2241: The Best Thing About Dungeon Crawlers is Dungeon Design

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If I say the word “dungeon” to you — assuming I’m talking about games; leave any thoughts of leather-clad masochists chained to the ceiling beams while straddling a wooden horse for the moment — what springs to mind?

The term “dungeon” can mean lots of different things, even within the RPG genre.

In traditional top-down RPGs such as Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, the term “dungeon” is used to distinguish specific locations from the overworld map, and to further distinguish those locations as being dangerous rather than safe havens where you can buy things and heal up. Usually they’re semi-linear in nature, with a clear start and end point, usually with a boss monster right at the end, followed by a story event and, if the designers are feeling nice, a teleport back to the surface.

In modern massively multiplayer RPGs, meanwhile, the term “dungeon” is used to describe instanced content that is completely separate from the game’s main open world, and which is designed to be played through by a specific number of players. They are usually completely linear in nature, given the unpredictability of humans when brought together in a group and the impracticality of exploration when combat requires everyone to be present in the same place, and usually make their encounters the focal point of the experience, with boss encounters challenging players to understand and react appropriately to various mechanics.

In action-adventure RPGs such as the Legend of Zelda series and its imitators, the term “dungeon” is used in a similar way to in traditional top-down RPGs: it’s a dangerous location separate from the main overworld. In Zelda-likes, though, dungeons tend to be less linear — or at least have the appearance of being so — and much more puzzle-based, requiring exploration and creative use of items to progress instead of just pure combat skills.

In dungeon crawlers, meanwhile, dungeons are incredibly complicated beasts that present as much of a challenge — if not more so — than the often frequent combat in the games. And, given that dungeoneering is the focal point of these titles, that’s a very good thing indeed; while linear dungeons with predictable encounters may work well for more narrative-heavy experiences, dungeon crawlers tend to be heavy on the mechanics and restrict narrative for the most part to being a reward for progressing.

Let’s take Dungeon Travelers 2, which I’m currently playing, as an example. Here’s a screenshot showing the map of just one of the floors of the Mostar Catacombs, a mid-game dungeon that seems to give a fair few people online a bit of grief. (Credit to xChaosLokix on GameFAQs for the pic.)

Dungeon Travelers 2

Mostar in particular seems to confuse people quite a bit because it is about as far from linear progression as you can get. You don’t clear the first floor and then go on to the second one; navigating Mostar is a complicated affair that constantly sends you back and forth between its two floors using ladders, pit traps and teleporters. On top of that, you also have to deal with Dark Zones, where the visibility is lower and you can’t look at your map, along with traps, hidden doors, one-way passageways and all manner of other goodies.

Likewise, the other dungeon crawler that I’ve previously invested time into, Demon Gaze, had some marvelously fiendish mazes to navigate, with hazards ranging from water currents that drag you uncontrollably from one place to another — very frustrating when you can see that where you want to be is just over there — to floor tiles that deal damage or do unpleasant things to your party, but which are the only way through a particular passageway.

I absolutely love this. One of my favourite things to do in this type of game is to explore, and dungeon crawlers reward thoroughness with a wonderful feeling of satisfaction: the knowledge that not only have you bested the monsters in the dungeon, but you’ve bested the dungeon itself. This isn’t an exaggeration, either; in both Demon Gaze and Dungeon Travelers 2 — and I don’t doubt this happens in other dungeon crawlers too, though my knowledge on the subject is more limited than I’d like it to be — there are times when you’ll find your progress stymied not by the power level of the enemies you face in battle, but by the very design of the dungeon confounding your sense of direction or hiding its secrets behind illusionary walls or on the other side of deadly traps.

You just don’t get this level of dungeon design in other types of RPG, and that’s fine — if the Final Fantasy series plopped you into a dungeon that took 6 hours to navigate in between every major plot point, I doubt people would have the patience to see their stories through to their conclusions — but it gives dungeon crawlers a very distinct identity, even within the RPG genre. And I really like that a whole lot.

While many RPGs are worth playing for the story and characterisation — areas in which neither Dungeon Travelers 2 nor Demon Gaze slouch, it has to be said — the real highlight of dungeon crawlers is in exploring these weird and wonderful mazes that someone came up with, and feeling either the frustration and terror of becoming completely lost, or the jubilant sense of triumph that comes with finally locating the stairs up to the next floor, or unlocking that door that has been taunting you ever since you came into the area for the first time.

I’m 36 hours into Dungeon Travelers 2 at the moment and I get the impression I still have a very long way to go. I’m looking forward to the continued journey if what I’ve experienced so far is any indication of the bare minimum I can expect to be challenged with later in the game!

1228: Dungeon Delving

Way back before I started doing this daily blogging shenanigans — yes, there was a time when I was an erratic blogger, just like normal people on the Internet — you may recall that I once gave a harrowing account of the adventures of Count Kurt von Hellstrom and his merry band of warriors, otherwise known as the characters my friends and I rolled to play a campaign of Games Workshop’s tabletop roguelike Warhammer Quest. On the off-chance you haven’t been reading this blog since December 2009, here’s a link for your delectation.

I greatly enjoyed my experiences with Warhammer Quest, though it hasn’t hit the gaming table for a good few years now, which is a shame. It takes quite a long time to set up, you see, and the heavily-random nature of the game’s encounters wasn’t altogether to the taste of a couple of our group; our more recently-acquired Descent: Journeys in the Dark 2nd Edition is scratching the dungeon-crawling itch a bit better for the group as a whole. Despite this, I still consider myself highly privileged to own a copy of this much sought-after collector’s item, and one that is in pretty good (certainly playable) condition, too.

As such, it will probably not surprise you to hear that when Rodeo Games, developer of the excellent Hunters series of XCOM-style turn-based strategy games for iOS devices, was working on a digital adaptation of Games Workshop’s classic, I sat up and paid attention. Hunters and its sequel already played more than a little bit like Games Workshop’s Space Marine-based board games such as Space Hulk and Space Crusade, so I was confident that they were a good team to take on the challenge of porting Warhammer Quest to the small screen.

And you know what? They’ve done a great job. The iOS version of Warhammer Quest, which hit the iOS App Store around midnight last night, is a fantastic adaptation of the board game and its various foibles, tweaked just enough to feel like an original video game rather than a straight-up port of the board game’s mechanics.

The iOS version of Warhammer Quest features a substantial single-player campaign in which the player’s party of heroes moves between various towns in the Warhammer Old World, and takes on quests, as all good heroes should do. Most quests are introduced by some well-written text that gives a good feel of context to the dungeon crawling, and these are supported by various encounters in the dungeons themselves.

The actual dungeon-crawling gameplay is very similar to how the board game works. Characters have a particular move allowance for each turn, and a certain number of ranged and melee attacks available, assuming they have the appropriate weapons equipped to perform these. The wizard character may cast spells on his turn as well as moving and attacking, and all characters may also use items or certain other special abilities as well as moving and attacking.

Fans of the board game will recognise certain specific quirks of the tabletop version — for example, rather than having a set pool of magic to cast spells at will, the wizard character is dependent on the randomly-determined Winds of Magic that change each turn and provide the power required to cast spells. Likewise, the satisfying “Deathblow” rule is in effect, which means any time a character defeats an enemy in a single mighty blow, they can automatically attack any other adjacent enemies and sometimes clear out a room rather quickly.

A few changes have been made, however. The level-up system, which was simply based on the amount of gold acquired in the board game version, takes the form of a more traditional experience point-based system in the iOS version. This works just fine, and a helpful breakdown of who killed what (or healed whom) at the end of a quest helps you easily figure out which of your characters is pulling their weight and which ones need to step up to the plate a bit more readily in the next adventure.

There’s a couple of frustrating bugs present in the current version, which mars the experience a little — firstly, occasionally the game will get “stuck” while resolving an encounter upon entering a new room tile and require a restart to proceed. (Thankfully, the game autosaves regularly, so you’ll be back before the move you made that froze the game.) Secondly, the game’s “hardcore” mode, in which characters can die permanently, doesn’t appear to work correctly at present — I lost a character in an early quest, completed the rest of it and was very surprised to discover them waiting for me back in town when I returned.

The game also falls into the trap of offering obnoxious “Get more Gold” in-app purchases for players too lazy to earn their way to higher-tier equipment. Not only does the ability to purchase in-game currency remove all need to manage your finances carefully — an important part of the game if you’re playing it properly — but it also raises questions over how well-balanced the in-game economy actually is. Is the rate of gold acquisition in the game deliberately slow in order to push players in the direction of the in-app purchases? It’s hard to say at this early stage, but it’s something that will be on the mind of some players.

The game also includes a selection of day-1 DLC — three new characters and a bolt-on series of quests. Normally, I object thunderously to day-1 DLC but when the game itself is just £2.99 it’s hard to get too mad, particularly when each package adds a significant amount of cool stuff to the game and is still pretty cheap even if you buy all of them.

Despite these issues, the iOS version of Warhammer Quest is well worth your time if you’re a dungeon-crawling fan. An update should hopefully fix the bugs described above, and with any luck Rodeo will continue to support the game with new content over time. As it stands, they claim there’s 25-30 hours of single-player content in the game already, which should keep you busy for a while.

Download it here.

#oneaday, Day 294: Filthy Rogue

The roguelike genre is one I only discovered relatively recently. In fact, I was a relative latecomer to the whole RPG genre, only getting to grips with it for the first time with Final Fantasy VII. As such, for a good few years, I felt that RPGs were all about strong stories, interesting (and sometimes clichéd) characters, a buildup to an epic final conflict and some of the best music you’ll ever hear.

As such, when I played an RPG that wasn’t so strong on the story and focused more on loot-whoring or level-grinding, I found myself losing interest quickly. It was long after its release that I finally beat Diablo II and, to this date, I’ve never beaten it on anything other than the normal difficulty level.

That changed when I came across Angband, though. Angband looks like the sort of game you used to play on Teletext. Sure, there are graphical tilesets you can customise it with. But at its heart, it’s a text-based game with about a bajillion keyboard commands.

But you know what? The kind of emergent narrative that came out of several intense Angband sessions rivalled any pre-scripted tales that Squeenix have ever come out with. Largely because it was so unpredictable, and that any screw-ups were inevitably your fault for failing to prepare adequately, rather than the fault of the game mechanics itself.

Take the time my oil lamp ran out on the fifth level of the dungeon. This meant, in gameplay terms, that I couldn’t “see” new passageways ahead of me—namely, they weren’t revealed on the map—unless I banged into a wall, which then helpfully revealed said wall on the map for me. My first reaction in this instant was, of course, to panic. Death in Angband doesn’t mean restoring a saved game. Oh no. Death in Angband means your save game getting deleted and you having to start all over again. This adds an enormous amount of pressure on you, the player, to get it right. And it also makes you kick yourself when you realise that you didn’t bring enough oil to fuel your lamp.

So off I went, slowly “feeling” my way along the walls of the corridors in an attempt to find the stairs up… for five floors. This sounds like an impossible task. But after a fairly lengthy period of methodical, careful searching (and a few terrifying combats in the pitch darkness) I finally managed to emerge victorious to town level, stock up on oil and provisions and jump back into the dungeon with renewed fervour.

Of course, I promptly got twatted by an Ogre, making all that work utterly meaningless. But it didn’t matter—it was a fun experience unlike anything I’d experienced in a game before. And I’ve struggled to repeat it with any game since then.

Not through lack of trying, though. There are some great roguelikes out there, many of which are a lot more accessible than Angband. I have three favourites I’d like to share with you right now, one of which is, of all things, a board game. The other two are iPhone games.

Sword of Fargoal is actually a remake of an old Commodore 64-era title which didn’t look like the picture above. No, it looked like this:

The best thing about Sword of Fargoal is its simplicity coupled with a surprising amount of hidden depth. While Angband is rather intimidating to get started with, with pretty much every key on the keyboard (shifted and non-shifted) mapped to something, Fargoal simply requires that you get to grips with moving and using a context-sensitive button in the top-right corner. And keeping an eye on the text display at the top of the screen for hints and cues, too. Combat is a case of running into an enemy—the player and monster will then take turns bashing each other until one or the other falls over or one runs away. Gold is collected to sacrifice at altars throughout the dungeon for experience point bonuses. And the rest is left to the player to discover. The more you play, the more you start to notice little graphical details and cues tipping you off to the location of traps or treasure.

And it’s challenging, too. There are 15 levels to explore, all of which are sprawling monstrosities with several areas. And when you make it to the bottom to recover the titular blade, you then have to escape again. I haven’t even made it to the bottom yet. It’s a lengthy, challenging quest. And despite the fact that death is permanent, it’s addictive and easy to return to.

Then we have 100 Rogues, which takes a slightly different approach to that of Sword of Fargoal. While Fargoal‘s quest is lengthy, 100 Rogues can potentially be beaten in one sitting. Key word here being “potentially”. 100 Rogues is particularly brutal, fond of surrounding the player and battering them to a pulp. Fortunately, the player also has a Diablo-style skill tree at their disposal, including a number of attacks that can beat back several enemies at the same time.

It’s very difficult, though, and the descriptions of the game on the App Store don’t even try and hide the fact that you will die. A lot. In fact, there’s even a Game Center Achievement for having sent the titular 100 rogues to their eventual demise.

I only picked this up recently, but it’s immensely appealing due to its 16-bit graphics and soundtrack. It looks and plays like a Genesis/Mega Drive game, in a good way. It’s a bit buggy in places but the author appears to be committed to regular updates.

Finally, one of my favourite roguelikes of all time is Warhammer Quest, a game that involves you having people you actually don’t mind being in the same room with. Featuring all the genre staples—a randomly generated dungeon, permadeath, brutal difficulty, vast amounts of phat lewt—it’s very much the board game equivalent of Rogue et al. Even better, everyone gets to join in on the fun—there’s no need for a Game Master player (unless you really want to use one) as the rules cater fully for monster “behaviour”.

Couple that with the game’s immense customisability (it’s a word) thanks to its use of Games Workshop Citadel Miniatures line of figures and you have a game with limitless potential. And hundreds—hundreds—of tiny pieces of card and plastic.

So there you go. A whistlestop tour of the roguelike genre. And I didn’t even mention Moria or NetHack once.