The Dungeon Of Naheulbeuk: The Amulet Of Chaos

The game is great on one condition: You spend all your points in Agility. Don't even bother with anything else. If i remember currectly, it determines your chance to hit AND dodge. So why wouldn't you want all your shots to hit and all the AI shots to miss? If you try any other build, you are in for a brutal experience, and I mean you will be in a room with 60 enemies and you will miss 9/10 and get hit 11/10. Stand together as a group? You're screwed, split to avoid AOE? You're screwed. Put the wizard in front? Back? Middle? Doesn't matter, you will be screwed either way. And then, you decide to heed my advice. You go to the bartender and buy a potion to let you re-level your heroes. You put EVERYTHING into Agility. And now, what do you know, the AI is missing everything and you are hitting always. Anyway.. i don't remember seeing bugs, Graphics are nice, I wish there were more secrets and missions, it is pretty linear. Funny, depends on the humor you enjoy. Battles are fun if you build currectly, as I mentioned. It is a fun game, don't expect Divinity Original Sin or anything, don't get carried away. Keep your expectations in the right place and you'll be fine. I have it on Steam, in case it says I don't own the game :)

Before being a dungeon wandering RPG, Naheulbeuk is a transmedia adventure starting as a tabletop RPG, doubled with a delightful audio adventure, several novels, and a rock band. All the media have one thing in common: they decontruct the RPG tropes with a trucculent humor while following a bizarre, yet very typical group of adventurers. This new media is true to Naheulbeuk spirit. The tropes are there such as the tavern, the side quests, the typical adventurers, the unforgiving combat (that's the adventurer life), the cooperative managing the dungeon after the previous owner did not read the TOS, etc. As DM in Naheulbeuk tabletop RPG, i love the i-game rule system, complicated but true to itself with many choices that make an excellent strategy turn-by-turn game. Combat are challenging and i like that. The french dialogues are excellent with many guests voice actors and we can finally explorer the legendary dungeon that made the saga a success. The english voices are more serious and the translation is less funny that the French one but I guess the public is different (my kids play in English for language reasons, I play in French). One thing I regret is the camera mouvement that could be smoother and the kind of POV that is both very intersting but not really used to its full potential All in all, a good, not expensive fantasy game, 8/10

the game mecanics are very classic isometric dungeon crawler, with simplified rules. (reading all the rules is helpfull but not needed - about 20mn of reading, not mandatory, but recommended, plus it's hilariously written) The visuals are fun, any piece of equipment you equip will modify your character's look nothing fancy, Art style and direction is comic like. THE WRITING IS AMAZING i cannot stress enough how good the writing is: witty, funny, offbeat, goofy, and overall hilarious. The voice actors (at least in french and english) are *also* hilarious. If you enjoy dungeon crawling, Divinit of Sin-like and wanna try a different beat you really should give yourself the opportunity to try this. === the main writer is a hugely well known dungeon master and writer in his country, very well known in the DnD player circles. He has many books under his belt, all hilarious (i have them all) === i cannot insist enough on how good the writing is. === if you don't like reading all the little descriptions and notes, you will still get lots of laughs just from the dialogues, but you will be missing some good jokes, puns, and laughs. === did I mention how funny this game is? === without taking into account the writing, the game is a solid 4/5 stars. taking the writing into account, the game is 6/5 stars. === another reviewer (NamelessCommander) wrote this: Before being a dungeon wandering RPG, Naheulbeuk is a transmedia adventure starting as a tabletop RPG, doubled with a delightful audio adventure, several novels, and a rock band. All the media have one thing in common: they decontruct the RPG tropes with a trucculent humor while following a bizarre, yet very typical group of adventurers. and i wholeheartly concur. ===

This game is what French speaking millenials have been waiting for since their teenagehood. The audio fiction 'Donjon de Naheulbeuk' is a huge reference for all the nerds of our generation, so I might not be the most objective. But for me, this adaptation is a huge success. Game-design (4.5/5): the fights can be as gritty as old-school TTRPGs if you like it (or lower the difficulty if you prefer something less punitive). The numerous organic combo options, interaction with the environment and character options let you approach them as you feel, and offer some replayability. It might not give the same feeling of freedom as a DOS, but they do not appear as puzzle-like as some other modern TRPGs (Langrisser Mobile, I look at you). Level design (4,5/5): The battle maps are easily understandable but still giving you surprises so you need to adapt you plan. The destructible terrain gives many tactical options. The exploration maps are giving some metroidvania feeling without having to run everywhere all the time. The atmosphere is amazing. UI (4/5): I would have enjoy a larger UI, a few more keyboard short cuts (maybe I didn't find them) and a bit more control on the camera. But all the character options, stats, gear, ennemies, are very well explained: mechanics are synthetic, flavor text is amazing. The menus are very easy to access and everything is where you need it to be. (Side note: the game could be a bit smoother with better optimization, but for a TRPG it's no big deal) Narrative design (5/5): as a fan of the original audio serie, it's hard for me to be objective. But I feel that the hints and hooks are well made. The humor is... a very subjective topic, but as a RPG and TTRPG player, I love it. Actually, the game is so well written and dubbed in French that I am really curious to see how they localised it in English! Conclusion: a big shout-out to Pen of Chaos for the realisation of this project!