like to explore, and it feels like a real or more real world if you have the option to explore, in like ‘oh, what’s this little path down here?’ And then you’ll go see what’s down there. So we tried our best to really make the world feel believable.
Q: Yeah, so like in most dungeon crawlers you’re just kind of going level by level. There’s this bit more freedom to look around, for people who like that sort of gameplay experience.
A:Yeah, we have tons of Easter eggs too, and like if you go down this random little side path, you might find like a puzzle, a little extra battle, or some extra story. Our game has lots of story and lore. We did tons of world-building. So we have these little things that you’re able to inspect just to learn a little more about the trolls, the dwarves, or some event that happened in the past. There are little rewards like that if you do go off and explore.
Q: The troll lore sounds quite interesting. Were you inspired by anything connected to classical troll folklore from like Norway, or was it more the fantasy type of troll?
A: It is actuallyinspired a lot by Scandinavian trolls, but more specifically, I think like Icelandic trolls because our trolls are smaller. Some of them do get big, but it’s not like a giant kind of troll that you see. There’s more that is more typical of fantasy. So, these trolls are smaller, more like dwarven kind of size, maybe a little bit bigger. And they do have the traits of you know, turning to stone in the sunlight.
That’s actually one of the big plot points of the story is like, ‘hey, you know the trolls just attacked our village. How do they do that? They’re supposed to turn to stone in the sun.’ So that’s one thing you discover along your journey, but it’s certainly inspired by them. And you know, they actually live deeper in the mountain and the trolls were digging too deep and then that’s when the trolls came out. So there’s definitely inspiration from Norse mythology,Icelandic fairy tales, and whatnot.
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Q: Are there any of the things you think that setDwerveapart from other tower defense or dungeon crawler RPG games, or anything else that comes to mind that you think makesDwervedifferent or would maybe attract new players?
A:Yes. So if they do like traditional tower defense games, we just added that new game mode, but in terms of the overall is the story. A lot of tower defense games don’t have stories and they don’t have worldwise characters. Even thoughDwervewas originally designed for hardcore or I’d say mid-core kind of gamers, we do have difficulty modes. And so, if you do just enjoy a good story, you can still playDwerveon story mode and enjoy it without having to master the strategy and the turrets and place everything in a perfect position. It’s a really fun world with fun characters, and you can experience that without having to be a mid-core, hardcore gamer.
At the same time, if you are a super hardcore gamer, we have extreme mode and those battles are almost like puzzles where you need to place the turrets in the exact position and move them at the right time. It’s almost likea puzzle game. We’re trying to solve the layouts in the placements that allow you to win the battle, so we did our best to have offered a positive experience to various types of gamers with the story and whatnot. I think that’s about it in terms of what setsDwerveapart.
Q: Lastly, is there anything else that you’d like to add today that we haven’t already covered? You mostly mentioned like some new plans forDwervefor Spring, maybe coming to Xbox. Is there anything else that you’d like to add?
A:Yeah, soDwerveis available now on Steam, so if you can get the game, check it out. There is a freeDwerveprologue. It’s on the main game’s Steam page as well. But that is a free demo, if you want to check the game out and just see if you like it while you’re waiting for consoles. Just to clarify,Dwerveis coming to Nintendo Switch, but hopefully PlayStation and Xbox sometime this year. We don’t have a strict timeline yet because it’s our first time for those consoles that we don’t really know. But hopefully, within the next couple of months.
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Dwerveis available to play on Steam and is coming to Nintendo Switch in Spring 2023. It is currently part of the East Meets West Festival hosted by Curve Games and has 15% off on Steam till June 03, 2025.
