Defying the laws of gravity has always been something I’ve dreamt of during slumber. Being able to jump higher than what an ordinary human being can do, or just flinging around like crazy as your body now weighs as light as a feather. Saying “screw you” to the universe’s restrictions and doing the impossible is awesome, but there are that many simulations to capture this feeling. No, I’m not talking about space games with low amounts of gravity. I’m talking about games where there is no gravity at all and you just live out the dream of being a whirling pinball. I have been told Gravity Rush captures this dream perfectly. The anime adventure game about a young quirky girl navigating around using gravity defying powers. People keep saying it’s good and severely underrated, so that’s why I decided to check out Dandara. You probably should have seen this twist anyways since it’s in the title of the review. Dandara is basically a metroidvania with the gravity defying gimmick as mentioned, and it was developed by a indie studio ong Hat House who previously made projects for Game Jams until their first big release which was this. I’ve been struggling again to figure out what to review.
I finished Fez a couple days ago and was originally planning to cover that, but then realized I didn’t have all that much to say about it. It’s an average platformer backed up by some unique puzzles and a mechanic that allows you to turn the 3D modeled levels even though the game is taking place from a 2D perspective. It never really tries to build up on its ideas beyond the core mechanic, and half the puzzles are so obscure that you either need a guide or have to wait until a second playthrough to be able to do everything. Which is not what you want from a puzzle game, because while that does give a reason to replay the game it does mean not all the content and pieces that can be put together are available during the first run. I was also thinking of doing this rhythm based shooter called BPM: Bullets Per Minute, until the roguelikes aspects started to piss me off. Instead I opted for Dandara, which does focus around a gimmick but is a metroidvania. A lot of you readers may say metroidvanias are overdone, and while you are absolutely right I will say I love this genre. Throw any good metroidvania at me and I’ll be ready to praise it. See what it does to differ itself from other entries.
It’s just a really good game genre! A perfect blend of exploration, interconnected maze-like level design, occasional thinking, maybe some engaging side scrolling combat, and seeing how strong you are by the end of the journey. To the point where you basically become god. Ah, that’s the love to be found within metroidvanias. Dandara is a really interesting case to look at. It’s not one of my favorites and there are a couple flaws preventing me from calling it excellent, but what I can tell you is that it’s one of the most unique metroidvanias I’ve played through. The core gimmick of flinging around is well utilized, and the game makes the most out of the five hour runtime it has. This is the Long Hat House’s first biggest project besides Game Jam entries, and for their first published release it’s really good. It's a shame it didn’t get the attention it deserved, but that’s why I’m here today to discuss. Afterall I am a reviewer and this is my job. Today we’ll be talking about why Dandara is really good and why it deserves your attention.
Stor
I’m gonna try and recollect as much of the main story as possible, because it is presented really vaguely. The world was once heavily populated and with it came many advanced societies. There existed this great kingdom and they discovered a source of magic they could channel into power. They dubbed this resource as Salt and soon it spread across the land. Being readily available to anyone. However, a weird corruption began to grow within the Salt as it got twisted overtime to match human needs and soon came these monstrous beings. A few of these monsters were born of human mutation, but nevertheless they began to ravage the land. Attack civilians or chase them out of their homes. The great kingdom was abandoned and the world began to be torn apart as the Salt grew more unstable. A small faction tried to harvest and master the currently corrupted Salt, but something happened to them to turn evil.
This leads us back to the main protagonist. Dandara, a young girl who awakens within an empty room and is called to by a mysterious voice to solve the arising apocalypse. Upon exiting the room, Dandara finds the walls and surfaces of the earth bending in peculiar ways and the only living creatures who are left are either isolated survivors, monsters, or mercenaries working for a corrupt faction. The voice gives you the job to cut off the source of the Salt, and the only way to do that is to face the corrupt faction’s leader who is keeping the source running. Dandara must navigate dangerous terrain, collect ancient relics that allow her to traverse more of the world, grow stronger by collecting Salt of her own, and stop the end of the world from happening.
Gameplay
Dandara is a metroidvania, and if you don’t know how these types of games work then let me quickly catch you up. You start off powerless in a huge sprawling world. You may not be able to access every area immediately, but through exploration and uncovering new equipment you can open up these areas. New abilities may not just act as keys to open the way forward, but also navigation abilities or ways to approach combat. Fights scale in difficulty to match the player’s rising power and arsenal. You can also open up shortcuts and unlock the ability to fast travel later on to cut down the amount of backtracking you’ll have to do in the sprawling world. Pretty basic stuff if you’ve played a metroidvania like Hollow Knight, Ori, or Guacamelee before.
Here’s what Dandara does to separate itself from genre contemporaries. Rather than walk and jump around the world you instead zip towards any surface you can latch onto. This includes the ground, walls, and even ceiling as long as it’s offered. This creates a whole new thinking pattern on how you navigate areas. You are no longer restricted by gravity, but rather what surfaces you can jump towards. Not every surface can be latched onto, or they’ll be out of your reach. Some surfaces may even contain hazards and you may want to be careful so you just jump into it.
Along the way you’ll face a variety of enemies. Whether that be soldiers or charge at you or fire projectiles. These small orbs who fly around and try to get a meaty bite out of you. Turrets, these guys for firing arrows that home in on the player, and the occasional miniboss who is literally just a wall with tons of cannons firing at you. Luckily you have a trusty blast projectile you can charge and fire at the enemy. It goes for a certain distance and the projectiles spread out the farther they travel, but it’s to attack an enemy up close. Your projectile blast has the effects of a shogun where it is useful from afar, but it packs a punch up close. Now you must learn to position yourself in a way where the spread of your shots can be condensed and hit a single foe.
You also have alternate firing modes. Magic projectiles with unique effects or can deal heavy damage in a shorter period of time. You have rockets which fire quickly and have long range, but deal less damage than your shotgun charge. Bouncy energy projectiles which are good for clearing out small rooms flooding with foes or maybe even a big guy taking up a lot of room. There’s even a laser you can position which deals lots of damage in a small period of time, but targets a specific spot, prevents you from crossing to the other side of the laser, and you can take damage from the laser as well. Potentially killing yourself if you are not careful. All these magic projectiles use mana and this is an energy resource which runs out the more you use it. Run out of mana and you will no longer be able to use magic projectiles unless it’s refilled.
You will also occasionally take damage while exploring the world, so how do you refill on health and mana when it’s low. Either rest at a checkpoint or use a flask. Healing flasks are an infinite resource, but have a finite amount of uses. When they are all out you must rest at a checkpoint to refill. The amount of recovery you gain from a flask can be upgraded, and through exploration you may unlock more flask charges which increases the amount of uses before having to rest a checkpoint. The fla- okay, I hate to be the one making crappy comparisons but this sounds like a mechanic ripped straight from Dark Souls. In fact, there’s also another huge mechanic Dandara borrows from Dark Souls. Corpse running, otherwise the Soul retrieval system.
You unlock metroidvania styled power ups to expand your ability to navigate the world, but to upgrade your maximum health and other important stats you must level up at campsites. Enemies and certain treasure chests will give the player Salt, and these are the experience points of the game. If a player dies they are respawned at the last checkpoint, but lose all the Salt they were carrying on them. They are offered the chance to retrieve the Salt they lost, but if they die again then all that hard earned Salt is lost. It’s a punishing mechanic, and that’s the point. To show the player they must play carefully to retrieve the resources needed to grow stronger. Through each failure there is a lesson, and trying to identify what exactly killed you. How can you prevent this the next time through and face off against a similar problem in the future?
Besides that there really isn’t much else. I could mention that there are bosses and they’ll test your strength and skills, but there’s only like three of them and what they narrow down to is firing away at a large object or wall. Dandara is pretty well designed for the most part and it presents some really interesting mechanics along the ride. Hopefully you can defeat the corrupt overlord of the world and restore peace.
Thoughts
Dandara caught me off guard and ended up becoming one of the most surprising and special metroidvanias I’ve come across. Its flaws are quite big the more you look at them, but what makes Dandara stand out are the unique components and helps redeem what could have been another average metroidvania with a gimmick slapped onto it. Let’s get my biggest problems with the game out of the way first.
The world and story of Dandara is interesting and what’s being presented to the player is enough to hook them in. It goes for a vague approach to storytelling, but compared to Ender Lilies or Transistor it fails to connect all the pieces together. Not saying what was there was bad, but there wasn’t enough to provide a satisfying end product. The villain for me felt out of nowhere and it’s surprising that the end level to a fantasy game was this high tech cyberpunk esque fortress. There’s books and documents to be found across the game, but those aren’t enough to fully explain what is going on. Why there’s a giant writer fiddling around with this mysterious glowing object, or why the corrupt faction was able to advance so quickly. It could be my fault for not diving into the lore any deeper, but I do feel there needed to be more to get me hooked into the history of the world and want to research it so that the story would be more satisfying.
The game is really short and only took me around five hours to beat. That was with occasionally taking the time to pursue optional treasure chests and items. To be fair the game doesn’t overstay its welcome and if it lasted any bit longer I would get annoyed by it. However, there aren’t that many reasons to replay after rolling credits. It’s not like Hollow Knight or The Messenger where I want to see the content I missed out on or see if I can do better the next time through. Dandara doesn’t have much interesting side content outside of treasure chests and the levels are set up in such a way where you go through them once and one time alone. No reason to ever backtrack or rescan the area for secrets besides it containing the road block forward. They tried to add more reasons to play Dandara longer with the Trials of Fear expansion, but it's not enough either as it’s basically the whole world map copied and pasted with a few minor alterations. This is a one and done game and I’m surprised there isn’t a new game plus mode which allows you to carry all the RPG upgrades you obtained throughout your first playthrough. Maybe they added it in a patch. I don’t exactly know.
Dandara is extremely flawed, but it is a good game. Despite being five hours it does a lot within that short run time, and for the most part it’s really well designed. The game lacks optional content, but this is the least bloated metroidvania I’ve come across. If you want to focus on the main story then so be it, and even though the level design is condensed it does give a good idea on where to go next. Eliminating the problem of wondering where to go and getting lost. Combat can be tricky at first, but it’s fair for the most part. You pick up on enemy attack patterns and the way they work quickly, and even when bullets start flying around the screen you can get out of the way easily. The game is challenging, but it nevers crosses the line. It’s not slamming your face in the wall and demanding you to develop god tier reaction speed. Like I said, I love the gimmick of flinging between walls and how it’s not about how you traverse the world but what you can stand on. Whether it’s safe to just fly around quickly or take your time so you don’t just fling yourself into a hazard. There’s a lot of backtracking, but it’s easy to just zip through areas. I can imagine the amount of speedrunners for this game. I do want to mention though the controls aren’t always precise, and sometimes you fly towards a surface or enter a door you didn’t want to. Yet again, this could be me and just button mashing away at the fling button seeing how fast you can speedrun areas.
My other compliment with the game is that the pixel art is gorgeous, there's some really cool designs for the characters, and there's a variety of colors on display. Despite being a depressing and dead world to explore, the game has beautiful environments and detailing. The soundtrack is also really good and I don’t think there was a single bad track across my journey. Dandara as a whole is a really good game. While the story and set up of the universe falters it does maintain good pacing and level of challenge, and I do recommend it as it’s just plain old fun and can be beaten possibly within a single play session. It’s just another good experimental metroidvania in a genre bustling full of them. In the end I am going to give Dandara an 8.5/10 for being pretty good.
Comments