Dandy: Or a Brief Glimpse Into the Life of the Candy Alchemist Reviews

A very fun and colorful rougelite shoot em up. Love this game and it deserves more attention.

It reminds me a lot of Binding of Isaac but bright and colorful. Honestly good fun with friends!

Dandy is an auto-scrolling shooter with rogue-like elements such as random items and perma-death. The game is also available on mobile, that explains the art style and why the enemies look rather bland, but trust me, it is a lot better than it looks. The gameplay is simple, you kill waves of enemies, after some waves you get randomized power-ups and eventually you fight a boss. [b]Enemies:[/b] The strongest part about dandy is the enemy design. Most of the enemies have weaknesses that can be exploited to fight them efficiently without losing health. For example some of the enemies require you to stand still or else you can't hurt them, while others force you to move or else they shoot at you. These two enemy types can appear on the same screen and lead to difficult situations. Overcoming these tricky screens with knowledge and skill feels very rewarding. The final boss is annoying, it is a bullet-hell boss and he doesn't fit in the game. The 4th version of the boss has a ridiculous amount of hp and if you don't have good damage items the fight goes 20 minutes or until you die. [b]Controls:[/b] I play the game with an xbox-controller, you move up or down (you can't move left or right) with the analog stick and use the a-button for shooting. If you hold down the a-button you character auto-fires. The only problem i have with the controls is that there are items that require you to charge them up, picking up one of these items overrides the ability to auto-fire. I really hope they add an extra button to charge up shots in the future. [b]Items:[/b] The item variety is rather small, there are maybe 30-40 items and most of them are just damage upgrades or defensive upgrades in some form, Items that are more special like pierce or the banana boomerang are rare. Some items are overpowered, the peach and the cinnamon both allow you to oneshot pretty much every enemy leading to extremly easy runs. However in general the items aren't very important, even if i get only bad items i can almost always make it to the final boss. [b]Conclusion:[/b] Dandy is a fun skill-based game that has well designed enemys and good controls. The replay-value is rather limited because of the non-random encounters and the bad item system but if you are a fan of the genre the game is definitively worth the asking price,

I played about 3,5hrs before I wrote this and I'll continue to play more of course. Graphics are fine and very colorful. The variety of different monsters is good. Overall gameplay is good and fluent. You have to think fast at some points in the later game! Could be very frustrating at times but people who play roguelikes are immune to frustrating. I'm not. Fun to play but wears itself down very quickly. Big share of the items are almost just the same as others and the bullet graphics could be a bit different. There's a big variety of power ups but it seems I really can't tell which is which. It's a shame! It's very pricy for what it's worth. I tried multiplayer but there wasn't any players online. This game can't in any turn be compared to The Binding of Isaac. Do not do that! This game has all the potential to be great. Maybe it will be. At this state you should avoid it. It's not worth 9,99€. My verdict at this state: 6/10

I adore this game. The artwork, the music, everything. I randomly came across it this morning and decided, "What the hell, I'm gonna buy this." No regrets. I can't wait to play it with my friend. My only gripe would be that I really wish I could move left and right. I mean, I understand if that was intended, but maybe there could be an option to move left and right? I don't know. It's really not a big deal, but it gets frustrating when I move upwards to dodge an enemy that is following me, and I don't have enough room and it hits me. Otherwise this game is super awesome, I highly recommend it, the charm alone is reason to purchase.

Prunk saw game called "Dandy" and soon realized it is not same game from Atari in the 1980s. That was a dungeon game. Prunk likes dungeons but this floaty clouds, side-scrolly game is good, too. Just not dark and dungeon-y. So, Prunk play game and Prunk die. Back to beginning. Prunk frustrated but want to get better at game so play again, and again, and again. Prunk keep dying, but keep playing to win, even though no scores - must reach end! No reach end, but game good. Remind Prunk of Centipede or Space Invaders, but sideways. Dandy character floats through kingdom on lollipop with candy cane weapon that shoot at different types of enemies. Candy cane sometimes seem to fire blanks even when it look like direct hits on enemies. This would be less problem if Prunk had battleaxe, but candy cane shooter more appropriate. Learned fast shooting not so great at damage, but Prunk panic and do faster shooting most times. Probably why keep dying. Interesting item boosts at end of phases, like "Ego Boost" -- all that long, floaty black hair on Dandy made Prunk grunt-chuckle. Prunk say: Fun & Entertaining - 5 / 5 grunts Skill Leveling - n/a Action Intensity - 3 / 5 grunts Storyline - 4 / 5 grunts Playability - 4 / 5 grunts Addictive - 4 / 5 grunts OVERALL - 4 out of 5 grunts Now Prunk get back to game and try to reach phase 3, maybe invite other gamer friends to try race feature, maybe.

You are doing yourself a disservice if you do not pick this game up. It is incredibly polished and a great deal of fun. I booted it up intending to only play for a few minutes and ended up spending nearly an hour on it. Highly recommended!

Not a bad variety of enemies with decent attack patterns plus an ok mix 'n' match missile selection system between each stage. I like the way you unlock more missile-types (by killing X amount of different enemies) and the game is good for 2-3 runs per session before game-play gets a tad stale. What it lacks is any sort of score and hence any sort of high-score chart. It does not keep track of what stage or level you have reached and there is no indication of this while you play and no records of runs whatsoever! You're simply whisked back to the start when you lose 5 lives and do it all over again. Sure, you unlock new sweets (missile-types) and it tracks how many of each enemy you have killed altogether but I do prefer my 2D Shooters to be score-attacks and high-score based (which is pretty much 99% of them) rather than to grind out kills for a meter to move up. Gets a thumbs up though cos it's ok for a 2-3 run blast per session.

Do not judge this game from its cute style, it will tear into your heart with fear and frustration as the globs of sweets swarm into your defenceless body, which shall never be ready. Even when you think you have the upper hand, you will find the torment to be far from finished. The end seems so close but in truth it is so very far. Do not attempt should you suffer from mental instability or high stress levels for if it can break you, it will break you.

This game started pretty good and escalated to great in my book. Every enemy is reactive or proactive such that you'll get a group of enemies where 2 will react if you move, 2 will attack you where you're at after a delay, and some with block shots and you have to access little you want to move and when. So every wave is a risk evalutation, bad execution turns the game into a bullet hell. Nominated for "The Sweetest" game award