IG:Desktop Dungeons

Indie Grind:
Today I'm rolling out The Indie Grind, a column focused on bringing attention to interesting indie games floating around the internet. This week: Desktop Dungeons.

It may not look like it, but this guy is in deep trouble.

Admit it, you've stood in the freezer aisle of the grocery store looking down a line of microwaveable dinners in search of a quick, easy meal with low expectations for substance and even lower expectations for taste. At home, you pull a warm, flimsy plastic bowl out of the microwave and tell your brain to shut down as many taste buds as it can. You take a bite, and believe it or not, you like it, no, love it, so much so it becomes a staple of your diet. That is essentially the experience I've had with Desktop Dungeons, a puzzle/RPG for the PC. Desktop Dungeons condenses the experience of a multi-hour dungeon crawl into a 5-15 minute session. What makes Desktop Dungeons interesting is how the game blends the quick pick-and-play experience of a puzzle game with the all the level grinding and resource management you associate with RPGs.

     Desktop Dungeons essentially plays out like a minesweeper RPG. The player moves around a dungeon revealing new tiles containing enemies, treasures, spells, and altars of gods, all with the aim of leveling up to defeat the dungeon boss. The dungeons and it's contents are randomly generated so the goal is less about conquering a specific dungeon and more about learning to make the best with what you're given. Every tile of the dungeon you uncover recovers a few points of health and mana, properly managing between exploration, recovery, and battle is essential for defeating the dungeon boss(es). I can say with certainty that you will die, a lot, but to use the motto frequently uttered by Dwarf Fortress fanatics, “Losing is fun”. Fortunately, DD offers a selection of races and character classes, all of which have dramatically different play styles so there are plenty of opportunities for victory. On top of the satisfaction that comes from clearing the dungeon, the game provides plenty of classes and dungeons to unlock. Every victory unlocks a new class to play and a new enemy that randomly generates in the dungeon, which ensures the next visit to the dungeon will be a bit harder than the first. 

A quick disclaimer: this write up is based on the free alpha version available on the Desktop Dungeons website, currently the game is in beta for those willing to pony up $10. After playing both versions I recommend checking out the alpha version. The beta adds some interesting folds to Desktop Dungeons, but at a cost. The beta version adds a persistent items and an over-world to explore, but you can only play with an active internet connection and the new art style pales compared to the 8-bit pixel art of the alpha version. Ultimately, Desktop Dungeons boils down to a 5-10 minute dungeon crawl, and the alpha version does that perfectly.

-Edward