By Olivia Davies To perfect a formula is no easy task, especially when it comes to video games. Each genre and sub-genre, from RPGs, to deck-builders, to metroidvanias, are multi-layered and possess so many systems and features that I find it rare to find a game that does it all so well. But Well Dweller is one of them. I have never really looked at a game developer and thought, I want to play all of your games but Kyle Thompson and the team behind Well Dweller has done just that. Since 2020, both Thompson brothers have created 4 metroidvanias, which in itself is incredible. 6 years and 4 games is no easy feat. And despite only having played their latest title, you can see it was made by people who love this genre, polishing it to a point in 2026 where I think they’ve made an amazing metroidvania.
A World of Horror and Light
Well Dweller’s story is a beautiful melancholic journey with a set up that instantly enraptured me with its tone and heart. This tale focuses on Glimmer, a young crow whose family has been kidnapped by the Queen’s hunter. She has nearly wiped out the entire bird population because of her obsession with using their feathers to create her gowns. Glimmer’s main objective even involves finding coveted golden feathers in order for the Queen to grant him an audience, alongside finding his family members. It’s incredibly dark and despite a playful beginning that involves Glimmer’s siblings bickering, you can feel this creeping fear as you venture out into the world for the first time. There was a certain moment that set the tone for the rest of the game and I absolutely loved it, that moment where the Hunter peaks out gave me chills. It feels almost grimdark in how it meshes its fairytale type inhabitants with unsettling horrors. The game presents its main narrative beats through these fairytale type drawings and even has these mini stories you can collect pages of that are all stories that have a dark twist.
Well Dweller is a game about hope and resilience and the small animals that inhabit the kingdom are that hope that shines in its cruel darkness, where a Queen enslaves them and butchers them for her own personal gain. You meet so many characters with tales of their own woe that never failed to pull at my heartstrings. Some of them included Ilda, a field mouse whose family has been forced to work for the Queen so she flees to hatch a plan to rescue them. Another is Willow who is the only child who survives a strange incident that sees the entire village’s children descend into the drains, Weapons style. I found all of the game’s inhabitants to be delightful and memorable despite their brief appearances. There’s even a letter box where they’ll send you updates from time to time. This game is an expert at making you feel despair, but brings you back to the light in these tender moments where you stop and talk with the many troubled souls of the world.
I’ve Got A Matchstick!
If you’ve played Hollow Knight or its sister Silksong, then you’ll be very familiar with the systems in this game. Glimmer’s main weapon is his matchstick which can be used as a weapon and to jump off of to reach taller heights. Next you have oil vials which act as heals, and, get this, you have to complete a brief mini game where you need to time a button tap, to actually execute it. At first I thought why would you make me do this game but then I realised it was its way of making you strategise when to heal in particularly close situations. Kind of like how Hollow Knight’s heals take a few seconds to complete. Making it this silly little mini game was a fun touch and made me curse a bit when in boss fights, but maybe it’ll be annoying for some players. Finally you have vessels which fill up as you attack enemies. Once full you can hit circle and launch a flaming molotov at them. How cool is that! The more vessels you have, the more projectiles you can launch. A really nice touch I appreciated too was that you don’t have to be precise with your aim. If you hit the bottle midair with your matchstick they’ll lock on and fly towards the nearest enemy and absolutely wreck them. Players with a ‘get good’mentality will probably say I have a skill issue, which I do, thanks. But for me it made Well Dweller a smoother experience.
Glimmer has a variety of ways to improve his build through trinkets, this game’s version of charms. I found that the trinkets in this game never drastically changed how I played though. In Hollow Knight a certain combination could change your approach to battles, but Well Dweller’s upgrades mostly involve attack boosts, guards when your health is low, and other conveniences like showing all hidden passages. Each trinket cost trinket slots to equip, with most of them costing 4-5 each. However you can get as many trinket slots as you want. The shops literally stock 98 of them!! So who knows maybe you can end up equipping ALL of the trinkets in the game at some point.. There aren’t many of these collectables in the game but you can upgrade them using workshop tokens and the game’s currency when you venture further into the game.
Exploring This Fairy Tale
The core of a good metroidvania is its exploration. I’ll always remember watching Game Maker’s Tool Kits video on the design of Hollow Knight and it stuck with me when playing other games in the genre. The pull of a good metroidvania map is the joy of discovery, like encountering an obstacle that can’t be passed until you get a certain ability. Well Dweller does this a lot with blocked doorways. There are a lot of paths that act as shortcuts that require you to be on the opposite side. This helped guide me to where I needed to go, as some area bosses wouldn’t give you an upgrade that could uncover parts of the map, meaning I’d need to backtrack and find a different area to explore. It never felt tedious with the help of fast travel. However if you are struggling with where you need to go next, you can actually buy a tip off that puts a marker on your map, signaling your next big objective. But I never found I struggled too much with exploration, aided by a rather useful map. There are two types you can switch between, one being a more boxy type layout and the other has every curve and crevice you lay eyes on. Sometimes that attention to detail can be a bit disorientating and it can be hard to tell where you need to go. But this is helped by your typical markers.
The environments themselves are just gorgeous and the atmosphere they create gives Well Dweller this creepy yet wondrous feel. You have The Drains which have this beautiful quality to them with monuments dedicated to the lost children, decorated with lotus flowers. You have the dried up town of Gravenvalley that feels like it’s from the medieval period but drenched in Silent Hill fog. But what struck me the most was the lingering presence of a lost human civilization. Well Dweller is inhabited by critters and animals with no humans in sight except for the hunter and the queen but it seems the land is barren and with corpses littered across the landscape and most buildings abandoned. It’s all so peacefully creepy.
In the vein of exploration we have the abilities you can unlock that will open up different areas. Well Dweller’s are pretty standard with a climb and glide ability as two early game examples. However, my favourite was the versatile matchstick which of course is used to beat up enemies with but can also be released like an arrow and stick to the side of terrain. The only caveat is that you can only do it when on solid ground, so no ninja techniques. This allowed for some pretty neat platforming to get to just out of reach collectables. This paired with the climb ability made flying around the map tons of fun.
Finally I was impressed by each area’s unique traversal mechanic. You have bubbles that you can pop off of to jump across gaps, other bubbles that you can jump into that will shoot you flying in any direction you choose, wind that you can glide through to avoid spikes and even MORE ways to use your matchstick. Damn this thing is good. It all helped make each area feel unique and fun to go through. It created different challenges in getting from point A to B which broke up the tedium of exploring for long periods of time.
The game also has a few extra challenges to break up exploration. Every so often you’ll enter mini gauntlets where you need to defeat a bunch of enemies and you’ll find time trials which provide you with some cracking rewards for completing short bursts of difficult platforming.
Not My Hollow Knight
My biggest, I guess, fault with Well Dweller is that its difficulty feels a bit… misleading or this may just be a way of unpacking my Hollow Knight and Silksong trauma so let me lie down on my couch and talk about it! Well Dweller generously has three difficulty options, easy, normal, and hard and I decided to go for normal. Middle of the road, solid, I won’t cry. But despite grinding my teeth with anxiety about if I’d even be able to get past the first boss, I found normal mode to be a bit too easy with no difficulty curve that pushed me to be better at the game. Not to brag but I was defeating bosses in one try sometimes and even though I’m not one for challenge, I found myself wanting it. Enemies don’t feel progressively harder either. You can get a trinket that basically dramatically increases your attack which I thought was a tad broken. Now I don’t know if those bug games were just so hard that I’m a pro gamer now but I doubt that so it’s definitely a warning to those looking for a challenge.
The whole aesthetic package of Well Dweller is my absolute favourite part and gave me such great memories of how I first got into Hollow Knight. I’m the type of person who associates gaming with relaxation so I don’t gravitate towards hard games but despite Hollow Knight and Silksong being incredibly tough times, it was its world that captured me and didn’t let me go. The exact same thing happened with Well Dweller. This one track that plays in your home base and in those tender character moments lulled me into that sense of security, whether it’s a false one, you’ll have to find out. Unfortunately the rest of the soundtrack wasn’t incredibly memorable. They served its purpose in creating atmosphere but they all kind of blended into each other. The backdrops of each area are also stunning. You can feel the foreboding nature of the deep tangled woods in the first area and the Silent Hills vibe of The Bog.
I want to give a special mention to the designs of the bosses. They are positively horrifying darling! And I mean horrifying. Each one feels like it’s stepped out of a nightmare. The gardener was already a tad creepy with its human teeth but Lida The Terrible is just downright grotesque and made my skin tingle. I LOVE it. The same can be said for the general enemy designs. There are tons of them but they all fit their environment rather well, with loads of unique attack patterns I’d need to watch out for.
Well Dweller Review Verdict
Well Dweller is a truly enchanting experience that gives two meanings to ‘I’m going to cry’ one being in horror and the other with sadness. It’s so tender and full of heart with storylines that felt so quietly beautiful and haunting but also had a grim side that often sent shivers up my spine. Its ability to do both is what drives the game’s charm. It treads the same path as popular games in the genre but does enough that makes it feel like it’s carved out its own identity, from a pretty nifty matchstick to cool time trials. It definitely leans more on the easy side with a normal mode that feels akin to baby’s first metroidvania, but again I don’t know if I’m heavily traumatised from the genre. Well Dweller is a wonder to explore and has me excited to dive into Kyle Thomason’s previous metroidvanias. Is it time to coin the term Kylevania?
You can play Well Dweller when it comes to Xbox Game Pass on September 22nd.
Looking for a cozy game instead? Check out our previous review of cozy puzzler Woodo.
Well Dweller Review – Once Upon A Nightmare
+ What works
- Exploration is fun with beautiful environment designs
- Horrifyingly good boss designs
- Memorable cast of characters and character moments
- Story is a perfect balance between horror and cozy
− What holds it back
- Normal mode feels like easy mode
- Not much variety in trinkets
- Available on
- Xbox Series X|S · Xbox PC · Windows PC · Cloud Gaming
- Developer
- Kyle Thompson
- Publisher
- Top Hat Studios Inc
- Release date
- 22 September 0026
- Age rating
- PEGI 12
- Price
- £17.99 | Xbox Game Pass Free-to-Play
Fletcher Wilkinson
Jordan Campbell