Dark Fairy Tale: Dreamland Survivors Review
Dark Fairy Tale: Dreamland Survivors is a Vampire Survivors clone that’s hard to recommend.
Dark Fairy Tale: Dreamland Survivors. Bingobell
Dark Fairy Tale: Dreamland Survivors from Bingobell will feel familiar to many players. If you’ve played Vampire Survivors, you’ll immediately feel at home. Enemies slowly creep toward you, and your evolving auto-attacks keep them at bay while you rush to collect the XP they drop. The developers wear this similarity on their sleeve: it's in the store description. Bingobell adds a couple of wrinkles to the formula, but aside from the “dark fairy tale” skin, there isn’t anything else that’s new.
There isn’t anything to the story besides the concept. You’re Pinocchio, and nightmare versions of other fairy tale characters are out to get you. That’s it; it doesn’t develop beyond that conceit. For this kind of game, it’s not a problem for me that the story is shallow or non-existent, but if you care deeply about narrative, be forewarned that you won’t find it here.
Dark Fairy Tale: Dreamland Survivors. Bingobell
Gameplay is what you’d expect from a Survivorslike. Move, autofire weapons, and earn rewards as you level up. The game loop is familiar, but it works. This game features a dodge move, which many similar games lack.
Where the game mixes things up a little bit is with the rewards you earn: Dream Eggs. When you earn a Dream Egg, you have the option to devour it or equip it in your inventory, which will have different effects. Devouring it grants you a tag—effectively a new weapon—or an upgrade to a tag you already have, as well as some small stat boosts. Equipping an Egg can have completely different effects, but it offers some tactical flexibility. It’s a little confusing, and the tutorial screens that pop up as you play along with the inventory screen’s wall of stats only serve to make it more intimidating, but once you spend some time experimenting with the system, it makes a little more sense.
Rather than simply giving you new weapons, the game’s tag system gives you tags such as “Lancer,” “Caster,” etc., that signify different types of attacks. It’s an additional layer of abstraction that’s confusing and, frankly, makes earning new attacks less fun. With the Dream Eggs, the tags, and the accompanying wall of stats, it’s hard to tell whether there’s actually a mechanically complex system here or just a bad user interface and experience that makes things much harder to understand than they need to be.
As you play, you enter bonus Tarot Dream stages, each themed after one of 22 different Tarot cards. These short bonus challenges grant bonuses based on the amount of risk you’re willing to take; at the start, you flip over a series of cards, which could either be a completion reward or a modifier that will make the level harder. I found these more irritating than fun, as some of the Tarots can have effects such as reversing your movement directions.
Dark Fairy Tale: Dreamland Survivors. Bingobell
Dreamland Survivors character and enemy designs are fun, horror-themed takes on fairy tales, rendered in colorful 2D art. The designs are weird and inventive, I just wish there was a greater variety of enemies to showcase more. Attacks are drawn in the same way, which is a problem because everything ends up blending together in a mess of visual noise as more enemies show up, and it ends up becoming difficult to clearly see what’s happening. Particles, glows, or other effects on attacks would be extremely helpful. The quality of the spritework is undercut by the boring levels, which are comprised of a single, flat, tiled texture.
Dark Fairy Tale: Dreamland Survivors. Bingobell
Dreamland Survivors is a Survivorslike with some interesting mechanics but also glaring flaws. The limited variety, boring level design, and confusing systems make the game difficult to love, but I’d like to see if the developers further evolve things with updates. Streamlining the UI and improving the first-time user experience to make things easier to understand would go a long way. As it stands, it’s hard to recommend the game over the many other Vampire Survivors clones out there.
Dark Fairy Tale: Dreamland Survivors is available now on Steam.
Score: 5/10
Played on: Steam Deck
