TINY DUNGEONS
(RetroSouls, 2022)
Crawling around Dungeons appeals to some. It's nice to make your fortune by pocketing trinkets and liberally smiting the dungeon denizens with your massive battle-axe, shouting "I only have to be lucky once!" to no-one in particular.
But I remember renting Vagrant Story from Blockbuster for a few days, as you did back then, for the original Playstation, since it was a Square Enix game, and they had wowed everyone on the planet at the time with all their Not Even Slightly Final Fantasies. It started alright, the usual turn-based fighting malarkey, but after a while all the rooms started to feel the same. Fresh air was there none. And this made me feel a little despairing and dismal. I'm a human, see - I need fresh air now and then. Even as a pallid retro gamer.
But hopefully I can put my dungeonophobia aside for a little while, so I can check out these two Spectral...dungeons. Really can't think of another word for them, best get used to hearing that one. First up is Tiny Dungeons... argh, I'm feeling claustrophobic already.
I very much like the Tiny plot. "An evil necromancer holds the land of Twilight in fear. Three brave heroes set out into the ancient dungeons to put an end to his evil deeds." There you go, it does the job nicely, eh? Although it might be nice to know who the heroes actually are... but no matter, we know the drill by now.
So the warrior (almost certainly), the wizard (dead cert) and maybe a valkyrie (sounds reasonable) set forth with their health points, shield points and magic points on show for all to see. How many dungeons are there? I dunno, but I've reached number 5 before getting squished.
Cunningly you can juggle the 3 combatants at will to suit your circumstances, which is handy when one of your dudes is looking a bit peeky. And if you see a particular pick-up you can choose who picks up the pick-up. Like giving the wiz any magic point boosts, say. This results in greater teamwork, better morale and improved productivity among the proletariat. Most patriotic.
Considering the tininess (that word doesn't look right, don't know why) of everything, the game looks really good. Hugely colourful U.D.G.s everywhere. And you can see quite a bit of the map at once handily. The enemies only actually move when you do, so you can treat it like a chess game if you really want to, gets a bit boring that way though. There is of course some brill music to jolly things along, this being a Grachev production.
DESCENDING DUNGEONS
(James Broad, 2016)
Now we go down, down, down (rock lobster) into those Descending Dungeons. It's a gang of four this time round, greedily seeking lost treasures as per usual. Admirable in their equality are the barbarian, she-warrior, magician and sorceress. There's a dragon lord to smite at the end too, I'm told.
Each dungeoneer can carry three items, which is pretty generous. A melee one, a ranged one and another one, spells and stuff mostly. Magic types can hurl bolts of varying sorts, while fighters naturally pack more of a punch. There are 9 dungeons to enjoy in order to complete your quest and go home for sandwiches.
Y'know what this reminds me of? Most Gollopian games - Chaos, Rebelstar, Battlecars (okay, maybe not that one). The key layout is the same, the turn-based action is the same and the combat is too. But this is not a problem - if you're going to copy, then do it from a god in human form. The world can never have enough Gollop-inspired games in my book.
Each adventurer gets rather a lot of Action Points, possibly too many, with which to move, fight and love (not really). And fights with enemies are quite fun, if generally a bit too one-sided in your favour. But tragically the best thing Mr. Gollop ever invented is absent here. I speak of Opportunity Fire. The element that makes so many of his games such a random riot.
It's got a lot right, this game. And I floated through about half of the 9 dungeons ("Four and a half dungeons then, Al?") happily enough, hardly losing a member of my questly team. Things eventually do get tougher later on and the levelling-up of your equipment keeps your interest up. But in the end I think those old dungeon doldrums stuck me again after a while and I was gasping for fresh air.
The same can also be said for Tiny Dungeons. As such the lack of variety tends to be a killer in the end, even more so than the deadly dungeon denizens. I'm going to give Descending Dungeons the edge for trying slightly harder to keep me amused.
DUNGEON DECISION
TINY DUNGEONS 80%
DESCENDING DUNGEONS 82%
(Spectrum Computing) Peter J: "I enjoyed the D&D feature, thanks."