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.
