Well Keeper Review

Well Keeper takes place inside a sacred forest. Here was a magical well that was the home of a cute little mouse with big ears. One night, a horrible storm came, and the little one ran home to take cover. Just as they got to the well, the mouse was struck by lightning. Suddenly, monsters started to come out of the clouds, thirsty for magic water.

The little rodent awoke, sparks shooting out from its body and fizzing with electric energy. Its home was under attack, so the mouse, who was also the Well Keeper, had to act quickly to protect it using his newly acquired powers from the shock.

Navigating the stage isn’t as simple as walking around with the thumbstick. Instead, to move the mouse around the screen, you will be flapping its ears using the shoulder buttons. If you hold it down, you will maintain a consistent height, but if you want to go higher, you will need to repeatedly press the buttons to go up. Since you are in a well, the bottom is covered in water. The mouse can't swim, so you need to make sure to not touch the water, or you'll lose a heart. 

Enemies will be coming at you from the top of the screen and firing projectiles at you, so you need to dodge them. The Well Keeper can dash in either direction to destroy the incoming projectiles and to try to get away. You don’t need to worry about hitting a button to fire a weapon, as the mouse fires lightning bolts automatically, so all you need to worry about is avoiding all the bullets coming at you and lining up your mouse with the target to take out your foe. The monsters that you defeat will drop coins, so be sure to collect them, as these will be important to your success. 

You will notice that there is a boot in the centre of the stage; inside of this footwear is a hidden shop where you can learn new skills to get stronger. Once it starts glowing, head inside to spend the coins that you collected. At any point during your run, you can hop inside if you want to make a purchase. You will spend the coins on Wishes; skills that you buy will permanently upgrade the mouse’s abilities. So you won’t need to worry about losing them all when you die. 

There are three different skill trees in the shop to learn from. You begin learning the abilities on the Wishes of the Oak tree. The Wishes here include powering up your lightning bolts to deal more damage, an increased rate of fire, maximum dash charges, or the Well Keeper can attract coins from a distance, which is useful to keep upgrading your mouse. Once you learn all eight wishes, the Pine tree is unlocked, followed by the Willow tree once those are all learned.

Our rodent starts with three hearts, and once they are depleted, your run is over, and you see your poor mouse lying on the ground. However, any Wishes you had learned remain, so the mouse gets stronger every run, plus there are Wishes to gain more hearts as well. Unfortunately, any coins you had are gone, and you start at the first level. So it might be wise to spend them before you lose them. The Wishes called Wolf and Fox can be powered up 13 times, but the Spider can only be upgraded four times. Each time you upgrade, it will cost more coins to level up, but chances are you are defeating enemies more easily, so you will probably have more money.

When you pause the game, you will see your stats on the screen; play time, deaths, kills, how many coins were spent and number lost are all shown. It is so sad to see that the amount of coins I've lost is almost two times the number that I was able to spend…

On the right-hand side of the screen, we see a small route map showing how many waves to the big boss. There are 10 waves to play through before we reach the final encounter. It might not seem like many stages, but you will die and start over a lot! There is a lot of grinding here to get the mouse strong enough to take out the monstrous enemies that they have to face. So be prepared to play through the first few levels over and over again. Especially when you get greedy trying to get all the falling coins and you put yourself in danger.

The backgrounds and characters in the game look like they are from a children's storybook. The water at the bottom is not still and slightly moves and bounces light onto the sides of the well. The Well Keeper is super cute with big ears as it flaps around the stage like Dumbo. Each wave of enemies you battle against has a unique look and abilities, some filling the screen with streams of bullets to avoid.

Well Keeper is an incredibly challenging game, and you will need to die a lot to power up your mouse and new abilities and power them up to increase your odds of success. It is satisfying to fly through the earlier waves that you had previously found challenging in a short amount of time! The game is very addictive and I keep coming back for just one more attempt to see how far my next run will take me and to see how much more powerful my character will get! I highly recommend this cute game that is frustrating yet satisfying at the same time!