You descend down the hall slowly and carefully. This room seems empty, for now. You prep your crossbow, however, just to be safe. Carefully avoiding the arrow trap nearby, you open the set of wooden doors in front of you. Suddenly, a horde of bats appears! Luckily, you’ve fought monsters like these before, so you pick them off one by one, not missing a shot. As the last of them drops to the ground, something else catches your eye- a simple chest, sitting by its lonesome. Bashing it open, you are overcome with joy upon discovering what’s inside- a pair of parachute pants! Not only will they improve your dodging greatly, but they’ll also go great with your rocket boots and magical sombrero. If anything, at least you’ll go out in style.
Dungeons of Dredmor is a cheap PC game released in the middle of last year. I, however, acquired the game in December, thanks to the digital distribution service Steam’s annual winter sale (which is an event worthy of its own post on this blog). Now, I’ll admit, this purchase was a textbook example of an impulse buy: I knew very little about the game beforehand, and the game’s price was probably the main reason I bought it at the time. But after playing it for over two months now, I can safely say that I have no regrets buying this game.
Dungeons of Dredmor is a game in the “roguelike” genre. This genre is a subset of the RPG and dungeon crawler genres, characterized by procedurally generated maps (in other words, rooms, enemies and other dungeon features are randomized each playthrough), turn-based movement and combat, oodles and oodles of loot, and permadeath. If you’re not familiar with the concept of permadeath in video games, it’s pretty much what it sounds like- once your character dies, they are truly dead. Their associated save file is deleted, and in order to play again you must begin anew, with a fresh character. Although this may seem harsh, it actually works, at least for Dungeons of Dredmor- since the map changes with each new character, you still get a unique experience. Plus, the permadeath gives a great sense of progression to players: starting out, you will probably die fairly often in the earlier stages of the game, but as you play more and learn from your past mistakes you will be able to get through more and more of the game with each playthrough, until you finally achieve the game’s main goal, which, for me at least, was a highly gratifying moment. But if you still feel unsure about permadeath, don’t worry- you can turn off this mechanic in Dungeons of Dredmor if you so desire.
Now, the main goal of Dungeons of Dredmor is simple enough: descend down ten floors of a dungeon and defeat the evil Lord Dredmor in the last floor. The floors themselves are riddled with enemies and traps, and each successive floor is more challenging than the one that preceded it. Fortunately, you have many different ways to tackle these obstacles. You can choose to attack everything in close combat, using melee weapons and heavy armor to brute force your way through the dungeon. Or you can choose to be a cunning wizard, trained in various different types of magic. Or you can choose to be a sneaky rogue, dodging enemies and using ranged weapons to kill them from afar. Alternatively, you could be a combination of the three, or even none of the above, if you’re the experimental type. It all depends on what skills you use.
 |
| Suddenly, mustaches. |
Skills are the backbone of your character. When you start a new game, you are presented with an illustrated list of the game’s skills, of which you pick seven. Some skills are straightforward- sword proficiency, enhanced perception, the ability to regenerate mana more quickly, etc. On the other hand, there exist such skills as Vampirism and Mathemagic (the magic of math, in case that wasn’t obvious). These skills all have associated skill trees, which include various different types of powers. These powers include both permanent and temporary stat buffs, spells, and various special abilities. For example, the last power in the Perception skill tree gives you the ability to use eye lasers every once in a while, which can set enemies on fire. Because at that point your eyesight is so good, it’s deadly. You get one starting power from each skill at the beginning of the game; additional powers are chosen once you level up, which occurs once you have accrued a certain amount of experience from killing enemies and disarming traps. Of course, you can only pick one power to gain at a time, so choose wisely. Eventually, you’ll have a slew of different spells and/or abilities at your disposal (spells require mana; abilities have a cooldown time) which you can use in combination with whatever weapons you have equipped in order to handle large groups of enemies with relative ease. Finding the most effective combo of attacks with your current character is all part of the fun.
As you may have noticed, this game has charm- a whole lot of it, in fact. Humor abounds in this game. Items have names such as “The Poncho with No Name” or “The Tome of Too Much Information” (the latter of which allows you to deal existential-type damage). The RPG genre is often satirized throughout- for example, side quests are attained by praying to The Goddess of Inconsequentia. All items, powers and enemies have humorous descriptions, and enemies frequently spout out insults or other lines of dialogue at you while fighting. Mana is restored by drinking booze, and destroying one of the many statues of Lord Dredmor littered around the dungeon will cause a gruff voice to yell “HEROIC VANDALISM!” But don’t think that this game is totally wacky and over-the-top with its humor- the jokes and references are subtle enough that they do not make you tire of them, instead providing the occasional comic relief as you struggle to survive on a particularly challenging floor. Also, this charm carries over to its art style, with beautiful hand-drawn sprites and wonderfully-animated enemies. Some of the enemies’ death animations in particular are so sad, you almost feel sorry for them. But then you remember that a similar enemy almost killed you not so long ago, so all sympathy goes out the window.
 |
| Case in point. |
Now, it is true that Dungeons of Dredmor can get pretty buggy at times. I’ve learned to save frequently, as the game crashed on me quite often. Also, there can be some odd glitches, such as enemies getting stuck in walls or certain buffs from items not immediately appearing when you equip them. But I can forgive the game for this, and not just because it was developed by a small developer nor that it is rather inexpensive (only $5). The fact is that this game has provided me with so many quality hours of gameplay (the exact count is 102 at the time of writing, according to my Steam stats), presenting a surprisingly strategic challenge without being overly serious. There’s more I could say about this game, specifically the various special features of the dungeon that show up now and then, but part of the enjoyment I had with this game was discovering that stuff by myself. So if you’re a fan of dungeon crawlers, I would highly recommend that you check this game out; and if you aren’t, I strongly suggest that you check it out anyway, as it deserves all the attention it can get.
One final note: if you want even more Dungeons of Dredmor, an expansion was released late last year, called Realm of the Diggle Gods. It adds more skills, items, and enemies, and expands the number of floors in the dungeon from 10 to 15. It too is also quite cheap, so don’t hesitate to check it out as well.
In another castle dungeon,
-[Witty SciFi Pun]
The Red Shirt Crew Blog and Podcast Network 