Guild of Dungeoneering Ultimate Edition

It´s quirky, funny, interesting, a breath of fresh air .. for the first hour. Then you get out of the somewhat balanced starter dungeon and the RNG keeps killing you over and over and over and over again. I gave up on this maldesinged mess after 5 hours of suffering. Worst 8.5€ I EVER spent.

If you ever played a tabletop game called Munchkin, this one seems to feel just like it. I absolutely the game's visuals, and I appreciate that the author went for a hand-drawn style instead of pixels all around. Also narrator talking in limerics and mocking characters' deaths is nice to listen to. I couldn't give it 5 stars for a single reason, and that's gameplay being a little lacking and randomness dependant. The system of character choosing its own actions could be interesting, were it not so shallow and easy to control, as the character just goes towards the monster that's closest in level to him, else goes to the biggest pile of treasure he sees. Both of which are exactly the things you want him to go to 99% of the time, so, basically, you have no need to bother with character's actions, as they are very predictable. What isn't predictable, however, is what tools you are offered to make a dungeon, especially the shape of corridors, which might lead to very long time until you finally get the piece you need to finish the quest (for instance, any corridor leading up), and sometimes outright cause you to lose (in case there is a turn limit or a boss chasing you). Also, some desing features seem useless. Say, there is a screen where you manage your guild. You can buy the rooms for it, that give specific bonuses, and then you get to position the room. And it makes absolutely no difference where you position them. Moreover, once you built them, almost all the rooms are non-interactive (graveyard being an exception), so you have a map of guild where you can do absolutely nothing meaningful, except to press the "upgrades" or "go exploring" buttons at the bottom of the screen. It just seems like a huge waste of time that was, perhaps, meant to be something useful, but didn't make it into the game.

I got the game lured by the graphics & the song in the trailer. Even now I catch myself thinking: “It’s the best thing in the game”—and that’s not good news. The game’s mechanic is simple and easy to grasp, but it misses the main purpose of any dungeon crawl: getting your character to level up and face more and more powerful monsters in the endless quest for treasures. The dungeons are limited in various ways: you might be able to only kill three monsters, spend there a certain amount of turns or collect certain loot. So if you’re dreaming of ADOM-like experience of endless dungeons and mowing your way through countless enemies until you die… well, dream on. Fighting the monsters is a card game, and your deck depends on your character’s class and the equipment you loot. It’s very entertaining and a lot of fun. Too bad that whenever you enter a dungeon, you start from scratch… It definitely misses the fun and satisfaction of slowly building a perfect deck while exploring a dungeon. Don't get used to the characters. They die a lot. And I do mean: A LOT. Mostly because of random card draws. On top of that, when you place the dungeon tiles and monsters, you don’t control which way you go and sometimes the character heads exactly the "wrong" direction, randomly traveling 1 or 2 tiles (if there’s a monster or a treasure, it's 1, but if the room is empty, it might be 1 or 2). So what kept me going back to the game? The music (the songs are fun enough, though they do get a bit repetitive), the graphics, and the light game play. I played it when I needed a break, but part of me wished I could build my own, complex dungeons, fill them with monsters and treasures, and then embark on hours-long quest to defeat them all. Oh well, instead I got some work done, so that’s good, right? If you’re in the mood for something fun and light (and relatively short) get it, but otherwise I’d reconsider. Sure, I enjoyed it when I played it—but it’s not a game I’m ever going to come back to.

This reminded me a lot of Desktop Dungeons - the gameplay is quite different (more of a deck-builder combat game along the lines of, say, Deep Sky Derelicts) but it has the same tongue-in-cheek rpg dungeon crawler-themed vibe while remaining a puzzle game at heart. You'll probably beat it in about 10-15 hours but each dungeon run is short so it provides a nice 'coffee break' kind of experience. You send your little adventurer dude into dungeons which you then populate with rooms, loot and monsters; the adventurer moves somewhat randomly through the dungeon (but seeking out loot and monsters of their level so it is usually easy to predict/control where he'll go.) The core of the game is the combat - which is card-based but not too random because both your dude and the monster tend to have a small hand of cards making for a fairly predictable experience once you get used to the monsters' "decks." Beating monsters gets you loot (more/better cards) and level-ups (more HP) and there is a tactical side to each dungeon in building up your deck/level before facing the dungeon boss. Picking the right 'class' of adventurer for each dungeon is important as they have quite different decks and do better against certain kinds of foes. Like all these kinds of games, you'll die a fair bit early on (many of the 1-star reviews clearly gave up at this stage) but death doesn't really cost you anything and with a bit of persistence you figure out the winning strategies and then the game is actually, if anything, a bit too easy down the stretch. There is some replay value (trying out different classes, etc.) but I'd kind of had enough after beating it once. A good 'casual' game if you don't mind the difficulty curve - recommended!

The first time I installed it I got bored quickly and uninstalled. But I tried again a year later, and have just completed it. It's a lot better than I realised! I came to really enjoy the simple mechanics, especially because there's a bit more depth than I realised - I reached a point where I couldn't seem to survive the harder dungeons. However, I started thinking more tactically, looking at upgrade paths, creating strategies like money loops with fountain branch-offs so that I would only power up at the good ones, examining characters and realising some had more health than others, weakening enemies with dead ends and lots of tiles around them ... and suddenly I was able to crack the hard levels and complete the game. So there is some challenge in there, and it is satisfying to overcome. I've decided this is a keeper. :-)