Super Dungeon Run review, by Rick Moscatello

[Doom]

[PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]

Lots of fun…until it isn’t.


It takes a village...to provide enough peasants to loot a dungeon.


It used to be, a computer would run $20 on sale, with $50 being typical. While there are still high-end games, there’s a flood of cheapo games out there. Yes, some of those are golden oldies, well past their prime, but still worth a buck or two based on nostalgia, but what of the newly made games that still sell cheaply?

A low price on a new game has always scared me—is it cheap because of bugs (in which case, at that price, I can’t hope for decent patches)? More likely, it’s cheap because it, well, isn’t very good.

So, I’ve avoided new games with low prices. Super Dungeon Runners, however, actually looked pretty good, and, heck, it’s a $5 game (ok, $4.99 to be more accurate)…how far wrong could I go?

The basic premise pulled me in: you clear a whole dungeon in real time, in a matter of seconds. I like a good dungeon crawl, but sometimes, yeah, I just want to bash monsters, loot some chests, and get out.


Peasant horde reporting for duty!

The dungeon crawl starts fast: you get a number of peasants, fresh down the stairs. A few nearby chests give some early loot. You click on the map where you want your peasants to go—it’s crude, but the peasants will mostly get where you want them to go taking a reasonable path, mostly. After you loot the free chests, it’s time to bash down a door (your troops automatically destroy anything they get near), and it’s off to the rest of the dungeon.

We’ve all played a fantasy RPG where you (and maybe some adventuring buddies) are wandering down the ol’ dungeon corridor, minding your own business, and *bam* a horde of monsters pops out, overwhelming you and your party.

Super Dungeon Run turns that around: monsters are relatively scarce, while adventurers come in groups. Easily the best fun of the game is when your peasants encounter a monster, and bash it from all sides, quickly pounding it into the dirt. As you can guess, combat is simple: everything attacks automatically and most things die very quickly.


Put on a wizard robe, and you're a wizard. Whatever.

Treasure comes in two important forms: gold, and outfits. While you start every game with peasants, you can find outfits in chests, which turn peasants into more useful adventuring classes. It’s a little weird, I admit, but this game is all about quick and dirty. If a staff makes a wizard and a sword makes a knight, then so be it.

You can also find crafting components, used to make enhancements for your peasants (or whatever outfit they’re wearing). This part doesn’t work so well, as finding components is random, and you’ll usually have more than you can ever need.

In addition to monsters and treasure, the next feature of the dungeon is the trap. These dungeons are packed traps, from minor arrow traps to deadly flame traps to even deadly spear traps…you’re going to lose most of your guys to traps.


Woohoo, some of us survived. Let's go down to the next level!

In short order, you come to the end of the dungeon: stairs down. You get a bonus based on time (some levels can be cleared in under 15 seconds), and on killing and looting. You clear level after level until everyone dies (but, somehow, all the gold and whatnot you find is transported back to the surface…except for outfits, you always start the game with just peasants).

Once your party is wiped out, you’re taken to the town screen, where you can buy various improvements with gold and crafting supplies. Your peasants gain levels in the dungeon, but you, the player, also gain experience points through play. You can spend these points for various upgrades (eg, a larger starting horde of peasants, or better quality peasants).

Overall, this is a fun game, at least for an hour or two. Past that, well, you’ll have seen all there is to see, there’s only so much depth you can have in a dungeon game where dungeons take seconds to clear. Considering the price of a movie ticket, this $5 game is a better deal than going to a theatre, which I suppose is the best you can hope for, and certainly more than I expected.