Well Dweller Launches Day One on Xbox Game Pass as Kyle Thompson's Next Metroidvania

Kyle Thompson's Well Dweller is out. The dark fairy-tale metroidvania launched September 22 on Steam, GOG, Nintendo Switch and Switch 2, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S, arriving day one on Xbox Game Pass. It is the third solo metroidvania from Thompson, following Sheepo and the widely praised Crypt Custodian, and it swaps a broom-wielding cat custodian for a matchstick-armed bird trying to save its family from a rotted kingdom.

A Tiny Bird, a Matchstick and a Wicked Queen

Players control Glimmer, a small bird who lives at the bottom of a well beneath a kingdom modeled on classic fairy-tale illustration. According to the game's own pitch, Glimmer is "the only creature brave enough" to challenge the queen who is turning the land's inhabitants into thread for her royal gown, including members of Glimmer's own family. The only weapon on hand is a single lit matchstick, used for both combat and, true to the genre, lighting the way through dark corners the bird's early upgrades can't yet reach.

Along the way Glimmer picks up a small cast of allies: Ilda, a mouse who serves as a camp companion between expeditions, and Looter, a scavenger who tags along on exploration runs. Thompson has described wanting the art to read like storybook illustration rather than typical pixel-art metroidvania fare, a painterly look built with Spine for animation on top of hand-drawn character and environment work.

The Thompson Brothers' Third Metroidvania

Well Dweller is a two-person production in the way Thompson's earlier games were: he handles art, code and design himself, working in GameMaker, a tool he has used since he was a kid, while his brother Eric writes the score. That pairing built Crypt Custodian, which released through publisher Top Hat Studios in 2024 to strong reviews, and the pair are carrying the same working arrangement and publisher into Well Dweller.

Thompson has said the biggest lesson he took from Crypt Custodian was making sure every traversal ability stays useful for the rest of the game rather than being sidelined once its one puzzle type is solved, and that Well Dweller's world was built to feel more lived-in than his previous kingdoms, with recurring characters and locations that respond to the player's progress instead of static backdrops.

Redesigning the Matchstick After the Demo

The version that shipped this week is not quite the one Top Hat Studios first showed at its Spring Showcase demo build. Thompson has said the matchstick originally extinguished whenever Glimmer took damage, a mechanic he found "lopsided" once players got their hands on it and reworked well before launch. Gameplay design, he has said, is consistently the hardest part of finishing one of his games precisely because small combat rules like that one can throw off an entire run if they are not tuned correctly.

That kind of demo-to-launch revision is a recurring feature of how Thompson builds these games: both Islets and Crypt Custodian went through public betas and showcase demos before their full releases, and Well Dweller's own demo has been available on Steam for months ahead of launch, giving the small two-person team time to hear from players before the September 22 release rather than after it.

“Gameplay design is always the hardest part of development since it can be so finicky and you have to make so many different mechanics harmonize.”Kyle Thompson, Developer, Well Dweller

Live Now on Five Platforms, Day One on Game Pass

Well Dweller is priced at $19.99 across storefronts, discounted to $16.99 for its launch week. The Switch 2 version ships with higher-resolution textures over the base Switch build, and the Xbox release supports Play Anywhere alongside its Game Pass day-one slot, meaning subscribers can start the campaign without buying it outright. A free demo remains available on Steam for players who want to try Glimmer's opening hours before committing.

Thompson confirmed the release himself the same day it went live, posting that he was "really proud of this game" and pointing players toward all five storefronts at once rather than favoring any single platform, in keeping with how the game was announced as a simultaneous multiplatform launch from the start.

What's Next for the Kingdom

Neither Thompson nor Top Hat Studios has announced post-launch content plans for Well Dweller, and nothing here should be read as a promise of DLC or a sequel; for now the studio's public messaging is focused entirely on the launch itself. What is confirmed is that the game closes out a run of three metroidvanias built the same way, by a two-person team working directly with one publisher, at a moment when the genre's biggest recent breakout stories have increasingly come from exactly that kind of small crew rather than larger studios.

My dark fairy tale metroidvania, Well Dweller, is OUT NOW!! I'm really proud of this game and I am so excited that it is finally out. You can play Well Dweller on Steam, GoG, Switch 1+2, PS5, and Xbox!

— Kyle Thompson (@KyleThompsonDev) on X