I was drawn in by the sharp artwork of Dragon Fin Soup long before I heard about Red Riding Hood’s alcoholism and the other odd takes on fairy tale characters that populate its world. When I tried it at PAX East, I was assured that this was just the tip of the strangeness that was to come as the series delves more into odd takes on fairy tale worlds and settings. Hopefully others are better at keeping Red alive than I was, though, as her rough life was quite short in my hands.
The game plays in a top-down style, one where the enemies only move when you move. It opens the game up for some tactical thinking, which is unfortunate for me since I tended to rush ahead without thinking a whole lot. You have to be careful not to pull too much attention from the zombies and other monsters in the game, lest they rip you to shreds. The game was not shy about killing me, teaching me to play a bit smarter next time.
It looked really good while I was dying, though. The entire game is done in a similar painted style to some of the game’s promotional artwork, although with the more cartoon-like style on its characters. The game also takes groups of tiles and puts them together to create your play space, procedurally generating the environment around you while you play. I didn’t see much of this effect since since I only played once, but it’s there to add more variety to your dungeon crawling so it sounds like a nice idea.
It’s an interesting idea with a good combat system, so I’m curious to see where things will end up once the full game comes out and I learn to play it better. The devs at Grimm Bros are working to input a lot of other features into the game, creating an odd experience that the game uniquely builds for you as you play it.
