There’s three pillars that make up Drop Duchy: Tetris, Roguelikes and deckbuilding. The latter two are very commonly combined, to the point that deckbuilding would synonymous with Roguelikes if it wasn’t also being shoved into RPGs, strategy games and everything else that we can come up with.
The block-dropping joys of Tetris, though? Well, that’s more difficult to add into the blender with other genres. Drop Duchy does it, though, the team at Sleepy Mills Studios obviously not knowing any better.
Having played the new demo on Steam, that’s definitely not a bad thing.It’s the Tetris of it all that does make up the bulk of this game, with the other elements adding further puzzling peril and tension to how you drop different blocks from the top of the screen, down onto the grid below.
There’s very little of the harried time pressure of traditional Tetris, though, and you’re not looking to score by clearing lines of the board.
Instead, each Tetromino shape is a a chunk of land or a building that you’re slotting down onto the board to craft a neat 8×13 slice of terrain.Through combining these you earn resources at the end of a board’s completion.