Game: Dungeons of Dredmor

Platform: PC, Mac

Publisher: Gaslamp Games

Developer: Gaslamp Games

ESRB: N/A

Genre: “Roguelike” RPG

Players: 1

What's Hot: Rock solid roguelike action, fun skill system, good-natured sense of humor, near-infinite replay value.

What's Not: Dying in the first room thanks to a random storm of monsters

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Review by: Danielle Riendeau

Dungeons of Dredmor is a quirky, funny roguelike with charm and personality to spare. Offering as many hours of randomly generated RPG spelunking as you like, its foundations are solid and the experience is surprisingly accessible, given the genre.

If you’ve never played a roguelike, here’s the deal – the entire game is one long dungeon crawl – you’ll fight monsters, score loot, and craft new items out of all the junk you find along the way. That’s it – there are no villages, no tired tales of yore or interminable cut scenes. Just good, old-fashioned monster slaying, lock picking and magic wielding. The other hallmark of the genre is permadeath - once you die, that’s the ballgame – and that’s here as well, though you do have the option to turn it off before loading a new game.

It’s precisely this sort of customizability that makes Dredmor palatable for newbies. Upon selecting a new game, you are allowed to choose your skills (predilections for certain types of weapons or magic, or specific buffs like lock picking), your difficulty level (pick “elves just wanna have fun” if you’re new to this), and whether permadeath will hover over your shoulders like a specter. From there, you’re off to the massive, sprawling dungeon to go about your business.

The name of the game is random – upon starting some games, I was attacked by a barrage of enemies in the first room I opened, and died within five minutes of starting up. In other games, I had better luck with my first picks, and I survived long enough to level up, gain achievements and probe deeper into the castle’s secrets. It all requires strategy and a bit of patience (do I eat the cheese now or wait until I’m lower on health? Do I use this wand until it burns out or save it for something nastier looking?), and the result is a satisfying game with a nice, slow burn. I found myself addicted within a couple of hours, especially once I got the hang of crafting.

There is a ton of crafting in this game – you’ll use smithing skills to forge weapons and armor, alchemy to make potions and brews, and even an ingot press to turn raw materials into useable items. Thankfully, there’s a comprehensive tutorial that makes sense of your myriad abilities (along with absolutely everything else in the game). Sure, you’ll find ready-made stuff lying on the floor, but the only way to really maximize your hero is to dive deep into the business of making new things.

What really sets Drednor apart – aside from the gameplay and charming 16-bit aesthetic – is its sense of humor. The story is a send-up of every RPG ever – an evil overlord/demon wants to take over the world – and you are the hero working against it. Except you are “unfortunately” the hero who just sort of showed up – and there are propaganda posters strewn about the dungeon, warning about a “bushy-eye-browed man”. Every item, weapon, potion, monster etc. has a cute name poking fun at genre conventions (your first pair of boots are flip flops, for example, making fun of the near-useless equipment you’ll often get on start-up), and you get your quests from “Inconsequentia” a deity of pointless sidequests. It’s played for gentle laughs, rather than guffaws, but the humor is a very nice touch.

There is a truly massive amount of game here for the $5 asking price, and Gaslamp Games has clearly set Dredmor apart from the crowd. If you’ve ever felt the need to crawl a dungeon, this one is most definitely for you, as it serves as both an excellent “my first roguelike” and a challenging quest for the experienced spelunker.

Danielle Riendeau is a regular contributor to GameShark and is the cohost of Jumping the Shark , GameShark.com's official podcast and is co-founder of the gaming blog No High Scores. She's also a serious workout warrior.

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