The Dungeoning Review

The Dungeoning is an action platformer with rpg-like character progression. It's a fairly simply game, yet difficult at the same time. The game is meant to be played in a single sitting, and death is permanent. Thankfully everything changes itself up every time you die, as the dungeons are randomly generated. The objective of the game is to reach the end of the dungeon and find the artifact located there.



The monsters vary greatly, and get tougher to deal with as you go along. This is good, because we have to change up our tactics to tackle the various challenges they each present. Different movement and attacks from one monster to the next make for a much more interesting time. My only problem with the difficulty scale is that it suddenly surges forth every few levels, rather than gradually increasing. The first few levels, you may see a tougher opponent once or twice, and then suddenly all the tougher monsters show up in a single level. The controls are pretty good, and all the keys can be customized. There are some little things that I can't put words to that make the game's controls feel a little off. It just doesn't feel perfect and smooth.

Rawr, me and my sword will be cutting up some slime tonight!

There's an inventory system, and everything from potions to scrolls to equipment is stored there. It's a little lacklustre at the moment though. The inventory system wouldn't be a problem if your equipment simply upgraded, but it doesn't. You attain new pieces of equipment, and that results in having weak equipment still around. It's not a problem of inventory space, because you can't run out of that. It's a problem with the quick switch. You have to scroll through all your equipment to find the one you want. It doesn't help that all your swords have the same icon. Items can't get dropped. You can't destroy them, toss them away, incinerate them or anything else. They're just stuck there. Thankfully, this is getting patched into the game in the next update as of the time I've written this, but this should have been something available at release as this is a fairly annoying problem to have to deal with. But, we can get over this. The developer has thankfully noticed, and it can be thought of as an oversight of the only developer on this game.

I spy with my little eyes, treasure!

Within the dungeon there are various monsters, npcs, treasure chests, traps, and more. There's plenty to interact with, and lots of eye candy lying around to fill up the little details of the randomized catacombs. It can still feel a little plain if you simply look at a picture, but you'll mostly be focused on the action as you play so this isn't a big deal. The lighting effects look decent, resulting in some pretty fires on wax candles scattered about. The artwork does the job and it's not a pain on the eyes.

Now, barrels in this game explode. You'll find that out real fast when you try to crack one open. A little odd, but we can get past that. The great thing is that it can damage enemies if they get caught up in the explosion. This is great, environmental hazards added to help give you more options to your monster killing methods. However, the monsters aren't affected by spikes, falling ceiling tiles or thorny bushes. You can't knock them back into some spikes and expect them to be in pain, they'll just slide right past it. The ceiling tile will make you lose hp, but won't affect any of the mobs that get caught underneath it. This is a bit of a letdown when the great exploding barrels work so well. On that note, it's also a little odd that there are any bushes at all growing inside a catacomb.

Found the exit!

The game is on the short side of things, and can be completed in under 2 hours. If you're good, maybe you can do it pretty fast and just get it in a little over an hour. This is a little unfortunate, as I would have liked to see more from this game. If it did get extended, the ability to pick up and drop out of the game would have be to added. It's a bit of a problem for anybody who wants to just play this a little at a time, at coffee break or something, because they would never be able to get very far in the game. The game is enjoyable, but only for the kind of people who enjoy fast one-sitting permadeath rogue-likes. Those looking for progression carrying over to each new life will have to look for another game.

7/10