Hatchwell

Quality top down Zelda inspired game featuring a cute little pet friend. Not quite as big in scope (only seven dungeons and a small over world that doesn't extend much past the town) but there's plenty packed into that small space, including one fairly long optional area (alongside some shorter optional areas). The dungeons themselves are good featuring an intuitive layout, solid (generally on the easy side) puzzles, and bosses that aren't too rough but generally harder and a bit more involved than your usual top down Zelda boss. Music is fairly catchy but has a short loop, so it can be a bit on the repetitive side. Simple story with some charming characters that you can interact with between dungeons that might have a small side quest or mini game to complete but are easy to ignore if you just want to progress the plot. Dev is very responsive and helpful, so if you're looking to scratch that top down Zelda itch look no further.

I'd say this game is good and has potential to be great if certain things get fixed in the future.
If you can look past some minor bugs / glitches that might happen while you play, it's a decent game.
Enjoyed:
- Gameplay is solid, simple yet effective, feels good to move around and hitting enemies.
- Sword attack is not a stab move - thank you so much for that.
- Character creation is simple yet very cute for a simple game like this.
- The little portraits of envrioment and objects give a nice flare to cutscenes and dialog.
- Bosses have decent ways to be defeated, but require a few tries sometimes
- You can pet your dog.
- The battle in the town was very creative and fun way to see if you know your way around it.
Nitpicks:
- The game is mostly hard at the start due low health pool, 3 hits and dead, no half hearts or anything of sorts.
- Seen a few different enemy designs, but most of them die with your sword alone.
- Some of the music has been just the same theme, but with a slight variation, it could have been ok if the loop wasn't so short... the dungeons can take a bit of time to get through so hearing a 10 sec loop isn't really nice...
- Some puzzles have a right way to be solved and doing it another way might cause you to get stuck and have to re-load your save (thankfully you just start at the entrance)
- Pet AI will just ram spiky enemies killing itself, then makes me feel horrible, my poor boy. Yes, you can change to passive but i think it could at least not do that lol.
- The game kept starting in window mode and changing controller settings isn't very intuitive.
- You cannot pet the dog.
But anyways, I liked it, especially after looking at the credits and noticing only a few people worked on it, Good Job! Ain't easy to make a game. Thank you!

This is a good game. A cute adventure with a lot of heart. "Zelda like" would be the easy way to describe it with the standard dungeon > new item progression, all completely centered around one town and it's inhabitants, all of which have changing dialog and their own small moving stories along the way. Nothing too ground breaking but every part enjoyable. Bosses stood out as each had their own unique setups. Menu controls can be a little odd to get use to at first but that's hardly an issue.
Writing this review mostly because of my own shock at how unknown the game is for it's level of quality.

A short but sweet Zelda-like that does enough of it's own thing to stay fresh.
The story is pretty good, the dungeons are mostly great, and the boss fights are really fun. Especially the final boss fight. There are even side quests that change some minor things.
My biggest complaint is that you don't really get rewarded for doing any exploration until the very end, because a lot of things will be locked behind all different dungeon items. The entire game taking place in and around a single small village kind of makes it reasonable though.
There's also a few softlocks and crashes in the game. But the dungeons are small enough that it doesn't really matter if you have to replay 15 minutes here or there.
Definitely a recommend from me, go play it if you enjoy top down adventure games. 8/10

An excellent zeldalike. The overworld map is small but dense (seriously, two dungeons back to back are one screen over from each other) but I think it works as this game truly focuses on just one town. After every dungeon you beat the day advances, and the delightful cast of characters has new things to say and new things for you to do for them, which is a nice way to give a sense of progression and give depth to the characters and make you care about them. The overall story is pretty generic but the characters make it.
The dungeons are expertly designed, not being too linear but still with a solid sense of direction, making them satisfying to explore, and the puzzles are fun without being overly obscure (or if they are, there's a sign or hint flower to help explain them just enough so you know the rules of the puzzle but not the answer). And even though it's kind of dumb (walking into walls and such), the pet that follows you around and fights for you is a great addition.
Some quests are missable, so make sure you walk around and talk to every NPC before moving on to the next dungeon. (Also, you have to wait to give Nada the heal flower, don't worry if you can't get it immediately).

Only a half hour in an already charmed by the art, characters, and pets! There is already more in depth story than I expected, which is nice. Looking forward to putting more time into this little world. I will update my review later as I play more!

Very charming adventure game, inspired by the early Zelda games. You have to save the people of Hatchwell from some evil force that spawns monsters all over the place, by finding six crystals in mysterious dungeons. Most of these dungeons are very well designed, with plenty of puzzles and unique enemies and bosses. Especially the water dungeon is amazing, and comes very close to the clever design of the Zelda games. The inhabitants of Hatchwell will also give you quests, and there are lots of secrets to find by exploring the environment.
Not everything is perfect tho; the last two dungeons are repetitive and the music sounds best when turned off completely. But for the first game of a single developer, Hatchwell is a great achievement. Recommended!