Dungreed

I feel a bit hesitant to review a game that's still being updated, but in the end that's the risk that developers take if they release a game that's unfinished. None of my complaints are about bugs anyway.

But before I get into my complaints, let's start at the beginning. Dungreed is a side-scrolling platformer rogue-like. So, for those who might not know what that means it's basically like those old Mario games. Except in this case it's also a rogue-like, so death restarts you and each time you play the layout is different. It calls itself “inspired by Rogue Legacy”, which is also a side-scrolling platformer rogue-like, and the resemblance is noticeable. They even have a similar pixel art style. It is different enough to be it's own beast though.

In Dungreed you play as a wandering adventurer, who is helping a town where a random dungeon popped out of the ground and sucked all the people into it. The lower you go, the more villagers you rescue, and they can each help you when you're back in town. The first one is the only one that's really important though, the one that trains you and allocates your skill points. The rest of them don't meaningfully add anything to the game, which is a shame.

Also a shame is the training that you do. It has five different aspects you can level up: Strength, Agility, Defence, Mysticality and Greed (I think that's correct, don't quote me). Unfortunately, I got to level 30 maxing out defence and greed. But at level 30 it won't let you level up any more. That's when I went online and discovered that apparently there is only one build (that is, how you “build” your character with stats) that you can actually win the game with, and that's Agility. Now, that doesn't mean all my time was wasted, as you can re-allocate your skills with no issue. But it undermines the whole concept of having different skills you can level up if only one of them is actually usable. You may as well cut out the illusion of choice altogether and make levelling up an automatic affair.

So that was the point that I gave up on the game. I was about 19 hours into the game when I found out my whole playstyle was wrong. If there'd been enough else going on I might have stuck around, learned the “right” way to play, and actually finished the game. But the game feels...a bit empty? A bit shallow? I feel confident that I'm not missing out on much by giving up at this point.

My verdict, it's okay but not special. I think Rogue Legacy does a better job of everything this game tries to do. Uh, good points are the graphics are quite cute. I'd never seen a lizard-man in a hoodie before, and that was cool. But in the end I give this 2/5 stars. Not worth your time/money.