Build a rewarding settlement with Drop Duchy
In a post-Balatro world, the roguelike deckbuilders have seriously upped their game. So when 'Drop Duchy' was released a few months ago, I couldn't help but try it out. Drop Duchy is exactly what you would expect from a game in the same genre — it's a simple, but well-built idle game. An idle game is what I can play when I listen to a podcast or an audiobook. It takes up half of your focus, because it is mostly just a combination of muscle memory and inconsequential decisions. And in a post-Balatro world, it needs a shiny new gimmick. So while Poker largely inspires Balatro, Drop Duchy chooses Tetris as its baseline mechanic. You would assume that Tetris has an easier learning curve when compared to Poker. Because Poker requires you to know maths, and Tetris just wants you to understand shapes. But Drop Duchy is cooler than that — it adds five additional layers of complexity to your normal game of Tetris, so that it barely resembles the original game.
So what is it? As the name suggests, you must expand your duchy. You own a small piece of land that needs to be carved out to provide you with the right combination of resources. If you are someone familiar with board games like I am, you might notice that creating a continuous strip of similar terrain forms will reap higher benefits. Think Carcassonne. Similarly, the game incentivises you to group shapes of a similar terrain together - rivers bind with rivers, forests with other trees, and plains with fields.
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