Ittle Dew is an Action-Adventure game developed by Swedish developer Ludosity, and the first game in the Ittle Dew series.
The title character is an adventurer who gets marooned on an island with a large monster-infested castle. She's quick to take on the adventure, but even more interested in finding a way off the island if the castle doesn't prove challenging enough for her. Along with her fairy/fox companion Tippsie, they seek the guidance of eccentric shopkeeper Itan Carver, who is willing to build a raft to help them escape in exchange for a mysterious artifact within the castle.
The game is heavily influenced by The Legend of Zelda series, with Ittle using her weapons to solve puzzles and search for hard-to-reach treasure. It's much shorter and simpler than a typical Zelda adventure, with three different tools and a ton of shortcuts to encourage speed runners and sequence breakers. One of the draws is that you only require 2 of the 3 items to finish the game so you're encouraged to find different ways to get to the end goal using different load-outs. The island is also sprinkled with smaller dungeons to test the player's puzzling prowess, as well as a "Master Cave" for even harder puzzles.
The game was made available for purchase on Windows, Macintosh and Linux computers (via Steam) on 23 Jul, 2013, and Ouya, Wii U, and smart devices (iPhone, iPod, and Android) a bit later. A sequel, Ittle Dew 2, was released on November 15, 2016 for PC and Mac (via Steam), PS4, and Xbox One, with a Nintendo Switch port in 2017.
Ittle Dew herself, Jenny Fox, Masked Ruby and Ultra Fishbunjin 3000 all return in Slap City as playable characters (and barriers make a cameo).
Tropes used in Ittle Dew:
- Bait-and-Switch Boss: When you first enter the final room of the Master Cave, it looks like you'll be fighting a simple fishbun. Naturally, it gets replaced by something much more threatening.
- Block Puzzle: Most puzzles in the game, besides lighting/extinguishing torches.
- Bonus Dungeon: The Master Cave and the Compost Crypt.
- Boss Banter: The Final Boss talks during the battle.
- Catching Some Z's: Ittle Dew is sleeping on her raft in the opening cutscene, shown with Zs coming from her mouth and fading away.
- Contractual Boss Immunity: The bosses can't be frozen, teleported or launched by a portal block (an instant kill on anything else).
- Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: There is no penalty for dying other than restarting the room and possibly jeopardizing a speedrun attempt. The total amount of deaths isn't even recorded.
- The Dog Was the Mastermind: That quirky merchant you met at the beginning of the game? Yeah, he turns out to be the Final Boss, and is the reason the island is filled with dungeons and puzzles in the first place.
- Drunk on Milk: It seems that health potions are rather intoxicating, according to Tippsie.
- Embarrassing Animal Suit: Frog and fox Jennies. The ending credits shows they were less than thrilled when these costumes were first handed to them.
- Emergency Weapon: Ittle carries a stick at the start of the game that serves as a backup whenever she loses her Fire Sword.
- Especially Zoidberg: Itan Carver claims to have carved everything he sells in his shop. Even the real-looking swordfish. Especially the swordfish.
- Fairy Companion: Tippsie, serves to simply give you the hint of whether or not a room is physically possible with your current equipment.
- Feed It a Bomb: Inverted, you instead have to keep enemies from eating them.
- Flaming Sword: A sword that is constantly on fire is likely the first weapon the player will pick up.
- Flunky Boss: Masked Ruby and the Optional Boss spawn enemies occasionally, but spawning stuff is basically the entire strategy of the Final Boss.
- Final-Exam Boss: The final boss (Itan Carver) will force you to use your Fire Sword, Portal Wand, and Ice Wand effectively.
- Frictionless Ice: Of the puzzle variety.
- The Goomba: Fishbuns (the enemies that look like platypi) are mostly harmless, wandering around and minding their own business, and don't actively attack you when you get close.
- Half-Hearted Henchman: The first Jenny Frogs that are encountered guard the castle by each patrolling a small area which Ittle can't even reach due to spikes being in the way. The rest of them don't seem very passionate about their jobs, either.
- Harmless Freezing: The Ice Wand does no direct damage and freezing a Jenny doesn't count as "hurting" her.
- Healing Potion: Tippsie seems to be addicted to these. Although Ittle asks to have some in one dialogue sequence, they're not actually usable in the game.
- Heart Container: Ittle starts out with only one heart of life, which gives her a maximum of four hits (or two projectiles) before being knocked out. Throughout her journey, she comes across treasure chests with small scraps of paper in them. After collecting four, she simply tapes the scraps together and draws a large heart on them before attaching the paper to her life meter. In the sequel, boxes of crayons serve the same function.
- Hearts Are Health
- Hook Hand: Exaggerated with Itan Carver, all four of whose limbs end with artificial extremities (his right hand is a hook).
- Increasingly Lethal Enemy: One phase of the final boss summons Petal Slugs over time. If left unchecked and this phase isn't defeated quickly, they can turn the boss arena into a Bullet Hell.
- Interface Spoiler: If you pay close attention to the cards that you're collecting, they all have Itan describing the island's creatures. More importantly, though, is the Pancake card which says "Why did I even create... uh... I mean..."
- Ironic Fear: The Titan de Graphiques is a heavy winged creature who's afraid of heights, but can't stop flying.
- Keep It Foreign: In the French translation, the Masked Ruby calls Ittle "señorina" rather than "mademoiselle".
- Kill Enemies to Open: Red doors must be opened by killing enemies, unlike green doors which use puzzles.
- King Mook: Ultra Fishbunjin 3000. As the card puts it: "Fishbuns usually don't exercise nor enjoy a balanced diet. Unfortunately for you, this one did."
- Jenny Deer and The Lichious Turnip may also count, being a Jenny and a Turnip respectively. Bonus points for actually having been their rulers, back in their time.
- Lethal Lava Land: Toasty Caves
- Line Boil: Done intentionally, generally used to indicate what can be interacted with and what is just scenery.
- Literally Shattered Lives: Enemies that aren't immune to the Ice Wand can be killed in one hit with the Fire Sword or Stick after being frozen.
- MacGuffin: Ittle and Tippsie are charged with retrieving an "artifact" from the castle. We never actually see what it is.
- Medium Awareness: Both Ittle and Tippsie seem aware that they're part of a video game.
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Minimalist Run: Only two out of the three items (any two) are needed to beat the game, and there are achievements for each combination. - Mook Debut Cutscene: Many enemies have a short dialogue with Ittle and Tippsie when they're first encountered.
- No-Gear Level: Each of the three item dungeons causes you to lose everything besides your stick and paper when you first enter them.
- One-Gender Race: The Jennies, which raises quite a few questions given the only males on the island before Itan Carver showed up were the turnips. A poster of a boy band containing a Jenny in Ittle Dew 2 does hint that there may be male ones, however.
- One-Time Dungeon: All of the main dungeons. As a sign outside the Toasty Caves points out, there's nothing that can be missed in them anyway.
- Pacifist Run: A Steam Achievement can be earned by completing the game without attacking any of the Jenny enemies. Everything else on the island is fair game, though.
- Permanently Missable Content: The game makes a point of averting this by saying outright that there are no items or chests than can be missed permanently.
- Pressure Plate: A common puzzle element.
- Punny Name:
- Ittle's name is, of course, a play on "It'll Do."
- Tippsie is not only the resident Exposition Fairy ("tips"), she's frequently seen chugging a red potion ("tipsy").
- The Jenny Rich monsters are all a play on "generic".
- Pun-Based Title: "Ittle Dew" is a nod to the game's Zelda influences (It's not Zelda, but it'll do).
- Puzzle Boss: Most of them.
- Reset Button: There is a menu option to restart any room at any time, which can sometimes be necessary if a puzzle locks you in.
- Samus Is a Girl: Spoofed, when Ittle causally mentions she is female, Tippsie asks, "You're a girl?" to Ittle's shock. If you don't pay attention to her shirt it may be slightly easy to miss. Later in the game, it's inverted, where a statue deduces Tippsie is female as well, which Ittle was unaware of.
- Seadog Peg Leg: Itan Carver is an extreme example, with two peg legs, one peg hand, and one hook.
- Sequence Breaking: The "intended" item sequence is Fire Sword then Portal Wand then Ice Wand, but these can be obtained in any order through the use of shortcuts.
- Sequential Boss: The final one has three phases if you have two items, eight if you're using all three (there are two phases that require all three at once).
- Shield-Bearing Mook: The Chilly Rogers.
- Shout-Out: An old man, when teleported, says "Wow! Now I'm in a completely different place."
- Skippable Boss: Any of the main three bosses can be skipped depending on the items you collect. However, you can only skip one per playthrough.
- Some Dexterity Required: The more fiendish puzzles in the Master Cave require teleporting moving objects or teleporting while objects move, sometimes with really unforgiving timing.
- Spike Shooter: Petal Slugs and Brutus shoot spikes in all eight directions. The former likes to do so just as you're trying to teleport them, which teleports the spike instead, wasting your portal block.
- Spikes of Doom: These are pretty common, though the only way anything can get harmed by them is if they're teleported on top by the Portal Wand. They mainly exist as a puzzle element that blocks can move across but Ittle cannot.
- Spit Take: Tippsie does an extended one upon seeing the final boss.
- Status Infliction Attack: The Ice Wand applies Harmless Freezing to those the attack hits.
- Suspiciously Specific Denial: "I am not a straw man with a record player inside," says one of the Old Man statues in the Desert Grove.
- Technical Pacifist: The Portal Wand can defeat certain enemies without directly harming them, either by using their own projectiles against them or dropping them onto spikes for a One-Hit Kill.
- Teleport Gun: The Portal Wand can lay down a block of energy, and then zap almost anything Ittle hits with it to the location of the block.
- Tele-Frag: The Portal Wand can teleport enemies onto spikes. One enemy that is immune to your other weapons can only be defeated this way.
- Three-Quarters View
- Time Trial: The game records your best time for each of the four possible item combinations, plus there's an option to display your current time in-game. There are also a couple of Steam Achievements tied to completion time.
- Tongue on the Flagpole: In one cutscene, Ittle is shown having her tongue stuck on the Ice Wand. It's just for show, though.
- Thick-Line Animation: Most of the player characters, enemies and scenery are drawn with thick black borders combined with Line Boil.
- Too Fast to Stop: The Volcano Express enemies run on a preset path, and can only be done in by pushing a block in front of them.
- Warp Zone: The warp garden allows you to warp to different places in the castle.
- Wheel o' Feet: When Ittle pushes a block.
