Tips, tricks, highlights, scores & stats
Downwell is one of the best games of the year and it’s only $3. If the stellar reviews and word of mouth are enough to convince you that this game is excellent, you’re in luck. And while it’s pretty great to just learn how the game works through repeated, vicious deaths, here are some tips to get good quick.
The Basics
– Go down the well
Advanced
– Killing enemies without touching the ground builds combo. Use your Gunboots to control your descent and stomp on enemies (except bright red ones) whenever possible to refill ammunition.
– Time voids. There are magic bubbles built into the walls of the well. Stop in them to grab chunks of 100 gems, hearts, and battery for your Gunboots (more ammo). As long as you crash land in the bubble, and not outside of it, it doesn’t end your combo.
– Stop & shop. The merchant’s shop also has a time void. Buy batteries, health, and expand your health. Any heart you get when maxed out fills a little four-block white bar below your HP meter and filling that will also expand your max health.
– Junk that isn’t blocks or platforms can be stomped on for a brief pause in downward momentum, ammo refill, and a couple gems. All the detritus in the first area, the candles in the second area, and so on.
– Turtles won’t die to bullets, so you can empty your clip into them to really slow things down, then bop them for a refill if you need a reprieve or to take stock of what’s below you.
– End your combo at 25. All this talk of maintaining combos. This is because at 8 you get a 100 gem bonus, then a battery bonus, and finally, at 25, a heart bonus. Hearts are the most precious commodity, so forget the style points, just keep killing your combos at 25 and stock up on hearts.
– The Knife and Fork upgrade (eat dead bodies for health sometimes) is great and so is the one that creates a blast whenever you stomp on enemies. Anything that shoots bullets upwards can be extra helpful starting in world 3 or so.
– The Laser and Shotgun kind of suck at first with limited ammo, but they are powerful and, thus, probably the best late-game for controlling your fall.
– Levitate Style for life. Playing the game unlocks new styles, like the 6HP, tubby Boulder style, but Levitate offers the easiest body control (comboooos), though you might reach a point where the fast-falling boulder helps shave seconds off your best time — worry about getting to the end once, first.
– There’s a wall jump! It requires pretty perfect timing and can help in a pinch. Or at least for snuffing out candles in wall well rooms, picking up a couple gems like searching the couch for pennies.
