Usually I run the other direction when a game tells me upfront that by design I will lose over and over again. But in Dungelot, a terrifically addictive roguelike by Dimitry Mitrofanov, you will die, and that's okay. I guess you can't expect to take on hundreds of monsters by yourself and survive, now can you?
The goal is to see how deep you can delve into the dungeon. To start off, you'll choose a hero. Examine their special abilities and select the one you like best. You can always try a different one after your inevitable death. After you've chosen, the game board will appear and you'll see a locked dungeon door. Starting by the door and using just your mouse, click on a tile to flip it over. As you flip tile after tile, you'll reveal monsters and items or people that can help you. Monsters block your way, and you must defeat them to open up the board. The fighting system is simple. You can see how much health each monster has as well as how much damage they will do. Enemies will always strike first, so even if you can deal more damage, they will always get at least one hit in. Keep revealing the board and defeating the monster until you find the level key, which you can use to escape to the next level. Often you will find the key before the entire board is cleared. Then it is up to you to decide if it's worth it to stay and clear out enemies in hopes of finding treasure, or if you should just move on.
Levels get more difficult as you get deeper into the dungeon. You will find spells in treasure chests that can be used against most enemies. However, if you don't want to use the spell to attack, you can turn it into health points. Collecting red gems ups your starting HP, and you'll also find good old-fashioned money. Money is used in two ways. One is upgrading hero special abilities. This is a permanent bonus attached to a specific hero. Or you can spend coins in stores found in various levels of the dungeon. In stores you can purchase attack power or health, but these are temporary and disappear after you die.
Dungelot is great in its simplicity. Anyone can learn how to play in a matter of minutes. Game levels are random, so you'll never have the same run twice. It would be nice to have a little bit of info on the many monsters, as some have special abilities of their own. Aside from that, there's little to complain about. It's got that addicting just-one-more-time appeal. Add to that a little bit of strategy, a lot of randomization, and some fun artwork and you've got yourself a game that's hard to stop playing.
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Is it just me, or is this game difficult to play due to screen issues? Even when you right click and expand to full screen, it still cuts off part of the screen. I opened in both ie and chrome.
Make sure your browser isn't zoomed.
That being said, I couldn't play the game in fullscreen, there was definitely an issue with the way the game rendered on my widescreen monitor (1920x1200). However, I didn't have any problem playing in the standard resolution (320x480) in Chrome. I was unable to get the Unity Player to install in IE for some reason, so I couldn't test it there, unfortunately.
Yes the regular view is fine in Safari. It small, but there is no problem. The fullscreen is bugged. When you open it it acts like there is side by side screens, so you can see the character selection screen on the main screen.
The real issue is when you play the game on full screen. You can see the result screen on your right as you play and an arena if it is on that floor. The character stats screen gets in the way of the bottom row, you can't exit our of any popup without leaving full screen, and some of the effects are off (when you gain more attack/health, breaking stuff/finding monsters.)
Outside of the full screen the game is great and fun.
Hmmm, I'm using Chrome and keep getting a grey screen with a puzzle piece and a "No Plug-in available to display this content." message.
It's a Unity game, so you'll need the Unity Player plugin to play. Click on the "Unity" link in the review header to get it.
I've been playing this one daily and I really love it! I can't wait for the iOS version so I can take it with me. (Apparently it's been submitted for approval, so it won't be long!)
Great game, but some big flaws.
Half the spells are just not worth it and will always be converted to health.
The greed door is completely useless and asks you for far too much to always give you just another spell.
Is there an ending? I went in with fully upgraded character, bought a ton of attack and made it to floor 27. Needs to be a clearer objective and less grinding.
Unfortunately, today's update has broken the balance of the game. While the extra characters and character options added looked cool, the new items and spells were a nice addition, and the new bonuses for the arena and clearing a dungeon level were nice... I'm currently on level 67 with 4074 health, 133 attack strength and 5255 gold in my first game, playing as a paladin, and I'm not sure the game will ever end.
I have to agree with rdunlap. I played to level 20 (with the dwarf) to unlock the Assassin, used what gold I had to upgrade him, and started a new dungeon. At a certain point, the game just becomes broken. I made it to level 100 with my health maxed out at 9990 and my attack at 200. Here are my tips/strategies:
1. NEVER buy Health from the item shop and ALWAYS buy as many attack upgrades as you can afford.
2. Keep Sheep and Gauntlet (+100% attack) spells for the bosses and more difficult enemies.
3. Keep the Find Trap enchantment to avoid them, but sell the Find Key and Find Chest ones (You want to clear the entire map for the bonus anyway, so you'll find them all eventually.
4. NEVER pay for Greed Door with attack power. NEVER!
5. Once your health gets into the thousands and attack is 100ish, you can sell off any of the "-1 when attacked" type enchantments, they're all pretty moot at this point. In fact, by this point, the only enchantment of any use to you is the +1 to attack. I only managed to pick up four of them, so I don't know if there's a cap or not.
So anyway, at around level 110 or so, I decided to TRY to die (not easy to do) Here's what I had to do:
1. Use the Trap Enchantment to purposefully find and step on all the traps on each floor.
2. Never pick up any Health powerups, including the bonuses for clearing floors, arenas, and special quests.
3. Pay for Greed Doors with attack.
4. Basically just let the enemies plink your health down.
I managed to die on Floor 145. When I returned to the main menu, I had 45k gold, but because there's no end-game, achievements, or anything really to unlock, I just didn't feel like upgrading any of the characters just to basically do the same thing I just did all over again, the only difference being it would be a lot harder to kill myself once I get bored.
Here are my suggestions to make the game a little more challenging:
1. Limit how many Health/Attack upgrades can be purchased in the Item Store. This is the main culprit for "breaking" the game.
2. Cap the player's Health/Attack based on the current floor. (If the item shop would be limited, this may not be necessary.)
3. Make the Boss enemy scale to your current stats for more of a challenge.
4. More enemies with ranged attacks (to make it harder to open up squares to use the Mage/Electricity attacks.
5. Have an enemy that can "break" your attack power, reducing it by 1.
6. Make Quest/Arena rewards a little more reasonable; currently they're just a little *too* good.
So anyway, long story even longer, this is a potentially awesome game. Unfortunately, in its current state, it's just a little too mundane. It needs more of a challenge. And more importantly, it needs more options unlocked by achieving certain floors; give a true reason to keep replaying the game over and over. I liked it, but it currently has a low replay value.
There's been another update, so give it a try and tell us what you think!
I missed the "broken" update, but here's a few things I noticed with the latest verses the originally reviewed version:
Almost all spells are now "worth it", as in the health you save by casting it in the right situation is better than the health you get from selling it.
The challenge doors are kinda weird, "well armed" should mean more than 1 attack on the lower levels, no? And I think I've gotten the lantern once, while I've gotten doors that ask for the lantern 10 times...challenge doors shouldn't depend on having rare drops.
I've never liked the fact that poison is completely unavoidable, now the poison finding item is an unbalancing item. If poison on level 15 is going to hit you with 5 unavoidable damage, and you're going to put an average of 2 poison tiles/level, one item now gives you an extra 10 health/level, scaling higher the higher the level.
Wooden shield should either have a higher chance to block an attack or not have a charge. 10 charges with a
I've also never liked that lightening/mage takes off a percentage of _current_ hp verses total hp, basically means that you can't ever kill anything with it which is just silly from a logistical perspective. "I've got one HP! I'm immune to lightening!"
Also, I'm noticing that the first strike is lasting three moves, not three attacks. And the paladin's recharged weapon bonus will disappear if you go down to the next level or enter/leave the arena, that nerfs it a bit.
"The content was stopped because a fatal content error has been detected."
I have gotten this error 3 times while playing forcing me to reload the game. It seem more balanced, but the monsters might gain too much HP in too little time to be a fair fight.
I also agree on the lantern. I have never gotten it and the shield does seem like if it has charges, then make it a better hit chance to use it or its just taking space.
I don't know what the deal is with the memory resources for this game, but it's frozen my computer twice -- and nothing is different other than all the game data gone. Normally Flash prompts for enlarging the memory (and jayisgames gets the lion's share already), but instead it just kills my monitor with no recourse. There's no plug-in action, cache is cleared, there's nothing else going on, just Firefox and Windows XP. Flash is fully updated and works everywhere else, including some memory hogs.
Very frustrating that it not only makes my system unstable, but there's not even a payoff of a saved game. I have to start all over again. Stabilize this puppy, please. It's just enough to quit the addiction.
It's not a Flash game, Shudog, it's Unity, so it's... different. Maybe try updating the Unity Player plugin to the latest version?
I know that the developer, Dimitry, is very active in continuing to improve and update the game. The iOS version should also be available soon. I expect that we'll see another browser update with more improvements soon as well.
Update