RiZ3R! Posted October 12, 2019 Posted October 12, 2019 INFO Dungeons of Dredmor is a roguelike indie game released on July 13, 2011 by Gaslamp Games. The game features tile-based graphics. A DLC release for the game entitled "Realm of the Diggle Gods" was also released later that year. A second DLC called "You Have To Name The Expansion Pack" was released on June 5, 2012. A third DLC called "Conquest of the Wizardlands" was released on August 1, 2012. The game has extensive support for user created modifications. GAMEPLAY Dungeons of Dredmor is a rogue-like dungeon crawler. You define your character by choosing several skills, then venture into the randomly generated dungeons, defeating enemies, looting, and working your way down through the dungeon's many floors. There are many different skill trees available, covering offensive, defensive and crafting. In terms of weapons, you can specialise in physical weapons such as sword, pole-arms, daggers, crossbows, projectiles (crossbows and thrown weapons), or rely on several types of magical masteries. Other skills include abilities to dodge, block, detect traps and more. The gameplay is turn-based, so when you move a square in the grid-like map, the enemies will then take their turn. This allows you to plan a strategy rather than frantically hammering buttons. The graphics are functional. The basic graphics work for what the game is trying to achieve, but the disappointment is that your character never changes from the boring stock avatar. No matter what type of character you are trying to play as, or what armour you have equipped; he/she is the same. It doesn't affect the gameplay, but it loses that customisation aspect. There are three difficulty levels, with the option of permadeath, so can be played by hardcore RPG fans, or a more casual gamer. You can also have smaller sized floors if you want to experience the game faster, where enemies give more XP to compensate. With a normal-sized dungeon, the game will last several hours which is a bit too long; given the appeal of a game like this is to replay with a different type of character. At first I thought the interface felt a bit fiddly and involved too many clicks to pick up items. In the menu you can configure it so clicking on an item instantly places it in your inventory. Also, you can configure an auto-loot setting so you certain items will be picked up when you walk over them. There's also a lot of items in the game and it can be a bit overwhelming to newcomers to understand how certain items are used, or what all the symbols and stats mean. A lot of the potions and mushrooms you find are either really beneficial, or can really hurt you. This is why I prefer to play without permadeath. You really don't want to be hours in to the game just to die by drinking a potion! There's a lot of humour in the game which can also make the descriptions nonsensical. The enemies have text pop-ups to show what they are saying. These are mainly jokes about RPG games. Graphics aren't much but if you get to play a couple of minutes you'll find that's very addictive roleplaying. I also enjoyed the humor put into this game. If you take the time to read the items description, very originally put. Fighting is turn based like but in a free way. You get the ocasionaly side quests from srhines and you go trough levels like in the First Diablo. Also you got a wide range of iteresting skils to chose from. Music is very good too, not that annoying repetitive tune that goes over and over again. Another point I enjoyed was crafting and smithing you can do plenty of stuff even concoct potions for you or to use on enemies. you gather items like iron steel gold and such that you can use tu forge armor or weapons. This is one of those games that goes under the radar. Roguelikes are not for everybody, but Dungeons of Dredmor breathes some new life to the genre. I've played through this umpteen times on "Rogue" (Hard) difficulty, on Permadeath, and still haven't beat it, refusing to look up any guides apart from what skills actually do. So believe me when I tell you, this game will grab hold of your balls and challenge the ever-loving sh*t out of you. So let's begin with the pros and cons, then I'll go into some deeper aspects of the game. PROS: Immersive, and amazingly so. There's a million ways to play this game, and it will give you *plenty* of opportunity to test out different builds. But, on the other side of the coin, it also gives you plenty of variety in difficulty, with 3 difficulty settings, a permadeath/ironman setting, and a setting to make the floors smaller but grant the same experience. You select each of these every time you make a character. Witty. This game would get the "not as funny as it thinks it is" award if it weren't for the clever use of deadpan references, most of which you'll get, and some of which you'll be like "heh, I got that, bet no one else did." The humor serves as a nice respite from the many servings of pain pudding this game can potentially give you. Really though, while some of the humor falls flat, most of it will make you smirk. Good graphics for its genre. Remember, this is a roguelike, and it's not meant to be flashy, but the sprites are well designed, well animated, effects look good and appropriate for what they do. Music is decent. A couple tracks are reminiscent of Castlevania, while others you might expect to hear in a bar on Tatooine. Some are a mix of both. Either way, while it gets a bit grating sometimes, they're well done and enjoyable for the most part. Similarly, sound effects are satisfying; not much else to say about that. Crafting system. Horrible UI for this. While the game even mocks itself for having an awful, unrefined crafting system, the UI for it is just atrocious. It does, however, get points for being very in-depth. Problem is... Inventory space. I am so damned tired of hearing "your inventory is full" I want to punch the screen sometimes. Fortunately, you get a little "pocket dimension" early on that you can teleport to at any time and store your goods (on the floor). Unfortunately... Bugs, particularly crashes. I'm positive one of them was a memory leak from me storing three inventory's worth of crap in my pocket dimension. The others, well, I dunno, but at least the game auto-saves fairly frequently to compensate. Lack of explanation. This adds to the difficulty, which I partly appreciate, but for the most part it's annoying. Granted, I didn't do the tutorial, but a lot of stuff seems to just go unexplained. Guess I can't say much since I didn't even play the tutorial though. Weak story. Not that this type of game is supposed to have much of a story, though, so I didn't take any points off for that. ----- Overall this game is just plain fun. It'll make you work, but you'll enjoy every minute of it. You'll welcome the torment. This game gets big points for being able to make you laugh and cry, with minimal storytelling involved--that's just from the gameplay. You can make it as easy or as hard as you want on yourself, and you can *definitely* make this game very, very hard. But it leaves it up to you. Dangles the challenge in front of you like so many carrots on a stick. Give it a shot, even if you've never played a game like this, it's all kinds of fun. TRAILER
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