Review: Dungeons of Dredmor
Dungeons of Dredmor is a “roguelike” turn-based dungeon crawler from indie developer Gaslamp Games. It features interesting character development and no frills monster crushing/loot collecting, while maintaining a light sense of humor. There are some uneven qualities to the game, such as the repetition as you progress further and further in the dungeon, but there’s enough value to meet the $5 asking price. While it won’t blow anyone away, it should provide some fun on a lazy afternoon.
While I’m told that Dungeons of Dredmor is relatively tame for a roguelike RPG, players unfamiliar with the genre will find the game’s difficulty fairly punishing. By default it features permanent death, though you do have the option to disable this (though I wouldn’t recommend this). The first few times you play, you will likely die on level 1 or 2 as you try to get your head around how to play the game. While there’s a tutorial that will teach you the basics, there are some things you’ll only learn through trial and error.
The "Monster Zoo" segments really put your character to the test.
The most challenging parts of the game are the aptly named “Monster Zoos.” Starting with the second level, there will be one room which is literally full of enemies, up to 100 in count. Since you never know for sure which door will lead to a zoo, you will learn to become cautious while scouting around for it. There are a few different strategies you can employ; either you spam area effect spells or items, or you run and try to kill the enemies in a single file line. In either case, you likely will spend most of your consumables at each of these zoos. It also requires you to design your character in a way such that they can withstand the zoos.
Building your character in Dungeons of Dredmor doesn’t involve selecting a class archetype; rather the character progression is entirely driven by skills. These skills range from mundane (such as different types of weapon mastery) to the unique (vampirism). When you create your character, you are required to select 7 out of the 34 total skills. Then as you level up in game, you can choose to upgrade a particular skill, but never add a new one. Some skills have only 2 or 3 upgrades, while others have 5 or 6.
With 34 different skills to choose from, there certainly are a lot of combinations.
While it is possible to build a character who’s a jack-of-all-trades, the difficulty of the game really encourages you to pick skills that synergize well. Most viable character builds will likely involve 4-5 combat skills, with the remaining slots being used on valuable support skills. For example, if you’re focusing on weapon combat, having blacksmithing is immensely useful. On the other hand, nearly every character build benefits from burglary, which gives you some great escape routes in addition to unlimited lockpicks. However, you can definitely build your character any way you want, and that is an admirable quality for an RPG.
When you first build a character, you also will be amused by the names of some of these skills. For example, one of the skills, archaeology, has the description “You start the game with a fedora and are generally dashing and roguish.” One of the spells you can learn as an archaeologist is named “It Belongs in a Museum” and another (very useful) skill which allows you to reroll stats on rare items is called “This Translation is All Wrong.” This sort of light humor pervades the game with its text descriptions of monsters and items, as well. Even some of the main stats and damage types join in on the fun with names like “Caddishness” and “Asphyxiating.” It won’t really ever make you laugh out loud, but it may make you smile, which is probably what the developers at Gaslamp Games were going for.
The latter half of the game starts to drag on a bit too much.
The primary drawback of Dungeons of Dredmor is that once you get over the initial difficulty hump, the game feels slow and repetitive. By the time you’ve made it half way through the game’s ten dungeon levels, the only thing it challenges is your patience. Regardless of your build, you will have to be extraordinarily methodical as you slowly clear through all of the monsters on a given level. If you become impatient and reckless, you’ll die and end your game. This is especially true of the “Arch Diggle” monsters on the final level, which can take out even the buffest melee character in a couple of swings.
Some might argue that the tension of permanent death would be enough to keep you on your toes throughout the game. But because everything is turn-based, there really is very little tension as you advance further and further through the game. If you’ve gotten that far, you probably have chosen at least one escape skill that can get you out of nearly any bad situation. So in many of these latter cases, you will look at your health bar in comparison to an opponent’s, and decide if it’s worth the risk. In almost all cases, the superior strategy is to run. But it’s up to you whether or not you’ll have the willpower to always run, or if you’ll become reckless as the game wears on (as I did).
Even the monster names strive to amuse in Dungeons of Dredmor.
Like many indie games, there are also some rough edges. In many cases, the interface definitely could have been more streamlined. For instance, if you want to craft an item when you don’t remember the recipe, you have to go through several steps. First you open the correct crafting tool (eg., anvil for blacksmithing), then click on the recipe book button, then select the recipe, close the recipe book, then click autofill, then click craft. A much simpler design would have combined the recipe book and crafting tool in one window, and have you simply select a recipe and click craft.
But perhaps more glaring is the poor balancing, especially in the latter parts of the game. For example, level 8 is far easier than level 7, simply because one of the enemies on level 7 is relatively overpowered. And the aforementioned “Arch Diggles” on the final level are so far and beyond more powerful than any other creature in the entire game that they’re begging to be fixed in a patch. But worst of all is that the final boss of the game is essentially unkillable in melee range. You have to root and attack from range, or you’re dead.
This is definitely not a game for everyone. On one hand, there essentially is no story at all, so it’s not going to draw in gamers who love rich RPG storytelling. On the other hand, most gamers who enjoy hack-and-slash games such as Diablo or Torchlight probably will be turned off by the slow and methodical turn-based combat. Top it off with permadeath, and it’s definitely very much a niche title.
But in spite of my complaints, there certainly is something addictive about Dungeons of Dredmor. Maybe it’s the loot whore trapped deep inside of me, but I stayed up late several nights in a row on my 25-something hour quest to beat the game. And that has to count for something.
VERDICT: HAPPY CANARY
Dungeons of Dredmor is available now on PC. Reviews appear every Friday on Game Canary. The Game Canary review system is detailed here.
Next week, I’ll review the highly-anticipated Deus Ex: Human Revolution.
Categories: Reviews
Tags: Dungeons of Dredmor, Happy Canaries, PC
So do you think Dredmor is faithful to the roguelike genre or did they make concessions for the modern gamer? Regardless it sounds like a future addiction for me.
Rate:
+1
I definitely think there is some effort to make it more approachable for modern gamers; it’s definitely not as complex as a game like Nethack. But at the same time it’s complex enough that even as an experienced RPG gamer it took me some time to figure out how to exactly approach the game. And there is enough build variety that you can certainly challenge yourself to try to win in different ways.
Rate:
0