Last updated on January 4th, 2026 at 04:16 am
Downwell – Action Game Review
Downwell is a Action/Casual game from Devolver Digital, Inc., first launched in 15th October 2015.
It’s rated 9+ and currently has 1,742+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Downwell Stand Out
Downwell is a curious game about a young boy venturing down a well in search of untold treasures with only his Gunboots to protect him. Make your way further and further down into the darkness filled with nasty creatures and mysterious secrets to collect the spectacular red gems scattered about the rocks. Step into precariously placed shops and buy some helpful items or level up between levels to battle well-dwelling monsters and uncover hidden caves filled with riches and relics. No two trips down the well are ever the same!
Simple, Responsive Controls – Designed for mobile from the ground up, Downwell is presented with intuitive and elegant controls that allow for action-packed gameplay using just three buttons.
The Amazing Gunboots – The fashionable and lethal Gunboots allow players to unleash a torrent of firepower on the nasty creatures dwelling in the well and slow your decent with each shot.
Unique Weapons & Items – Get different weapons, shop for peculiar items and obtain powerful upgrades that all stack and affect the way you play!
A New Adventure Every Time – Each level in Downwell is procedurally generated, so no two trips down the well are ever the same providing a fresh new adventure each time!
Music by Eirik Suhrke.
Sound Design by Joonas Turner.
This Action game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Downwell is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 22nd December 2020
Recent improvements include:
- Fix for a bug that crashes the game before the very end
Download & Availability
Downwell is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
The fact that this game was made for mobile is astounding. This is definitely one of the best indie games and best arcade style games ever made. The game design is just topnotch and the graphics and sound design are phenomenal. Its a tough game, especially in the beginning. But once you get the hang of it and are able to beat it, it becomes so satisfying to play. We have this on mobile and switch and fine the mobile version to be the one we go to way more often. Now, our only hope is that they continue to support this game over time. We play on iPhone 17 pro and do experience framerate issues that we wish would be ironed out. Additionally we would love if they added the achievements that are available on console versions of this game. But these things aside, amazing game that is just perfect for IPhone.
We love this game the pixel style is amazing and the colors? Great. We love it.
Elegant, simple, beautiful design. Great music! No pay to win. Engaging mechanics. No annoying adds. This is in its core, what all gaming should aspire to be. Excellent game.
We think Ive been playing this since the year it came out, if we had to pick one game to have on our phone for the rest of our life it would be Downwell. Worth every penny 3 bucks is an absolute steal.
Super fun, hard and time consuming. Requires skill and focus. As you go further it gets harder. Boss is difficult. Best $3 spent of our life, totally worth it.
A classic for us; the game that made us fall in love with Devolver Digital and their catalogue.
How about a part 2 Where there are modes where you get deeper and deeper.
Great game!!! Just wondering, Is the bench next to the well a reference to hollow knight.
Favorite mobile game oat, our only issue is that you cant turn off sound effects which makes listening to anything while playing the game kinda weird.
We really do love this game, but one thing had been bothering us since we've got a new phone: The hud clips into the bevels a bit. We know it really isn't a big deal, but our brain just instantly becomes distracted upon noticing it. (Even lost a few runs to it.) we're on the 13 Mini , but Im not sure it this happens for any other models. Thanks.
We play this game on a daily basis, we beat the game almost every time we play on hard mode. Im obsessed and addicted, but PLEASE ADD MORE LEVELS! We miss the challenge.
5 stars. Using on iphone 15 pro max.
This game have so good graphics in our opinion.
We couldnt get into it at first, but after getting the hang of the mechanics it has become one of our favorite arcade style games of all time. The epitome of easy to learn, hard to master. The mechanics are very simple. It cleverly rewards risk taking without forcing you to take risks. This allows you to naturally adapt the difficulty of the game based on your current skill level. In the beginning you can land on the ground a lot to reset your gun. However, the key to mastering the game is learning to create long combos which you can do by not touching the ground between killing enemies. If you only land on enemies or in safe zones, you can keep the chain going. But why would you want to do this and make the game harder for yourself? Every time you get a combo of 25 enemy kills, you can land to end the combo and gain 1 health. If you are full health when you get health (from a 25 enemy combo or from the shop), the bar beneath your health will start to fill up. When all 4 white rectangles under your health are full, you increase your max health by 1. The key is to focus on increasing your max health as much as possible before you reach the final boss. Youll need all the health you can get.
Its a game with just the right amount of depth + difficulty while having a simple premise and being easy to jump into. Never gets boring and the art style is perfect.
Highly replayable, nice to look at (you can change the color palette) and easy to get into, we find it hard to find much wrong with this game. Ive put more time into this game than we care to admit and Ive only just beat it for the first time (great ending btw). Looking forward to hard mode. The only thing we can think of that we would change, or rather add, is a few more mods to take at the end of each mission. We found ourselves making the same build each drop. Other than that. We highly recommend this game to anyone considering. At only 99, Ive gotten so much entertainment for the price.
Years later, Im still not tired of Downwell. The play control, sounds, and graphics are undeniably solid. The upgrades, shop system, and difficulty of the game are perfect. The game plays well on iPhone, PC, and Macbook (using boot camp), and its small footprint makes it even more attractive to have installed at all times. The touch screen controls are fine, but the game is even better with a paired controller.
We love this game, gameplay feels smooth and satisfying, and difficulty feels hard, but accomplishable. One minuscule problem is a lot of the time when we play rogue-likes/rogue-lites like this, we like to listen to a podcast in the background as we go through run after run, and turning off the excellent music is possible, but theres no way to turn off the sound effects. We realize it would be a whole thing to go and change that now, but really our only issue with this otherwise impeccable game.
This game is very fun but also very difficult at the time of writing this review we have gotten only to 2-3 but we must say this game is not frustrating with its difficulty, good game worth the money.
This game is so good that we have nothing to say.
We really enjoy this game its really nice if you want a casual game really fun minor button glitches overall really good 5 stars.
The best iOS game in existence, period. Ive been playing this game regularly for about a year now and we love it more and more each time we play (still havent quite beaten it yet tho lol). Intuitive yet challenging, simple yet engaging. The fast pace and permadeath also work so well for a mobile game. We love this game so much. We also love just paying a flat fee and then never seeing a single ad. Such a rare and beautiful thing. Plus, Ive played more hours and had more fun with Downwell than we have with some full-price console games, so safe to say its well worth the price.
We love rouge-likes, and Downwell is AMAZING. Love the gameplay visuals and music! Fell in love so quickly! Well done! Chefs kiss on Devolver.
We fell in love with this game on Switch and got it immediately once we found out it was on the App Store. The game utilizes the extra vertical space of the iPhone screen perfectly and we cant praise the game design enough. It does what we love to see in games, takes a simple concept/idea and creates a game around it. The very simple art direction and color palette make the colors and sprites pop and help you track everything going on when youre falling at high speeds. Brilliant game.
Absolutely love this game. One huge request, even though itd be a little squished, is landscape mode. Itd be way easier to play if we could hold the phone sideways.
So the very cool reference to the virtual boy is really cool.
No problems with controls, runs great in the state its in now (mid-2021), but any chance of getting Game Center achievements? The PS4 version where we first played this has them and it really gave the game that extra bit of replay value (not that it DOESNT, beating it alone is a challenge), but achievements is that extra little bit of go-to to keep us coming back. Please.
Im loving this game. Its an innovative game and Nintendo like in its multiuse moves and items that do two things. However even when we have BGM turned on, we dont get any background music. We have our volume turned up and have tried reinstalling the game but to no luck. Anyone have any suggestions.
There are only 2 games Ive ever played more than a month or two on iOS and this is one of them. Simple, challenging, addictive, and most importantly, elegant gameplay. We never get frustrated with the controls, rare for a mobile game. We like how easy it is to get back in to another game after you die, similar to hotline miami. No ads, nothing to buy to make the game less frustrating, just a simple, fun game you can enjoy for years.
Three dollars is nothing compared to the time that Ive spent in this game.
This game is amazing its worth the $3 definitely.
To one of the best games ever made. Would love to use our Xbox remote with iOS Downwell.
We love this game at first we didnt like because we thought it was horror but know we think its the best game ever.
We love the game but honestly we would sink way more time into it if we could only turn off the sound effects so we can listen to music while we play it.
Incredible! The only thing it needs now is an endless mode where your items can stack! For example having two gem attractors would make gems come from farther away.
One of the best mobile games! Request haptic feedback options. Landscape mode for when using a controller holder or Razer Kishi. ICloud saves for example: play on the road with iPhone and pickup progress with iPad and a controller.
Looses sound when getting a call. Otherwise great game.
The game is great but what we really think its missing is a mute mode, the sound doesnt fully mute when Im jamming to music and we still hear the game sounds and sound fx. No hate to them but its always bothered us when Im at work jamming out and we want to play this game but with the noise it makes its always too overpowering. Other than that love the game! Have for a long time.
Love playing this game as a little time killer. Our only issue is that it's completely unplayable if we want to listen to music at the same time. You can mute the background music but the sounds aren't able to be muted. Please add that as an option.
For a rouge-like that is quite hardcore, we love the straightforward game mechanics and design focusing on getting the skill for the game without any over complicated stuff for the looks. That said, we think sometimes there is frustration with the visibility of the character and the difficulty of maneuver that has not gone away after hours of play. The playstyles imo doesnt affect the gameplay too much unless you are a veteran player and we really wish there is some way we can customize our experience more, or to make it easier if we want to.
This is such an amazing game but this game really needs multiplayer mode. It would add more risk to it. Who can survive the most levels, who can finish a certain amount of levels quicker, and co-op. We are sure there are other things you could do. Again, an amazing game, just needs multiplayer.
Love this game. Only complaint is that the bats are so annoying we could pop a blood vessel.
Everything in the game is fantastic, but we love to listen to YouTube videos in picture n picture while we play some games, and Downwell only lets you mute the music and not the annoying loud sound effects. We wish they would add an option to mute the in game sound effects as well as the music instead of just the music.
Super fun game just let us turn off the audio for the game fully its very loud and we cant listen to music and play you can turn off music but not sound affects.
- In all honesty, this game is very fun and hardly gets boring. + When it does we feel like it could have used maybe other modes such as side scroller type levels or something like that. (Its just our opinion but this game is still great.) =One issue though is that the music does stop working even if the music in options is on. Thats the only problem with this game.
This game is almost perfect, except that we cant play music or listen to podcasts while playing. If there was a mute option Id be in heaven.
We love the game a lot, but the precision it seems to require from the player is frustrating at times. We enjoy difficult games, but wow. That being said, if you enjoy a challenge and learning a new game, we bet youll like this. The gameplay is addictive and fun. Just wish there was a slow mode or something.
Cool game please add d pad to mobile or an easier swipe gesture our thumbs hurt.
The game is really fun. Its hard but very simple and thats what youre looking for with a mobile game. The one criticism we have is that there isnt an option to mute the sound effects so if we want to listen to something while we play we have to listen past the very loud gun boots. Let us mute the sound effects.
Its a time waster game its fun. We have two complaints one its very repetitive doing the same thing over and over. And if you delete the game and then later re-download it your game save is gone.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 1.0.72
- Size: 80.35 MB
- iOS: 8.0 or later
- Languages: EN
- Content Advisory: Infrequent/Mild Cartoon or Fantasy Violence
- Developer: Devolver Digital, Inc.
Last updated: 22nd December 2020 | Genre: Action, Casual | Developer: Devolver Digital, Inc.