Dark Fairy Tale: Dreamland Survivors is an action roguelike by BINGOBELL that looks at Pinocchio in a twisted world. Fighting for his life in a strange fairy tale dreamland, he must gather the power of Dark Eggs to power himself up. His opponents are unrelenting but with careful resource management, Pinocchio can overcome dark versions of famous fairy tale characters to survive. What lengths will you go to just to survive?
The idea of consuming or equipping Dream Eggs gives you a crucial decision that makes you think about your choices. Pinocchio also has several attack options to deal with a growing variety of foes. Unfortunately, there are lots of mechanics that aren’t properly explained that would be nice to know for gameplay. This makes the game unnecessarily difficult while you figure out how everything works to make it enjoyable.
There isn’t a big story behind Pinocchio’s existence in the twisted world. He just wakes up there and it’s up to you to figure out how to survive. Enemies swarm you from all directions just like every other roguelike. Fortunately, Dark Fairy Tale‘s storytelling isn’t the focus; it simply provides the narrative for the rest of the game to occur and you spend most of your time with the gameplay.
Pinocchio has three main forms of attack: lances, arrows, and spells. You wield all three which automatically attack enemies as you move around. Enemies drop Dream Eggs, which not only give Pinocchio his weapons but also determine what his stats are. Dream Eggs can be consumed for power or equipped for their effects. Consumption grants you greater power, but it does make enemies tougher. Equipping eggs doesn’t provide as strong of an effect and you can’t equip everything. However, it’s also easier to configure what you need without risk.
Working with Dream Eggs is great because the risk vs. reward is enhanced even more with them. While you are encouraged to eat the Dream Eggs early on to stand a chance, the decision is more nuanced later. Is it worth eating the Dream Egg or do you wait because enemies are getting difficult? There’s also a number of other mechanics like choosing Pinocchio’s bodies or using ultimate attacks that provide more variety. You can also control the weapon activation order by collecting Dream Eggs aligned to a specific weapon. Tarot cards also influence the world in mysterious ways.
There are a variety of strategies and outcomes that vary the gameplay enough to remain interesting. It’s easy to spend hours figuring out what combinations work or what different approaches you can try. Dark Fairy Tale isn’t easy, but failures give you a chance to try something new.
However, the game’s myriad of options don’t have a tutorial that properly explains the fundamentals. While there are aspects to a roguelike that you must learn on your own, some parts don’t have clear explanations. For example, figuring out how you control your weapon order is difficult because you aren’t initially told what it means. How you acquire weapons and combine them together also isn’t easy to grasp. This results in gameplay that’s often frustrating to learn and you are flying blind most of the time. Even if you do grasp the fundamentals of the gameplay, this often occurs after lots of experimentation. Having a better starting tutorial or explanation would help you understand the game’s concepts quickly and truly start mastering it, otherwise you spend a decent amount of time hoping you did the right thing or that an effect works the way you think it does.
Dark Fairy Tale: Dreamland Survivors does provide a fun experience if you can grasp the gameplay. The variety gives you lots of tools to experiment with and the strategies you can use are endless. It does take a while to get used and learn everything, and that process can be frustrating. But if you stay with the game, it’s a unique addition to the roguelike genre that gives you variety to work with.
Victor reviewed Dark Fairy Tale: Dreamland Survivors on PC with a provided review copy.
