Review of dungeons and tombstones - please, sir, then

At least with regard to Roguelike dungeon exploration robots, there are some types of players: those who come out of their holes impatiently like meadow dogs by a hot summer day, sniffing the last game, and those who go looking for the nearest. Chalkboard and a pair of sharp nails, preferring this torture at the dead end-and-restart loop of a Roguelike. As we have had a new retro-pixel art-dungeon rampant-roguelike, fans of the genre will want to look at Dungeon and Gravestone of the Japanese Web Developer and Wonderland Kazakiri.

Now on Xbox One, Xbox One X | S, Switch, PS4, PS5 and PC, Dungeon and Gravestone appeared first on IOS as Dungeon de_stroll in 2016. It took five years to nail the new conjunction (I think I would have chosen Dungeon _à gravestone But I'm not a developer) although the game is essentially the same product as on mobile. You play a newly resurrected death, choose a body shape and dive into the underground dungeon to the disturbing appearance north of the city in search of treasures and monsters to kill. You die and start again, rinse and repeat, either taking advantage of the familiarity of the day of the marmot, or wishing a gentle release of your endless karmic situation.

Those who consult their well-worn copies of the Roguelikes Field Guide will note some distinctive features with Dungeon and Gravestone: Death means a restart in the city (itself generated randomly), any treasure picked up during a race is lost to death , and the level increases is distributed between the character levels, which restart each descent into the dungeon, and various improvements in statistics and inventory, related to the experience and which are permanent. More deeply in the dungeon, the treasure and the challenges become bigger, with environmental hazards, traps and finally boss monsters added to the mixture. From time to time, players can teleport to a hidden and heavy bonus level and the chance to get a special reward and every five levels, players can choose to return to town, preserving their booty. Of course, it's a risk-reward proposal because it means restarting from the top of the dungeon next time.

The Roguelikes present themselves in many flavors and forms, and can go brutally ruthlessly distinguished. For several reasons, Dungeon and Gravestone leans to the first. There is literally no tutorial or instruction and the player will have to discover the mechanisms of the game more or less by testing and errors. To be honest, the fans of the genre will recognize the mechanisms and the familiar tropes of other games and the bases are quite simple, but more subtle things, like the game upgrade system or even the statistics icons are never explained. Nobody suggests a long tutorial hours before the opening card finally appears, but some elements of Dungeon and Gravestone are not welcoming and some unintentional or uninformed early choices can have a long-term impact on success.

Dungeon and Gravestone is not a retro pixel-art game, but rather has an isometric voxel art style similar to Minecraft with a little inclination effect in the central city. The nature en bloc of environments, monsters and characters certainly removes some of the sadness to what could be dark, but there is so little detail in the block monsters that it is often difficult to read their face and Blocking their attacks, and sometimes the angle of the isometric view blocks important elements or environmental elements. Although there is an optional ceiling camera angle, it is limited utility. As we talk about the aesthetics of the game, it is necessary to mention the chiptune-style musical partition of Dungeon and Gravestone, pleasantly oblivable in the city but incredibly repetitive in the dungeons themselves. Turning off music is a necessity to save the reason, but this exposes what remains: a fairly minimal range of environmental sounds.

A bit like a rpm in turn, the movement in Dungeon and Gravestone is on a grid / square system. Although the fight is in real time, the movement for the monsters and the person's character is done on rectilinear paths and even after many hours of play, the imprecise nature of the movement and especially, the difficulty in positioning the person's character For the fight remained the biggest inconvenience of the game, resulting in countless dead, missed treasures and unintended unintended progression towards a deeper level of the dungeon.

Dungeon and Gravestone would suggest that the solution to motion-related frustrations and confrontation slows down, but then contradicted its own argument with a constant decrease blood counter (think of the bleeding mechanism in Dark Souls). Blood puddles or limited consumables refreshing blood supply at various locations, but stay still or moving too deliberately is just as dangerous and frustrating as trying to rush through the levels. Like those of so many of his brothers in the genre, the levels of Dungeon and Gravestone are generated procedurally and this translates into pretty random environments with the first almost empty levels or the potential for reappearance in a new level directly next door. to a monster.

With its look close to Legos, its modest levels and fast loading times on current consoles, Dungeon and Gravestone has an addictive appeal but finally not to provide anything new to a very crowded genre. There is certainly depth, both in the options for progression of the characters, in things to find and fight, and in the dozens of dungeon levels and hidden areas. The Buzzkill for me was not the loop of Rogue-Like expected and familiar, but the frustrating mechanics of movement, the need to replay the first levels without inspiration and stripped again and again, and the slow progress towards the construction of A reasonably powerful character. Dungeon and Gravestone will scrape the followers of the genre, but I suspect that those who do not have a lot of patience will bounce pretty quickly.

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