Dawnfolk Review
Minimalist city-builder Dawnfolk offers strategic depth while keeping things simple.
Dawnfolk. Credit: Darenn Keller / Astra Logical
I was instantly charmed by Darenn Keller’s minimalist, pixellated city-builder, Dawnfolk. Easy to learn but tough to master, the game drew me in with its aesthetic, intuitiveness, and air of mystery. I also appreciated that it’s designed to be played with a controller, making it perfect for my Steam Deck.
Developed initially as Lueur, a 64x64 resolution game developed for LOWREZJAM in August 2022, Keller left his job in AAA game development at UbiSoft to expand on his vision as a solo indie dev. Astra Logical stepped in as publisher around ten months before the game’s release.
Dawnfolk. Credit: Darenn Keller / Astra Logical
In Dawnfolk, you are the ruler of a medieval fantasy kingdom shrouded in darkness by mysterious monoliths that fell from the sky. You must rebuild your kingdom with the help of Lueur, a mysterious creature made of flame with the power to light up the world.
Dawnfolk features multiple gameplay modes, including Story, Puzzle, Sandbox, and more. I spent most of my time in Story mode, which takes you through the game’s narrative campaign. Levels introduce new elements and challenges as you progress. Puzzle mode presents players with specific challenges that take full knowledge of unit and tile interactions to complete as they require precise placements to complete the objectives; I’ll need to spend a lot more time with the game to get through these.
The game is easy to understand, refreshingly so for a strategy game. Your base and a few scattered structures are surrounded by darkness in the center of the map. You must spend resources to help Flueur, your fire buddy, light up individual tiles to build on them. You can’t see the world beyond single unlit tiles on your perimeter, but the game marks spots where you might find interesting things with question marks. Storms of darkness sent by your mysterious antagonist appear from time to time. If you don’t use your light resources to destroy them, darkness will spread, and if it hits your central base, you lose.
Different land tiles—plains, forests, deserts, oceans, mountains, etc.—allow for specific interactions or buildings on them. You can plant crops on plains, for example, or chop down trees in the woods. Placing structures next to land types or next to other structures could boost output; if you build a farm adjacent to a field of crops, you’ll gain more food as time passes. Succeeding is about being careful about where you build structures to optimize resource output, making the game a kind of puzzle, an idea pushed to its limit in Puzzle mode that remains true the rest of the time.
Dawnfolk. Credit: Darenn Keller / Astra Logical
Actions you take often play out as tiny minigames. Fire arrows at wild game, time chopping down trees, block dark blasts from the storms, and more. These were always short and never became tedious because of their benefits; if you do well, you can reduce your resource cost or gain more of whatever you’re trying to get. As your settlement gets bigger, the minigames get more challenging, and the rewards greater to offset the higher costs of the actions you can do. I enjoyed this part of the game much more than I expected.
The game’s low-res pixel art is chunky but attractive, with animations that add life to the game. Sheep graze in the field, trees sway, windmills turn. Dawnfolk keeps things simple, making the graphics and UI as minimalistic as possible while still allowing the player to understand what’s going on. When you hover over a unit, you can see little icons representing resources flowing in from adjacent tiles. I never had an issue understanding precisely what the game needed me to know.
Dawnfolk. Credit: Darenn Keller / Astra Logical
Playing Dawnfolk was less stressful than playing other strategy games. I enjoyed the cozy experience it offered, and I plan to revisit it to explore higher difficulty levels and challenge myself with its other modes. The depth of its design and wealth of content make it well worth the $14.99 price tag.
Dawnfolk is available now on Steam.
Overall Score: 8/10
Played on: Steam Deck
