Dungeonmans review, by Rick Moscatello

So good I can’t finish it.



Roguelikes have perhaps the oldest history of all computer game genres, being among the very first games played on the computer. The first types of these games were lean on graphics—ASCII graphics, and they don’t make ‘em like that anymore. There have been a few variations on roguelikes over the last 35 years—not many games go that far back!--but roguelike games of today have one important game feature in common.

The one deciding feature of a roguelike? Perma-death. When your character dies in a “true” roguelike, your character is dead. There’s no “load a save game” in a proper roguelike, and you’re definitely not going to respawn in 10 seconds.

Because of this feature, roguelikes are only barely role playing games. Yes, your character gains levels and gets better equipment (hopefully), but your character is expected to die, quickly…hardly worth naming, even, and roguelikes generally don’t have much in the way of other characters in the world to interact with (other than to kill, quickly).

Dungeonmans is a roguelike that manages to add much to the genre, while still keeping the all-important perma-death feature. While at its heart, this is a dungeon-crawling game, there’s more, much more, that makes this stand well above the many other roguelikes around.


It starts small, but gets bigger and bigger as you die.

The most important new feature is the Dungeonmans Academy. As your character adventures, he brings back resources to the Academy. While generally these resources don’t do the character much good, after he dies (and, yeah, he’ll die), the next character will get to take advantage of the predecessor’s efforts. Improving the alchemy lab will allow potions to be identified automatically. Improving the library will eventually yield bonus spell books. Bringing metals, blueprints, and weapons to the blacksmith will allow better equipment (generally weapons) for your future character.

You can pick a character class when you create your character, but the classes don’t mean much. Character development is all about the skills your character has, there really isn’t a “class” system here beyond the name. A character with the heavy armor skills, and wizard spell skills, can cast wizard spells in armor, for example. You can pick a “Ranger” class that starts with bow skills, if it pleases you…but eventually you’ll just pick the generic “Dungeonmans” class which gives you 5 skill points to spend as you choose.

There are numerous skill trees for your character, or perhaps “skill blades of grass” might be a more fair description. Beyond the very basic skills, you can, for example, learn only 3 skills in each blade. These skills scale with level, however, so it works well enough. There are also plenty of blades here. In addition to the tried-and-true 1 handed weapons, 2 handed weapons, shields, armor (three types), fire/ice spells, archery, and dual weapon use, there are also relatively unique (to this game) skills like three “southern gentleman” blades with various effects, and you can eventually open up “master’s programs” of even more awesome skills. There are plenty of skills here, and it seems like all are equally awesome in their own way (except for fire/ice, but it’s possible I just suck).

Your character can even retire, and become a teacher at the academy, providing bonus skills to future characters. Alternatively, if he (or she, there are “lady dungeonmans” here) gets to high enough level, when he dies he’ll come back as a ghost teacher, for much the same effect.

In short, playing this game isn’t just another conga-line of death like most roguelikes, you’re steadily making progress.


Outdoor battles can be rough until you get the right skills.

The game world is far more involved than most roguelikes—there are towns out there, bring them resources and they’ll build a statue to your character after he dies. There are dungeons, lots of them, as well as graveyards, towers, ruined castles, and other places to explore. If the world gets “old,” you can even generate a new world if you want a different sequence of dungeons to explore.

As you clear dungeons, you learn about the monsters—bring that information back to the academy, and future characters will have an easier time with the monsters. Similarly, artifacts brought back to the academy can give future characters a head start on equipment. As you defeat champion monsters, you bring back “proofs of stremf” back to the academy, getting a boost to stats for yourself, and boosts to all future characters.

Eventually, your characters start so powerful that the early dungeons are mere grinds—the game lets you “autoclear” trivial dungeons, getting the loot without having to waste the time actually fighting everything.

There’s also a humor element; it’s tough to make humor work in games, a joke just can’t stay fresh for the 1000th telling in an hour. That said, there’s a chuckle or two here, and the text is easy enough to ignore that the stale jokes don’t get in the way of the fun of getting another character killed.


So many deaths...I tried to win, honest.

There is an ultimate quest for the game (I think), but I’ve yet to beat this game, and I’ve beaten most every roguelike worth playing. I’m close though, but the bottom line, this is best roguelike I’ve played in years. The closest competitor is Dungeons of Dredmor (which was pretty good until they made killing the big bad guy at the end a miserable drag), but the persistent world, and heck, the fact that there IS a world, puts Dungeonmans over the top, and well worth the price of admission.