This game actually serves as a diamond in the rough. Most other Whale Rock games tend to be shovelware garbage. We are the Dwarves however, shows a considerable amount of effort was put in the development. The game graphically is nice to look at. It's a fantasy setting flung into the future. You'll be fighting tribal monsters and giant spiders, using shotguns, wearing spacesuits as dwarves. Gamplay is good, but not properly explained. The systems aren't a problem, but the game doesn't tell you how to interact with them. It's a real time strategy game where you manage what your dwarves do to get to the end of the map. Each character is unique in both mechanics and aesthetic. Enemies have an interesting detection system based on multiple senses, allowing for ways to manipulate them to your advantage. The sound is perfectly fine, however you will notice that the voices are a bit odd. Most likely, a text to speech bot was used. I never found it to be an annoying voice. Narratively this game is pretty good. The game has cutscenes with dialogue that makes it easy to follow along with, a journal that allows you to both refresh yourself on how certain elements of the game work as well as give you lore to read, and in game lines that do both. Maybe not a high bar for most games, but considering most other things Whale Rock Games put out fail to reach it this is refreshing. It's not perfect but it is a fun experience. If you want a strategic little game, this is a good choice.
This game, like many others Whale Rock Games makes is in Early Access. WHich means it will likely stay that way forever. What is here however is just plain old disapointing. The game starts with an unskippable cutscene. You will see this cutscene every time you die. It tells you that aliens and mutants have taken over and your goal is to kill them all. Doesn't tell you the controls though. For a flying game in space, knowing how to go up and down is a bit important. Gameplay consists of kill eighty-one things in level one. Thirty asteroids, fifty mutants and one spaceship. Most are stationary and take multiple shots from your laser to kill. The exception is one bug that comes out of literal nowhere to fly around an shoot you. Lasers shot by you and the other enemies are the same colour, while lasers shot by the bug are red instead of yellow. You do have a missile which goes further than the smoke following it. That makes it look like it just stopped partway, so you won't be able to tell if you're close enough to hit until you either do or don't see an explosion. There is nothing other than your kill tracker, weapon list and health bar on screen. You have no radar or map so you can't keep track of things not killed already. This becomes a problem because every now and then, the bug will fly at you shooting lasers. trying to avoid it's shots means you need to move. move around too much and now you need to reorient yourself to find what you were going after before. Soundwise this game is really lacking. It has some background music, a noise for lasers, a warning low health noise, and that's it. Hitting an asteroid, enemies shooting at you and anything else you find is silent. This game is bad, unfinished, will likely stay that way, and not worth an individual purchase.
This game lives up to the Early Access it has on it's store page because despite the claim that it's out of Early Access, it still looks like an alpha test. Your objective is to "get to the finish line", which is boring because there are no opponents on level one. You have no map so you have no real idea how long this is going to take. Any slight touch of the edge of the road is an immediate game over. You lose control of your car and will continue to hear the crashing sounds through the next loading screen. This game has no way to invert the camera, which is very disappointing. The camera also feels the need to reset itself once you get in the car. What you have instead of camera controls that feel tolerable to use, is a clock that shows you the real world time and date, for some reason. Visually this game is fine but all you have is Squared off towers passing you by, more skyscraper buildings in the background, the road and an RGB grid paper field to look at. Your character model is okay, but I don't understand why you don't just start in the car if the main goal is to drive. The car model is so unremarkable I forgot what it was once the game was closed. The music in this game is Synth and not memorable either. If it's dirt cheap and you have nothing better, it may be a better option than arson. It's not a good choice if your looking for a racing game, action game, or Sci-fi game.
This is a puzzle game in the same format as every other puzzle game Whale Rock Games has made. It's all lazer redirection, pressure plates with boxes, and shifting a sliding plate around while trying to move through barriers. Like Portal but without the actual portals, or the story or quality. Most of your gameplay will feel disconnected from what your supposed to be doing. This game has about an Hour of content in here, assuming you backtrack to the beginning halfway through. The story is irrelevant. There are two clicks of the mouse where it looks like you do something related to it and the rest is boxes, lasers and barriers again. Journal entries jump from one to six, if there is a two through five I couldn't find it. Like all other games made by Whale Rock, there is no voices. You get background music, some metal clanging SFX and that's it. Any story is told through a journal entry system, which is easily skippable. Visually this game is okay, for an asset flip. These developers have two box models that they use in every game. If you played Euphoria, Dofamine or any other Sci-fi/ Tech environment, then you've seen this game. This game is too short, unoriginal, and dull to warrant an actual full price purchase.
This game is an endless runner that was given a stop point. Things are spawned randomly so trying to follow the music is pointless. When the music ends the level is over. All money earned is added to your total. Hit small blocks to get $10. Avoid tall block or you lose $50. Money unlocks new levels that have different backgrounds and new cars. The game is grindy as the cheapest option for a new level is $10,000. The music is what you expect for something with synth in its name. You can add your own if you don't like it. The song changes everytime you play a level so at least it tries to not be annoying. It's not original in assets or idea, but it isn't the worst thing on GOG. If heavily discounted and you just want something to pass time, you have worse options than this.
This game has one positive and that's its visuals. It looks good, though it isn't really distinct from anything else Whale Rock games has under their belt. If there is a story, it's so well hidden that I can't find it. There's no dialogue, journal entries, visual clues for what's going on, nothing. All you get is simplistic objectives like "Escape the Neon Jungle" which give you no real usable information. Music and SFX are forgettable and unremarkable. Gameplay here like the other games these people have is simplistic. This game won't let you save here normally by default. Autosaves put you at the beginning of the level. The puzzles are fine for level one. After that it feels like I'm breaking it. It became very easy to throw myself into the sky and fall off the map in the second area. Invisible walls are frequent. Looking up this game gives few results and no guide I found goes past the first area. This game is early access gutter trash and will probably stay that way until the end of the internet.
