Regardless of what kind of gamer you are, casual titles can be a lot of fun to play. Of course, there are people who only play casual titles, but even for hardcore gamers, being able to enjoy some fun and relaxing entertainment without a lot of stress can be a very welcome experience. Developers have responded by creating a huge variety of games in the casual space. Some of the most recent ones that we have reviewed include the aquatic cleanup adventure Spilled, the hunt for finicky felines in Cats of Mona Lisa and the amazing remake of Carmen Sandiego.
Today we are looking at one of the latest casual titles to be released, and boy is it a good one. Called Drop Duchy, it’s available now on Steam for under $15, making it a great value with its almost unlimited replayability.
One of the most interesting things about Drop Duchy is that it pulls from a lot of different elements found in classic casual titles but then combines them in such a way as to create a really unique experience. The main premise of Drop Duchy is that players need to arrange various pieces of land configured into different shapes onto a grid, placing them in such a way so that they form a solid line at the bottom of the board. You can rotate the pieces as they slowly fall downward, but you have to live with their placement once they hit the ground or another piece of land sticking up in their way. And if that sounds familiar, it’s because you are basically playing Tetris with the map.
Now, adding Tetris elements to games has been done before, most recently in the Flowstone Saga RPG, but it’s a little bit different in Drop Duchy. Whereas in Tetris the act of forming a solid horizontal line normally causes that line to disappear thus keeping the grid open, here it simply activates all of the land in that line to allow the player to collect whatever resources like food, wood or gold that those tiles and resource buildings produce. The pieces stay in place when that happens, and if a tile lands at the top of the board with nowhere it can go, the level ends. But unlike Tetris, there are a finite number of pieces each round, so skillful players should be able to get almost all of them to fit.
Deciding what pieces are available each round is where the second core concept of Drop Duchy comes into play, which is deck building. Each level has a certain number of land tiles available, but the player also has a deck they can build up consisting of special pieces that can be added to that pile. The special tiles are mostly buildings which trigger interesting effects, like a wood clearer hut that chops down each forest around it, with the player gaining that wood while it also transforms those tiles into grassy plains. Or it can be a farm that turns plains tiles into fields that provide food. By carefully building up a deck that matches the tile distribution for a level (what kinds of land a level has), players can maximize their resource gathering, although luck also plays a role since you don’t know the order which tiles will pop up to the top of the stack.
You can also spend resources to upgrade cards too, which adds another layer of strategy. Upgrading a card can do different things from increasing the number of resources a tile gathers when it encounters its trigger conditions to expanding its range so that it can affect a bigger area. Finally, you can sell cards you don’t want for gold which can be used to purchase other cards at key points in the various adventures you go on as you play.
And while some levels are peaceful, others contain enemies which must be fought after the Tetris-like phase of land and building placement has ended. Military buildings that provide players with troops work just like resource buildings in that once placed, they will generate military units based on the conditions around them. For example, a ranger station can spawn archers based on how many forest tiles surround it when you drop it down into place, or how many forests you can place beside or on top of it after the fact. Meanwhile, a military camp tile spawns swordsmen based on how many adjacent military buildings it touches.
Once a level ends, you then move to the battle phase where you get to plot out how you want your troops to attack, and you have to include every unit on the entire board, allies and enemies, before the fight can begin. In general, having more troops ensures victory, but there is also a rock, paper and scissors type of mechanic too whereby each of the three troops, archers, soldiers and barbarians, are strong against another type and weak against the third. Moving one troop type in your army into another transforms the entire stack into that new type, so you can skillfully ensure that you are always sending troops to fight against whichever unit type they are best against.
Beyond setting the battleplan, you have another huge advantage over your opponents in that you are the one placing their military buildings, at least most of the time. There are special levels where the enemy has pre-built fortifications and things like that, but those are mostly boss battles near the end of a run. In general, you will be responsible for placing enemy buildings when they come up in the deck. So, you will want to place them in the worst possible way, such as putting a ranger station in the middle of the grassy plains away from any forests so they don’t generate any troops. The challenge is that you don’t control the order that tiles come up in the stack, so it’s not always easy or possible to maximize your army while minimizing the enemy.
You also have a reserve slot which can be extremely helpful when it comes to placing enemy military buildings. The reserve slot is always available, even on peaceful levels. It is used to hold a tile, basically skipping it in the order so that you can place whatever comes behind it first. But whatever is sitting in reserve at the end of a level does not get placed. So, if your enemy has a really powerful troop-generating tile that you can’t minimize on the board with placement, you can shuffle them off to the reserve area and leave them there until the level ends, so they don’t get placed. That is a good strategy, although it does mean you can’t use the reserve slot anymore to help maximize your tile placement during that level.
There is even a little bit of a story in Drop Duchy. You will be moving across a map and selecting different battle spots while also landing on special events like trading fairs where you can swap out resources or maybe get a free card. But at the end of those paths are challenging boss battles where your opponents have powerful special abilities that must be overcome with skillful deck building, efficient tile placement and maybe a little bit of luck.
Drop Duchy is a delight to play. It’s the ultimate “just one more turn” kind of game that is very easy to learn but challenging to fully master. And being available on Steam for under $15 makes it a really great value too, especially considering that there are almost unlimited replay opportunities for this really well-designed, casual powerhouse.