I grabbed Downwell after hearing tons and tons of recommendations. I'm glad I did.

For context, I dabble in indie game dev as a hobby and I was always under the impression that most people want to buy big, content packed games that are highly replayable and will last 100 hours or more. Short, experimental indie games belong on itch.io for free, otherwise it won't be played, end of story. Downwell however proved to me that all of that is hogwash.

As long as you have a core mechanic that's simple to understand and deep, it can sustain a game, especially if that core mechanic is super fun to use. Seriously, the shooting sounds and stomping on monsters are so satisfying I want to keep playing.

Tons of games I play nowadays forget about "the joy of doing" and instead focus on "the joy of finishing". It's a subtle difference that I start to notice more and more as time goes on, especially in the realm of AAA games. Games want you to keep playing not because it's fun to play, but because you get to see a number go up or they tease you with rewards after you do some mundane task. I kind of developed a hatred for mechanics that don't serve the core gameplay (for better or worse) like side quests in RPGs, hacking minigames and so on.

Downwell is not perfect of course - combos like 50 or 100 aren't rewarded, so you gotta reset to grab the rewards for 25 and some shop options are lacking. However thanks to it I'm definitely more on the lookout for smaller titles just to experience what's possible with the medium.