Epic Dungeon

Once again, we have a new guest writer! Michael Fossbakk not only has an awesome last name, but he also knows a thing or two about writing and video games. I recently sent him a code for the XNA title Epic Dungeon, so give his review a read and let him know what you think in the comments below!

Trying to review Epic Dungeon is like entering a time machine to go back to when 8-bit games were the precedent of gaming, playing all the games of that era (which is only about 30-40 years ago, mind you) and deciding what’s good and what’s bad. Mechanics are simple, because button layouts are limited. Graphics are, well, 8-bit. Music is…well see music is exactly how you’d expect an 8-bit track to sound like, but attuned for the setting of the game. Flash forward to the present and then try to play something like Epic Dungeon and still wonder if what you’re playing is good. Mechanics and specifics aside, it all comes down to one question: am I having fun?

Sadly, with Epic Dungeon the answer is a little. Epic Dungeon is an indie game from Eyehook Games released on Xbox LIVE through its XNA portal. When it comes down to it, it’s all quite simple. You pick your class, the Berserker, the Shaman, the Gambler, or the Tinkerer. Each one has a unique ability that is triggered by either the A, B, X, or Y button. The goal of Epic Dungeon is to level up, acquire new gear, plunge further into the dungeon, and above all else, live. See, in Epic Dungeon, death is permanent—a welcome aspect of the game and something that seems to have flown out of the window in recent years of gaming. The reason behind that comes back to its ultimate goal, which is to survive as long as possible in order to climb the leaderboard, giving it a classic arcade-style feel.

The class you choose at the start of your attempt hardly matters. The Berserker can swing his weapon in circles at surrounding foes, the Shaman can freeze nearby targets, the Gambler may poison nearby targets, and the Tinkerer can summon his trusty orb to help him fight off incoming spiders, witches, and other weird things you’d find in a dungeon. Though, all of the classes may invest in these abilities, choosing your class simply determines your default ability. By killing and looting these monsters, you acquire gold pieces to be used at various stores throughout the dungeon (why there are stores in a dungeon is beyond me, but this wouldn’t be the first time video games have seen such a thing). You can also find weapons and armor scattered throughout the dungeon that you can pick up and swap out for your lesser, current gear. One tip to surviving this game is to stock up on health potions. So save your gold pieces, because once you’re all out of health potions and there’s not a store in sight, it’s time to man-up and be careful about how you approach everything that will inevitably come for you. However, given the simplistic fighting mechanics of Epic Dungeon, death seems rather inevitable.

That's one suave dungeon crawler.

Fighting off the creepy-crawlers of Epic Dungeon is as simple as pushing the left analog stick and walking into them. Yup, you literally throw yourself at them and until you make contact, there’s no sword-swinging to be done, apparently. This is quite a poor design choice as it inevitably requires you to lose health when you fight, unless you invest in a lot of dexterity, but more on that later. Realistic, maybe, but I seriously doubt that Epic Dungeon is aiming for realism. Even the original Legend of Zelda had mind enough to map “attack” to a single button.

One of the few redeeming qualities I found in Epic Dungeon was its scripted events. These events, which are triggered by bright yellow question marks on the ground that you must activate, present you with a scenario that can range from “You found 30 gold pieces” to “You find a group of orcs drinking and having a good time. You decide to…” at which point you choose one of the responses. This is where I believe the “Luk,” or “Luck,” attribute comes into play as you can choose to part-take in their drinking game and hopefully not get beat up and robbed or even killed.

Always attack old hags without a solid alibi.

The four attributes in Epic Dungeon are attack, defense, dexterity, and luck. Attack obviously amplifies the damage that you deal. Defense makes you take less damage. Dexterity determines your ability to hit enemies and dodge attacks, and luck plays into the aforementioned scenarios as well as loot. I just simply spent most of my points in attack and split the rest between defense and luck. Though, spending points in luck was just an attempt to liven the game. It didn’t really work.

As I mentioned earlier, you also have a skill tree that you can invest in that will give you access to the abilities or skills of the other classes. This adds some interesting gameplay to otherwise simplistic fighting mechanics as you can be a shaman with the ability to summon the Tinkerer’s orb while chain-freezing targets. “Chaining” is another welcome mechanic that forces you to pay attention whenever you use your ability. For example, if you press X to freeze a target and then press it again in exactly one second, you will freeze it again. The maximum amount of times that you can chain an ability depends on the ability.

So there you have it. After stepping out of my time machine and taking a gander at where games have come from, I can easily say that while Epic Dungeon is not indicative of all games from 30-40 years ago, nor is it indicative of all indie games. I found it to be an overall dull experience, albeit with some redeeming qualities that freshened up the gameplay. That said, constructing a finished game as a one-man team is impressive and news has it, additions do seem to be coming to Epic Dungeon, including a new class, the Goblin, which will have the ability to heal wounds over time. For just a dollar, a game like this is an easy buy and forthcoming updates will insure that your meager investment in Epic Dungeon will be worthwhile.

Josiah Renaudin

View My Other Posts