Making a hybrid roguelike with twists on classic genres and mechanics is rather like hosting a party. There are going to be genres I’ve never met in attendance, gameplay mechanic strangers I only know through mutual genre friends, and if the party isn’t fun from the start, then I’m prone to wandering off to do something else (probably finding the household pet and introverting at it). But much like a good party, there are a few easy steps to make sure it’ll be a winner, and Drop Duchy understands that perfectly.

Starting out with Drop Duchy is simple, familiar and enjoyable — and honestly, that might be the most important foundation for any good roguelike. Making use of the core Tetris premise of stacking things juuuust right to make neat rows and columns (proven to work as a whole game on its own already), the core gameplay loop is as consistently satisfying as it has always been in Tetris. If you start out fusing classic design concepts that don’t necessarily sound like they should work together, you need to build trust with your audience by making the core of your game innately fun — enough that they’ll let you cook with the weird bits that don’t necessarily feel like they’re going to fit together at first.

Tetris-style gameplay is the friend inviting you to the party; you know them really well, and you’re certain to have a good time if they’re around. They bring us in and keep us engaged long enough for Drop Duchy to start sneaking hybrid design choices in through the door. First are the different terrain tiles – the fields and forests are people you’ve seen around and talked to a few times, the basic variations on your classic Tetris shapes that fill your deck, populate the game board and act as set-up pieces for your strategy further down the line. These familiar faces pave the way for the real life of the party: we know ’em, we love ’em, it’s… Synergy deck-building combos, the most popular kid in the indie school!

Now we’re dealing with building tiles which turn terrain into combo pieces, letting you rack up resources and stockpile military assets just by doing that Tetris thing and filling in rows. And now that synergy combos are raking in the points and resources, you find yourself moving through the paths of a roguelike map, acquiring new tile cards for your Tetris ‘deck’ and spending your combo-acquired resources to upgrade your cards, gain new passive bonuses, and manage the HP of your empire. And now it doesn’t really feel like Tetris anymore, though that core loop is still there. It has an identity of its own now, more than the sum of its parts. So now that your snowballing combo deck of plains-focused military and resource cards is in full swing, you’re filling rows left and right. That’s when Drop Duchy hits you with a curveball. They invited your crush to the party; it’s time for the COMBAT TRIANGLE, BABY! (Did you forget about the party metaphor? I’m sorry, but I’m in too deep to change it now).

Drop Duchy starts sneaking enemy tiles into your deck, forcing you to manage filling the rows of the board, while also placing enemy tiles in such a way as to nullify their pieces. And when all the pieces are placed and the battlefield is set, you work through the puzzle of ordering the flow of combat so each troop type is used as effectively as possible: making sure that swords take out arrows, who rain death on the axes, who cut down the swords in turn. Hot combat-on-triangle action at its finest. None of these individual pieces are complex, but as each one gets added, they layer and shift the effects of the others until you’re working to synergise a whole host of disparate parts that nonetheless feel like a well-balanced whole.

It becomes surprisingly tricky to avoid focusing too much on one aspect to the detriment of others — focus too much on row completion without making your tiles work together, and you won’t survive the combat phase. But prioritise your combat preparations while disregarding your resource acquisition, and you’ll fall behind economically, left unable to purchase the tiles and upgrades needed to stay competitive. All the while, you’d better not fail to fill those rows, or every aspect of the game will suffer. You have to keep an eye on every moving part, and yet they all work wonderfully without becoming overwhelming. Of course, strategy is all well and good, but luck is ever a fickle mistress, as prone to offering you the perfect line-piece in your hour of need as it is to shower you in ill-timed zigzags and blocky segments with no place in your perfectly-ordered rows. It can feel pretty rough to come up with a harmonious combination of tiles only to find yourself foiled by uncaring geometry rather than a superior opponent. However, those moments are quickly soothed by a fresh run.

It’s impressive how devoid of tiny gripes and nitpicks Drop Duchy feels, considering how weird its composite parts look from an outward perspective. All these disparate pieces could have mashed together awkwardly and ended up in separate corners of the room with no common ground or shared interests to talk about. And yet here they are, all working together perfectly and having a fantastic time in a way that feels almost effortless. It’s a collection of simple packages that blend into a complex, charmingly presented final form, and I’m more than happy to attend a repeat of this particular party again and again. And I’ll be rewarded for that too, because you KNOW this bad boy has a progression system. I mean, what’s one more gameplay mechanic, am I right?