Dungeon Rushers – PC (P)Review – by Selthor
Genre: Indie RPG Strategy Adventure
Developer: Goblinz Studio
Publisher: Goblinz Studio
Release Date: May 11, 2016
On May 11th, 2016 Goblinz Studio, a small 2 man studio, released their first game Dungeon Rushers as an Early Access title on Steam. The games options are very minimalistic, giving you sliders for music and sound volume, a choice between French and English, resolution (ranging from 1024×768 to 3840×2160), and then toggles for full screen and centering the camera. The game is not perfect yet, being in early access, but I only encountered the occasional error, and none that really broke the gameplay, such as sounds still occasionally playing at full volume despite your sound settings for the game, and the game locking up a bit when the last character on a side died to poison or flames (you could get around it by changing a character’s position or abandoning a fight depending on who it was that died). But beyond that it played very smoothly.
The basics of the game are a combination of turn based combat, and top down dungeon crawling where you move square by square, occasionally encountering enemies or events such as treasures, cursed objects, or traps. The game is labeled as “A Heroic-Parody tactical RPG, combining dungeon crawler’s gameplay and turn-based fights” and aptly lives up to that description, with the story being a witty and enjoyable parody of the usual hero tale. (It starts with the main character giving up on his life of scrubbing toilets to set off on the glorious career of dungeon exploration). You start with a single character, and you encounter more along your way, which the main character snaps up like so many stray dogs. Each character has their own unique abilities, such as giving combat advantages if used, or disarming traps, or revealing a treasure tile or enemy on the map. Graphically, the game is simple. The art style is amusing, and the animations are solid. The characters are all images, no moving models or anything along those lines but nothing is displeasing to the eye or hard to see. While I don’t recommend running out to buy the soundtrack, it will not be a hardship to leave the sounds and music on either.
Dungeons drop various types of loot, from equipment and potions, to crafting ingredients. The crafting system is built with tiers inherently, you have to craft enough equipment to gain experience to unlock the next tier, and each tier requires ingredients specific to a chapter of the story. Each dungeon has bonus challenges with 3 restrictions that are optional to meet. These range from a time limit, to the number of potions you can use, to not allowing any character to be knocked out. Completing a run with all bonus challenges complete (has to be done in the same run) unlocks heroic mode, which requires you to defeat a certain group of enemies in the dungeon to get a key that will allow you to open the treasure chest to end the dungeon, as well as being unable to use your potions.
Outside of the main story, there is a sort of multiplayer, in which you can design your own dungeon and attempt to defeat dungeons created by others. You earn a currency for unlocking more features in your dungeon by challenging and defeating dungeons of other players. This is the only part of the game that requires online access to use as it pulls player dungeons to challenge, and uploads your dungeons through the steam workshop.
Selthor gives Dungeon Rushers a Drastik Measure 8.5 out of 10 (85).
Pros
- Lovable story line for anyone who enjoys parodies of genres
- Early Access means that the developers are actively working on the game
- Easy game to relax with while listening to audiobooks or music
Cons
- Early Access does mean that there will likely be changes and bugs as you play
- It is a bit grindy as it currently stands
