As the weather starts to cool here, I’ve been thinking again about Daybreak in Snowhere, a cute little 90’s style 3D platformer that feels perfect to welcome in the winter months. I’ve been wanting to take a look at this game since it caught my eye last year (and I had full intentions of doing that last winter, but here we are now!). Daybreak in Snowhere is a solo project by Steph Walter, aka slunberparty. Currently only chapter one is released, with not much info available on upcoming chapters. There is a free demo available, though the single chapter is short enough that I’m not sure it’s worth checking out instead of the full chapter.
The Last of Dragonkind?
The game follows Eira, seemingly the last dragon in Snowhere, who resides in a village of gryphons. After a day of exploration with her best friend Seraphine, we’re treated to some lovely exposition during the village’s annual solstice festival, where we learn that all dragons disappeared suddenly 100 years beforehand. Eira was apparently found as an egg and raised among the gryphons, with no real certainty about where she came from. She decides to leave the village following a strange dream, convinced that she needs to seek out the rest of the dragons, although Seraphine stays behind in anger at her friend’s departure.
While the main story beats may be a bit cliche, the setup has me intrigued enough by the mystery that I look forward to seeing where it goes. Chapter one has a good balance of gameplay and cutscenes to give just enough exposition to keep it interesting.
Visuals and Vibes
Even though a playthrough of chapter one takes only about thirty minutes, there’s a lot to enjoy already. The music is atmospheric, putting you in a cozy, wintery mood right off the bat. While the visuals are simplistic, the lower detail does evoke that 90’s platformer nostalgia. The game does feel quite visually cohesive, if a bit sparse at times. Despite its winter setting, there is a warm glow during most of the daylight scenes, giving the game a very cozy vibe. There’s also some fantastic hand-drawn art during the festival exposition scene which contributes to some great worldbuilding.
One particular visual strength of Daybreak in Snowhere is the character designs. Eira’s daintiness is a welcome change from other shorter and stockier platformer dragons. I do think her horns are too big, giving her head a bit of a jester’s cap vibe, but otherwise I love her design. The gryphons are extremely varied, with each being a different adorable mix of a bird and woodland creature. The character models and icons are expressive, giving them all lots of personality. Looking at other concept art and early models of later chapter NPCs on the dev’s tumblr has me excited to see more of these wonderful characters. I also quite enjoyed the dialog throughout the game, which struck just the right balance of endearing and the quirky/silly tendency a lot of these small indie games have (and which I feel so many way overdo).
Gameplay
Gameplay-wise, Daybreak in Snowhere is fairly simple. You have some basic controls: run, jump, fly, and a couple of attacks. I’m not sure how much of a role combat will eventually play later in the game; in chapter one, you have a good-spirited tussle with your friend Seraphine to try out your ice breath and melee attack, but otherwise there are no enemies or other use of your attacks to speak of.
The main gameplay element here is flight. For once in a game like this, this is basically unlimited, though you don’t have any sort of fully 3D control and basically flap your wings to stay afloat across long distances. It’s not particularly difficult, but the constant need to stay flapping does make the whole thing feel more dragonish. I would have appreciated some sort of hover/landing mechanic like in Spyro as the smaller platforms can be a bit finicky, and at times I found myself kind of bouncing off the ground instead of landing, resulting in having to redo several sections. Some of these platforming sections drag on a bit without a whole lot of variety, so I’m curious if later chapters will offer different challenges.
Despite the obvious parallels to the Spyro series (aka the only 3D platformer from the 90’s starring a dragon), I would say Daybreak in Snowhere really doesn’t feel that similar to the famous purple dragon’s games. The pace is instead much slower, with more of a focus on the world, story, and broader flight experience. If I had to make a comparison, I would say the game that most comes to mind is Croc: Legend of the Gobbos. The world of Croc felt equally a bit sparse and isolated, with less of a focus on combat than other titles from the era.
My biggest gripe with the game is some control issues. Overall, maneuvering Eira really isn’t too bad, but keyboard and mouse controls were a bit difficult in some of the platforming. There apparently is some limited degree of controller support right now, but I didn’t give it a try yet. Camera control is tied to your mouse movement, with no in-game adjustment. I had to manually turn my mouse sensitivity down to make the camera feel a bit more controllable. I disliked the use of the enter button to interact with characters as it required me to take a hand off either the mouse or keyboard, and often I wasn’t quite aligned properly to activate the interaction, resulting in more fiddling around with the controls than I’d like. But even so, I didn’t feel like these problems interfered too much with my enjoyment of the game. I hope the dev is continuing to refine the controls while working the later chapters.
Conclusion
At this point, I don’t know when any more chapters might be released, or how long the completed game might end up being. The first chapter was released in December 2021 and there’s currently no sign of a release date for the second, so we’re probably looking a long dev cycle for the full game, if it ever gets completed. But that’s probably what we can expect from a hobby project from a solo dev; I just hope to try out more of the game sooner rather than later!
Overall I think Daybreak in Snowhere is a promising little title from a solo developer. It’s short and inexpensive, so it’s well worth spending about half an hour with on a chilly afternoon.
Daybreak in Snowhere can be found on itch.io. See the developer’s Twitter page here, though she seems to be most active over on tumblr.