Quest of Dungeons Review (PC)

Quest of Dungeons is yet another entry in the seemingly unending series of indie roguelike games that have been popping out lately, made by the video game industry equivalent of a one-man-show, a single developer named David Amador.

Although the pixelated appeal to nostalgia and the ease of making a roguelike game is drawing indie developers like moths to a flame, not all of them crash and burn, and some have even shown that they can offer worthwhile experiences in such a modest packaging.

As is the case with most roguelikes, you don't get much story, as people are usually waiting for the dungeon crawling to start and don't pay attention to the story anyway. As such, an unspecified Dark Lord has stolen all the light in the world, and all your party members abandoned you and now your mission is to descend into his lair and defeat him.

You can choose to play as a Warrior, Wizard, Assassin or Shaman, and you have to bash enemy skulls and cause home decorators all around the world heart attacks by cracking open and looting every pot, table or bookcase you stumble upon.

You're going to need every last piece of gold in order to get better gear from the vendors you'll find inside the procedurally generated dungeon floors, as survival is not always an easy task, especially if you want to stand a chance against the deadly enemy bosses.

All the maps and item placements are completely random, so you're never going to find anything in the same place twice, as you're no doubt already accustomed to by now.

Let's see what makes Quest of Dungeons stand out from the crowd of similar titles available on the PC platform. You get random quests, which usually task you with retrieving a certain item or defeating some random elite enemy, and net you some extra XP and gold, you get three difficulty levels, shops, boss encounters and online leaderboards.

Yeah, that's what you said last time too. Didn't work.

Your combination of lip and useless equipment is awe-inspiring

Your biggest enemy will be death, as is the case in all such games, there is no saving and dying is permanent; yet, it also teaches some valuable lessons for future playthroughs, such as the fact that it's better to be rude and slam a door shut in a boss' face than to politely invite him in and have it munch on your exposed brain matter a couple of turns later.

The dungeons will be inhabited mostly by harmless creatures that can only pose a threat if they manage to overwhelm you. That is, of course, if you're willing to run circles around the room waiting for your health or mana to regenerate, which no doubt everyone will.

Which comes to a strange design decision, why not integrate regen somehow into the game's mechanics, or increase it when "out of combat," and not have players do what they will always attempt to do, bending the rules of the game in order to get topped up after every encounter.

Killing monsters gets you experience points and gold, and when you level up you get more health and damage and clearing floors becomes even easier. Until you die, that is.

The difficulty has a nice curve, in the sense that it does not mock you sending unassailable behemoths your way from the get go, letting you explore for a while and not feeling like someone is enacting some Machiavellian revenge on you for whatever reason, but making you feel empowered and arrogant enough that you'll no doubt find your demise inside the labyrinth.

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You'll find new spells/abilities to use during your forays into the deadly dungeons, either when looting dead vampires or skeleton warriors or buying them from the shadowy merchant that keeps popping up from time to time.

These abilities range from mildly useful ones that you'll probably employ during boss fights to some that will become your bread and butter, especially during crowded encounters; they'll make the difference between finding glory or finding an untimely death.

The only critique here is the random nature of the drops, as sometimes you'll be showered in gold by the merchant you sell your excess tomes to, while other times you'll be stuck swinging your basic attack at deadly pigeons and floating one-eyed blobs for extended periods of time.

Quest of Dungeons falls prey to the same vicious design paradigm of non-MMORPG player developers and obfuscates the actual damage you do with skills, leaving you in the dark as far as min-maxing goes.

Really, why would anyone play any kind of action role-playing game if not for the numbers? For the "fun"? Please.

It would have been nice to know what "pierces armor" or "bleeding damage" mean, so as to better make use of some abilities, as they don't seem to be very different from the regular attacks.

Something nice is the Shaman's crowd control ability, but unfortunately there's not too much character depth and the gameplay is pretty basic, up to the point where you don't even pick up gold automatically by walking over it and you have to manually click on all the treasures.

The graphics are pretty old-school, pixelated and somewhat detailed, like a Final Fantasy 1 that benefits from a larger color palette, but they're also pretty neat and there's no eye-sores to worry about. Apart from the fact that they're pixelated and pretty generic, of course.

The music is pretty good, there are a couple of catchy tunes that change from level to level or during boss encounters, adding some variety to the experience, but after a couple of hours of play time you're going to head to the options menu and replace it with your own.

Oh, PIERCE skin... well that explains a lot

Let me just caress you with my Sword of Naps then

The Good

The Bad

Conclusion