Drake Hollow Review
Release date: Oct 1st, 2020
Developer: Molasses Flood
Platforms: PC (Steam Reviewed), Windows Store, Xbox One
Price: $29.99
Drake Hollow is an interesting take on the survival genre. It has a lot to offer and it should keep gamers interested. Is there enough of a difference between it and other games in the genre to draw people in? The Gamers Lounge seems to think so, especially if players have people they can play with.
Drake Hollow has an interesting premise, protagonist is transported to a different world and is responsible for saving the Drakes, little creatures that remind me of Pikmin. Players will spend a lot of time crafting, setting up their base and tracking down these little adorable creatures. Drakes can be leveled up and they will give player different benefits. They need to be cared for, and this means providing them with water, food, bedding, and sometimes entertainment
Combat is melee and ranged based, weapons which a lot of the time revolves around common household items such as brooms and hockey sticks wear out and break down quickly. I always found myself breaking weapons as fast as I could fix them. I found I spent about 60% of time base building and assembling things and the 40% exploring and dealing with Shadow Creatures. I found the combat to be okay, it seems that it should be a lot easier and there should be more options for ranged weapons vs melee. I did die a lot due to being ganged up on by smaller groups of enemies known as Grunts. This means you have to run back to your body from the base or respawn and take a penalty you will lose everything you collected. The limited space for inventory on your character can compound things as well, I always had to cut exploring trips short due to running out of space.
Other things to keep in mind, players will have to defend their bases, aka communities, from attacks from the Shadow Creatures and this becomes more of a pain as players have to defend multiple communities. Players can use waypoints and supply chains to travel faster, but in each new area these must be rebuilt at the cost of more resources, and this becomes an endless loop that feels painful. But if you can get 2-3 of your friends to co-op I found the game can become easier at some points.
I liked that the game had a kid friendly aesthetics to it. Molasses Flood also did Flame in the Flood and the art style for that game was great. I thought the music, and controls were well done. As someone who’s not a huge fan of this genre I still had an okay time.
I would recommend this game to anyone looking for a survival game with a friendly atmosphere. Try to get a few friends to co-op with you it will make the experience better.
Thanks to the publisher for letting us review it.
Final Score 3.5/5
Pros:
Drakes are like Pikmin
Good amount of building
Easy to play tough to master
Cons:
Combat needs work
Needs more fast travel
Bigger inventory