Dragonborne is a game that as actually released for the Game Boy in 2020, Developed and published by Spacebot Interactive. And now, it’s available on Steam. So without further adieu, let’s get to it.
As far as what it does, it does it all fairly well. You play as Kris, a silent protagonist in search of his missing father. While it has its own way of going about things, Dragonborne is a Game Boy game at heart, and the story is mostly on the same level as you’d expect from Game Boy RPGs. Notably, there are several endings you get based on your rank. Rank is determined by how well you do in the game. While there’s no penalty for falling in battle gameplay-wise, it does affect your rank, along with the number of secrets (golden dragons, diamonds, and diary pages) found. As far as dying is concerned, while you do have some wiggle room, if you drop too much, you’re not getting the best ending.
We’re now hitting the meat and potatoes when it comes to how everything else is. The battle system, in particular, is fairly… weak. Early on, you have few abilities or upgrades, and while almost every enemy will die in 4 attacks (barring critical hits), so will you. You re given a bar rather than hard numbers for your HP There’s also no experience system in the game, so you’re reliant on power ups and items. And that’s where potions come in. You have several potions available to you, and you can carry a stack of 20 of each: Small Healing (mostly top-off for your heath), Big Healing (worth a little less than half your health), Super Healing Spells (full heal no matter what, at 2x the coin cost of the big potions), Strength Potions (+3attack, battle only, personally had a hard time justifying a turn spent using them), and Magic Replenish (exactly what it says on the tin). Since the game doesn’t have random encounters or replenishing enemies (that I know of) this does work to some extent. On the other hand, since not all enemies drop money, replacing your stock of potions can get a bit dicey.
And that’s where fishing comes in. An early quest rewards you with a fishing rod, and it’s going to be your biggest boon. You can hold a stack of 20 fish, and each fish sells for 4 coins each. This means that, on demand, you can have an extra 80 coins available for replenishing your potion stock. The problem is, fishing takes a while; it’s completely random. There’s no button pressing to it, no trick; you either catch a fish, or you don’t. And since its basically a coin flip, you might not catch anything several times in a row.
Puzzle solving is where things go a bit more awry. Dragonborne takes notes from a large number of classic RPGs, specifically for the Game Boy (but not exclusively). One of the early puzzles that really got my goat was the final boulder puzzle in the forest. You have an NPC a few screens back that gives you the (cryptic) hint that you need to place them in the right order. Imagine my surprise when, after breaking out a notepad so that I could run down ever permutation of placement possible, and an hour of traveling around the map seeing if I’d somehow missed something, the puzzle still wasn’t solved. Luckily, there’s a video, uploaded by Spacebot, of a playthrough that shows the answer: specific boulders (between which there is no differentiation other than starting point, because everything’s Game Boy Green) need to go into specific spots. This was not a puzzle that made me terribly happy to solve this way. I actually solved the infamous Final Fantasy Adventure figure 8 puzzle by myself the first time I played through that game, but I found this puzzle to be a step too far.
I also found in the first dungeon that, aside from invisible pathways (always fun), the game might well hide secrets with no visible indicator in a part of a screen that you might not even venture to. The first dungeon contains a Golden Dragon statue that is completely invisible until you walk onto it, basically. It’s in the far corner of the secret wizard room that you’ll never have any reason explore so thoroughly as a room. It was at about this point that I started having Vietnam flashbacks to some of Alundra‘s more nightmarish Gilded Falcons, and I’m starting to think that wasn’t by mistake.
Graphically, the game is pretty dang charming. It clearly takes inspiration from a number of Game Boy games, most notably The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, from the overworld right down to the italicized typeface. Coincidentally, this typeface makes it somewhat difficult to differentiate between capital “A” and capital “R”. So, the boss of the first dungeon, who’s mentioned by name a few times before that, surprised me by being named Rurvim rather than Aurvim.
As far as sound goes, well, it was originally made for the Game Boy. It’s either going to be a nostalgic trip, or a screeching nightmare based entirely on how old you are or whether you have an appreciation of old games or not.
I personally found that not being able to rebind the keys was a hindrance. I have big hands, and having WASDZX as your listed primary keys (with ENTER and SHIFT as Start and Select) was unpleasant. There are alternatives: alt for Z and CTRL for X, Arrow keys for WASD, but those have their own problems. Namely, I found Steam overlay didn’t work properly with the game, and these alternatives basically made it impossible to get screenshots of precisely what I wanted due to preempting the take-and-save-screenshot keyboard shortcut in Windows (and I hate having to stop and manually save things from the clipboard). I eventually gave all of this the “fuck it” adjustment and used the USB Horipad I have for the Switch. So in case you’re wondering why this review uses the screenshots found on Steam, there you go.
So can I recommend Dragonborne? That really depends. If you’re big on retro games (particularly Game Boy games), it’s fairly novel overall, barring some small hiccups. If you’re not, though, it’s hard to recommend. And honestly, it mostly comes down to that distinction.
Pros:
+ Retro nostalgia
+ Charming graphics
+ Replayability
Cons:
– Battles are mostly empty
– Lots of trial-and-error in puzzle solving
– Features a few ideas that were best left in the past
– Your enjoyment is based on your appreciation of Game Boy games
Final Score
*A review copy was provided by the publisher*
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