Guild of Dungeoneering Ultimate Edition

Great game, lots of fun. Being able to practically build your own dungeon and guild hall is a major plus. However every dungeon is basically the same: put down a room, put in monsters/treasure if you have the cards and want to, kill them and get the treasure. Wash, rinse, repeat. It can make the dungeons drag a bit. But it is quite a unique game, having fun with it so far.

Amongst a sea of indie titles cashing in on the kickstarter hype train, draped in overly pixelated “art styles” with a range of ear-bleeding chiptune accompaniments, Guild of Dungeoneering is a delightful breath of fresh air. Playing into standard dungeon crawler mechanics, you send heroes into dungeons where they move about of their own volition, and it's your job to set up rooms, monsters and loot to help said hero progress towards a certain goal. You work with a pool of randomised "cards" that shuffle and redraw every turn, along with another class or equipment based "deck" for the game's own turn-based battle system. In traditional roguelike fashion, when your hero dies, they die for good and nobody’s loot (with the exception of gold for upgrading your guild) carries over after the dungeons. Taking about 10 to 20 minutes to complete, playing dungeons is a nice way to kill time. Although as a result, even with changing monsters and gear, the game can easily get repetitive after long sessions. The art-style is an array of scratchy monotone doodles, resembling old pen and paper games of DnD. It's actually quite cute, and the way the assortment of fantasy trope items equip to your heroes makes for each one to become a unique little fighter as they scour dungeons for gold. And yes, you can rename them all to make fun of your friends. The game is lacking in the SFX department, but the music is as good as you'd expect, and events outside of dungeons are met with a short serenade of a man playing a lute and making a rhyme out of whatever tragedy has currently befallen your guild. Guild of Dungeoneering is a quirky little dungeon crawler that doesn’t take itself seriously, packed with little jokes and glossed with a charming little art of monsters and warriors, it’s a good buy if you’re looking for something to load up before work or as a break from a project.

This dungeon crawler is a little gem : the twist is that instead of controlling the hero, you set the layer of the dungeon, putting rooms, monsters and treasure. At first the game seems very simple, yet your first death will comme very fast. You can unlock multiple classes for your heroes, each one with their strength and weakness. Depending of the dungeon and the type of monsters, some classes are more eficient than other. For example in a dungeon full of magical creature, a physical warrior will have more difficulties to resist attack than a apprentice wizard. This game is a weird crossing between a puzzle game, a strategy game and ... a rogue game. The dungeons aren't random, but the monsters you can encounter, the loots you get totally are, hence this little 'rogue' feeling especially since if you don't draw monsters adapted for your hero and/or weak treasure, you have a good chance to fail even if you don't make mistake. Especially after the first dungeon : The next ones are REALLY unforgiving. This game has a lot of jokes, and the 'drew' graphics blend very well with the them and the atmosphere. If you are hesitating, go on YouTube and watch some let's play. It's the best way for you to know if the game is for you or not.

After playing for quite sometime the game is indeed very fun and addicting but lacks many features. You can't see the stats or decks of characters you are going to buy leading to massive frustration once you do have them and they die nonstop. Most "endgame characters and loot" don't really feel viable in the early stages of fights and are always at a disadvantage. Characters need more reworks to their initial starter decks. A 2000 gold character should feel like a great purchase, not a dissapointment (Holy Knight). Other than this the game has fun level design, repetative fights with some difficult enemies early on in the game. If the game gets more content and expansions I could see myself continuing to play the game for a good long while.