You might think that building a straight and narrow path to the goal is the way to win, but you fast find out it's really a very elegant way of getting yourself killed. When the game's immense charm and good-natured snark wears off, the challenge sets in. The point is, it's easily the most fun set of commands since Citizens of Earth. And, in my head, sounds like Jason Statham-even the female variant. The Chump defends with Cower and attacks with Closed-Eyes Punch the Cat Burglar throws cats for physical damage the Bruiser attacks mostly with Cockney insults and bar-brawling moves.
#Guild of dungeoneering review series#
Battle plays out by a series of handwritten Magic cards picked up at random from enemies who either attack or defend from physical or magical damage. Guild of Dungeoneering becomes endearing the second you start and realize the aesthetic is little more than every middle-school nerd's D&D scribblings, with crudely drawn dialogue bubbles and enemies traveling along a marginally less crude grid of multi-directional rooms. Where’s that sad Mad World cover when you need it? And if that handicap isn't enough, he's got to do it in a dungeon drawn on geometry-class graph paper. Your job is to place those rats, zombies, and goblins in your Chump's line of sight, in the hope of beefing him up with enough XP and weaponry to direct his attention toward his set goal, which might be as simple as looting three chests in the area or all the way to slaying a pissed-off minotaur. You're dealt five cards at the start of each round with an enemy, a treasure or a chunk of room to place in tiles along your hero's path. The twist is that you have control not over your hero, but over their environment.
You start with the Chump, but eventually earn enough gold to hire one of several classes of useless adventurer: Apprentice, Cat Burglar, Bruiser, Mime-you read that right-before choosing which dungeon to raid. The format, with its focus on leveling up fast in quick bursts of gameplay to survive the ultimate challenges, pleasantly recalls Half-Minute Hero, albeit stripped of that game's 8-bit flair. The gameplay exists in some beautiful nexus of all RPG styles, flitting between being a card-combat title, a turn-based system, and good old-fashioned Dungeons & Dragons.
#Guild of dungeoneering review full#
And the chump has been chosen to conquer a dungeon full of rats, zombies, and goblins. The narrator sings ballads of his chumpery. Having neither fame nor adventurers, he settles on your first character after he answers an ad on a poster: The Chump.
You're presented with the journal of a douchebag: A guy who was kicked out of the world's premier guild of heroes before deciding, out of spite, to start his own guild of famed adventurers. It is the story of anonymous, disposable failures casually flitting through a death maze of your making towards dubious fame.
It is the story of petty street trash looking to die an ignoble death to buy a better bedroom. It is not a tale of gods and demons and the men caught in the wake of their eternal struggle. Guild of Dungeoneering is not a story of heroes.