I love puzzle games more than I openly express. It’s not a guilty pleasure as I don’t believe in feeling guilty about liking what I like. I find that to be a weird concept. But, I just don’t talk about it. Tetris Effect got a quick spotlight from me recently — but more because of the music associated with it. So, when Dwayne came to me about giving Drop Duchy (pronounced Dutch-y, don’t do it) a shot, on the basis of my love of the classic block puzzler, of course I said yes.
So, I watched the trailer and came away thinking this was the weirdest, most interesting concept I’ve seen in a puzzle game. Imagine Tetris mixed with a little Age of Empires and some Slay the Spire. That’s the best way I can describe it. Drop Duchy is a deck-building, roguelike puzzle game from Sleepy Mill Studio, published by The Arcade Crew. And getting a chance to play the demo through a full run, I think there’s some real potential here.
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‘Drop duchy’ enhances the strategy of puzzle games

I find Tetris to be a puzzle game that eventually comes down to the inevitability of your game ending. There is a layer of strategy early that can extend your game, but eventually, the game is going to move too fast to keep going. Drop Duchy, though, plays into that by adding resource gathering and management — as well as some combat. All of it takes place on your board with none of the lines disappearing. That’s right. When you form a line, it doesn’t disappear, but you gain some resources for use in upgrading your cards between battles.
The completed lines also result in territory you can use to boost your troop cards when you drop them. Now, here’s where the strategy comes in. Because you have to drop your enemies on the board as well. No choice, so pick your spots well because enemy troops have the same abilities that get buffed by the placement of your other blocks. So, the game becomes a mental tug-of-war with what you know about Tetris and what Drop Duchy is trying to teach you.
THERE’S A CLEAR DIRECTION HERE AND IT WORKS. staying POWER IS THE QUESTION
What I found to be useful was holding the first enemy block for as long as possible with an eye on its ability. At that point, I would just work on starving them out for as long as I could. Keeping one less enemy off the board is sometimes more important than buffing your own. When it comes time to do battle, you get to plot out who attacks when. This opens up another layer of strategy as sometimes choosing to supplement one of your blocks before attacking an enemy may be the right move. With a Rock, Paper, Scissors battle system, if you attack with your advantage, you gain a troop boost and vice-versa for your disadvantage.

The demo only allowed for the first complete run. After defeating the boss, I came away feeling like this game has a lot of potential. It’s all down to how the game expands after that first boss battle. The key is making sure that the gameplay continues to match the mixture of genres. If there is no reason to deviate from a winning strategy, there might not be much in the way of replay value.
The demo is out now, and I’m hoping that once the full game releases, the answers will be there. For the time being, though, this demo is a perfect snapshot of what this game can be. I’m looking forward to the game dropping in April 2025.
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