DungeonLand | a Review
originally published on 13/03/2024;
Hello everyone, I am the extravagant business magnate, G.E.M.Simov, a man so insane I have decided to make a theme park themed on dungeons, and today I will tell you all about “DungeonLand”.
Simple review details - I rank games on an out of 10 basis, granting up to 3 points in 3 categories, as well as a last, single point from my own self, depending on my experience with it.
Gameplay
This game is no longer on the Steam Store, but when accessed via the Steam Store it presents the Player with 2 out of 5 possible gamemodes available. The other 3 need to be purchased, which is impossible to do via the Steam copy, as a result of which this game is only going to be reviewed based on the 2 available gamemodes - those being the DM Tower and DM Mode.
To start playing a game, the Player needs to decide if the game is going to be Local, Private or Online, which feature the ability for other Players to join in. If no other Players join in, they are replaced by Bots (Computer controlled entities). When a gamemode is selected, the Player can pick a difficulty and apply challenges on top of that difficulty.
There are four difficulties - Casual, Hard, Harder and Impossible - and there are three slots for challenges, which fill up with a special modifier for the game session that is being started.
When difficulty and challenges are selected, then the Player is allowed to select a class - there are three, those being Mage, Warrior and Rogue, with each having a unique skill and approach to handling the threats presented by the game.
In common among them are the controls to how things are done. With the WASD buttons, the Player moves. With the spacebar the Player dashes in the direction of their mouse, which gets them out of the way quickly and is useful for dodging. However, using the dodge button too many times in rapid succession renders the Player Character(PC) slowed and incapable of dodging for a certain amount of time, so one must be careful with how they use the dodge.
The Player can attack by using the Left Mouse Button (LMB), which changes depending on the Character in play, but there are two varieties - a ranged attack which fires a projectile and a melee attack which does damage in front of the PC. By using the Right Mouse Button, the Player gets to use a special ability, again dictated by their Character. In the case of the Mage, an ally is made invulnerable for the duration of the button press, though the Mage can't attack. In the case of the Warrior, the Player becomes invulnerable for as long as the button is held down, but can't attack. In the case of the Rogue, he hits with a melee attack, though the special thing here is that he can critically strike for massive damage.
Another thing that is dependent on the Character, but also on their weapon, is the spell/skill they have access to with the Q button. There are many, so I won't go into detail - the important thing is that it presents a tool to use in tackling the dungeons. Then, there is the E button, which consumes a potion (by default the PC has three) to fully heal the PC and the other Player Characters (PCs), while also making them invulnerable to damage for a short while.
Lastly, the Player can press F while next to certain objects and pick them up, after which they can be thrown with the LMB, which makes them break on impact, doing damage to enemies.
With those tools at the Players' disposal, they need to traverse a number of stages, fighting various enemies, some slightly stronger and more enhanced than the others, until they reach a boss enemy.
And why is all of that being done? Well, it is done with the goal of accumulating Gold, which is then used in a shop to buy new items - weapons, armors, perks, potion effects and other things that cost real money.
These don't explicitly make one's character more powerful. The unfortunate reality of this game is that the PC is as strong as it is going to get from the very start, because the game is meant to be played in a manner that does not rely upon grinding - it's meant to be very casual friendly, it's meant to be something one can jump in and out of at a whim.
Thus, the Characters are, roughly, as strong as they are ever going to be at the very start of the game, and any power ups that might be experienced are found in the exchanging of a perk or potion effect for another that increases damage done or affects the Player's Power in a similar manner.
Already, this puts an incredible weight on the game itself - because if there is no progression and growth, then the only reason to play the game is to enjoy the moment-to-moment gameplay.
Unfortunately, that is not easily done in Dungeon land, because the game feels overwhelmingly sluggish. The Characters are too slow, the way the dodge works is it almost makes the PC stop moving before dashing, and even then the limit on how many dodged can be done further annoys, then there's the fact that the PC stops moving completely when using their basic attack, LMB, or their spell/skill (with Q), which further amplified the sensation of slowness.
Then there's the issue of ranged attacks not working properly, because even if an enemy is on screen, and the Mage or Rogue throws a projectile at that enemy, and that projectile looks as though it collides with the enemy, it does not actually do damage. In addition to that, there is absolutely no hit feedback, or it feels as though there is no hit feedback, because enemies don't meaningfully, if at all, react to being damaged.
Another qualm with the speed of the game comes by the fact that enemies either find means of doing damage or they slow the Players down by directly slowing them down, which effect also prevents one from dodging, or causing them to experience a loss of control and locking them in hard cc (crowd control).
These things mount on top of one another and lead into a very unsatisfying gameplay loop, because it does not feel good to play and there is no engoodening of the play anywhere in sight, due to the lack of progression. In fact, out of the gamemodes presented earlier, only the DM Mode actually means anything, because the DM Tower is the tutorial… And that's all it is. There is no "adventure" to be had, nothing to be unlocked, just play the same thing again!
The worst thing about this whole ordeal, the most indicative thing of the presence of a great problem here, is the fact that whenever the Player goes into the game’s menu, while playing, therein can be found the option to turn on “Automatic Mode”, which makes the game play itself. The Computer starts playing the Player’s Character instead of them. This is just wrong.
Fortunately, the main draw of this game is not the DM Tower - it is DM Mode, which allows one Player to take on the role of a DM, while another 3 Players (or bots) take on the roles of PCs. The DM populates the dungeon (zone, area, stage) with monsters, traps and other funky things to impede the heroes (the PCs).
Ultimately, being the DM in DungeonLand is about fighting the heroes, the other three Players, and coming out on top. For that goal, the Player is provided with a slew of options - traps, towers, monsters, spells - which can be expanded through purchases made with gold, this giving the Player a reason to play as a hero, rather than as a DM, for the DM makes barely any gold by comparison to the amount made by the heroes.
When a session of DM Mode starts, the Players pick their characters, while the DM picks their cards (which are their options, be they traps, spells, towers or spawnable monsters) and sets the difficulty. The higher the difficulty, the easier it is for the DM. The lower the difficulty, the harder it is for the DM. The highest and lowest difficulties are, respectively, impossible. Why? Because on very hard the heroes die in one hit, while on very easy they take, at most, one damage when hit, and do insane amounts of damage with their own attacks.
So, when a reasonable difficulty is picked, the heroes start playing the game as was described up above, sluggishly and unfulfillingly. The DM gets the freedom to look through the entire map with their camera, as there is no character for the DM to control (yet). In addition to that, the DM draws a number of cards, which cost some mana, and also get some mana.
These cards allow the DM to put down impediments for the heroes - traps that do damage or prevent movement, towers that fire projectiles at them, spells that affect monsters in their area of effect beneficially, or even just groups of monsters. Every card costs some mana, and the DM has a limited amount of mana, which regenerates slowly. The cards are also slowly drawn out of the deck - once every 20-ish seconds - so there's a bit of tactical thinking involved with how the DM plays their cards.
One other thing that the DM has to consider is the EVIL bar, which starts off on tier 1 and empty. The DM's EVIL bar's tier decrees how effective their cards are, allowing for a monster card to spawn three enemies instead of two, as an example. In addition to that, when the EVIL bar's tier reaches 3, the DM is allowed to play one of two cards - an Elite card, which spawns a very enhanced monster, or a horde card, which spawns a lot of enemies at once. Using either of those resets the EVIL bar's tier to 1, though, so it is not as neat as it could have otherwise been.
Regardless, how does the DM generate EVIL? By having the heroes take damage. Every time the Heroes take damage, the DM gets 1 point of EVIL. The DM also gets EVIL whenever a hero is knocked down, which happens when their health reaches 0, and when a hero dies, which happens when, after being downed, a hero is not helped back up after 10 seconds.
Additionally, the last ability of the DM is to possess a monster. Doing so allows the DM to play as that monster, though the monster does not get very many bonuses so it does pretty quickly. Regardless, doing damage as the possessed monster awards 3 EVIL points, but dying as the possessed monster takes away 2 EVIL points.
Additionally, whenever the heroes pass a green, glowing line in the stage, the DM's tier goes up, a new hand of cards is drawn and their mana is replenished completely.
All that is well and good, but the real star of the show is playing as the boss monster. Whenever the heroes get through the first stage of the dungeon, they get to the boss chamber. The DM possesses the boss and gets to play as it, which brings a large number of spells that are very powerful, a large health pool to play around with, and three heroes to hit over the head. One other thing that is available is the ULTRA ability, which introduces a new, albeit temporary challenge for the heroes, acting like an ultimate ability that could be interpreted as a trump card.
Unfortunately, much like DM Tower, there is only one map. Or, rather, the map’s layout is random, not within the control of the DM, and the number of stages is also outside of the DM’s control, as a result of which it gets very, very repetitive VERY quickly.
DM Mode is the truly enjoyable way to play DungeonLand, but, unfortunately, there is only so much stuff to do before it gets knocked down to the level of playing as the heroes, to playing DM Tower. The enjoyment might come from unlocking all the bosses and playing as them a few times, but, again, there is no reason to play DungeonLand - the gameplay might be fun while possessing the boss, but the lead up to that is a lot longer and a lot less fun than playing as the boss, which leads to a net negative experience overall.
The same can be said for the hero experience - buy the weapons and check them out, buy the perks and potions and the sub-classes and check them out. Unfortunately, the process of playing is not excruciatingly fun, as a result of which one might be willing to cease activities prior to the completion of that collection.
Lastly, this multiplayer game is not playable online, as either the servers are totally down, or the steam version does not have access to them. So the game is just bogged down, monstrously, by the lack of reason to play, the slow and unsatisfying gameplay, the lack of ability to play with friends - which is a major reason to play this game in particular - as a result of which it fails in most aspects. 1/3
Presentation
This game is a top-down hack and slash, presenting 3D models as the Characters and enemies on a 3D playing field that does not feature any verticality. The game makes use of bright colors but, unfortunately, makes its characters ugly in the same way MediEvil: Resurrection made its characters ugly.
However, while the Characters in the aforementioned game were caricatures done in good faith and had loads of character to them as a redeeming quality, the characters in DungeonLand are simply ugly and are also presented as unpleasant and nasty.
The only thing that is not caricaturesquely ugly are the sets and backdrops for the adventures. The areas that get explored look very quaint and the bright colors give them that extra oomph that really injects life into them.
Visually, the game is a mixed bag - it's ugly, but it's also pretty. When it comes to audio, it's also a mixed bag. There are sound effects, which sound effects are purely satisfactory and there is nothing outstanding about them, and there is music, which is loud and cheerful and evocative of medieval times, but that's about it - it is not good, but it is not bad.
However, what the PCs say, and they often say some things, and the voices put on by the voice actors when things are said, are just bothersome. It is evident that the caricature of the 'nerd' is being used and forced into the game, but making the Player Characters unpleasant, stinky nerds, who speak in an annoying manner and constantly get insulted by the DM (who says things now and again) is a surefire way of making one not enjoy the game's audio, because these Characters are supposed to be a representation of the Player, and no one likes being insulted in that context!
DungeonLand introduces the Player to its game after the Player manages to get into the game through a series of text boxes and a special tutorial mission. A lot of information is well conveyed to the Player, but at the same time not enough information is conveyed.
The basics of movement are presented, the controls and how things are done are all introduced well enough. However, the Player is not told that there is a limit to how many times they can use a certain ability - the dodge - in a row. They are not told what different color sheep do, or what bit sheep do.
Information is presented, but it is not presented completely - a lot of intel needs to be given to the Player, especially when one considers that this game looks like it is trying to appeal to children, what with its colorful appearance and whimsical music. Unfortunately, the Player is kept in the dark about many things. What are Challenges? What does raising Difficulty do? Why is the Mage's RMB ability not infinite - there is no indicator that it is getting depleted or ending!
Not only that, but when some information is presented - such as with what difficulty means in DM Mode - a lot of information is held back, and that is incredibly problematic, especially when it directly affects the amount of enjoyment derived from the experience.
Now, even though this game does quite a few things… Badly, in regards to presentation, it still does more things good than it does bad, as a result of which I feel it should get a slight bump above the average. 2/3
Story
There is no story, or at least there is no explicitly presented sorry. There are a few tidbits here and there about the fact that everything that is going ok in the game is happening in a big amusement park based around Dungeons (and dragons?)
The visitors are all loser nerds who stink horribly, and they're experiencing being heroes through these events… But that's all. It's literally not even there, it's more of an afterthought or just a means to get the fantasy, the concept of the game across. 0/3
Legendary Point
Does this game get the legendary point, so craved and wanted by all and none at the same time? No, it clearly does not. There was a concept, a very interesting concept, but it's incredibly far from being where it needed to be. 0/1
Conclusion
3/10. An abandoned, unpolished and very lacking game. With friends, it would have definitely been fun, but due to the fact there are no friends to play with, aside from one’s own fingers, it is thoroughly lacking in any entertainment, aside from the sheer concept itself. Do not play it.
On the wall of shame I hang it, as a reminder to all who breathe - multiplayer games need Gameranger support from day 1.