Dwarf Legacy turns Tolkien's sturdy miners into bullet hell mountaineers – don't mythril the demo

Remember in The Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers when Gandalf falls down the big chasm with the Balrog, smacking the sawdust out of it while plummeting towards the waters of the underworld? Well, give Gandalf a gun, play that sequence in reverse, and swap the Balrog for a flock of Space Invaders, and you are playing something like the demo for Dwarf Legacy – a “bullet-hell precision platformer” from Wulo Games about a dwarf clambering up the inside of a mountain.

Oh wait, Gandalf needs to be listening to crunchy dancefloor music to complete the analogy. Also, he needs to stop periodically to buy better guns from a blacksmith. I’m pretty sure this is still within Peter Jackson’s budget.

“Bullet-hell precision platformer” is a verbal fondue calculated to give you palpitations, so it’s alarming that Dwarf Legacy feels very easy, to begin with. Your jump is insanely floaty, and you can stick to walls without worrying about stamina. This isn’t exactly your classic, slow-moving, hard-wearing Dwarven miner. Even Legolas wasn’t this quick on his pins.

The odds soon steepen, however. The gun, once acquired, can only be shot in fixed directions – vertically, if you’re jumping or standing on the floor, or horizontally, if you’re hanging from a wall. Upgrade the gun to fire an extra bullet per shot, and the additional rounds shoot out parallel or at 45 degree diagonals, as with multishot upgrades in shmups.

Those constraints are all fine and dandy when you’re only fighting a handful of foes, and have room to manoeuvre. But when you’re dogfighting with a crowd in cramped confines, while avoiding spinning blade traps and spikes… yes, this is a test of Dawi mettle indeed. Fortunately, enemies take damage from traps, and have deliberately brainless pathfinding – some gauntlet runs encourage you to lure them to their destruction.

Between clambers, you’ll return to and gradually populate a cave village of upgrade-peddling NPCs. There’s some gently diverting writing, like the botanist who’s ecstatic at the chance to grow vegetables in pitch darkness. Another dweller offers optional challenges to encourage replay of completed areas, on top of the bonuses you’ll earn from a higher completion score.

The full version of Dwarf Legacy is out later this year, and will offer a few dozen levels across several distinct chunks of mountain strata. Oh, I forgot to mention a couple of Neat things. Firstly, when you grab a surface your character automatically plants a torch, lighting the level in an organic way.

Secondly, when you take damage, it dings your helmet off rather than killing you. You can reclaim your helmet to restore that diegetic second chance mechanic. I’d almost beaten the 10th level in the demo, but then some stinkbug bonked my hat off a precipice and I chased it almost all the way to the bottom. Fun! It occurs to me that Gandalf lost his hat during the Balrog descent, and somehow reached the bottom unscathed – truly, he is the, er, Dwarf Legacy of wizards.