Desktop Dungeons

4 Rogue: The Puzzling
Desktop Dungeons is not what most people think of when they think of roguelike games. There’s no ascii interface, no endless list of command keys, and only one “level” per game. Everything is controlled smoothly by the mouse, and it’s simple enough to start that your mother could likely pick it up in about five minutes.

Of course, all of that merely exists to lull you into a sense of security before it smacks you to pieces. Desktop Dungeons is less a roguelike, and more a puzzle game where careful balancing of resources is the key to winning. Enemies? They’re resources – XP. And only by defeating opponents of a higher level than you can you even manage to get close to the boss’ level, something that takes careful planning to manage. Uncovered ground? A resource – as when you first uncover a square in the dungeon, you heal health and mana. Spells? Resources, that can be converted to health, mana, or attack bonuses depending on your race. And this is besides the normal mana/health potions and gold.

With so many factors to juggle, Desktop Dungeons is very tricky, and yet it’s not a game that’s fantastically balanced. In the first dungeon, it’s easy to rack up a win with the Priest class by picking on zombies, since they’re completely shredded by his class ability. Warriors are at a distinct disadvantage, as while they can detect the location of enemies of equal or lower level, they have no damage boost like most of the other classes do, just an ability that lets them cheat death once a game – handy, but it seems counterintuitive for the warrior to be worse in a fight than the thief is.

That being said, balance isn’t really a game breaking thing here, it just means that it’s harder to use some classes than others – and since this is, at heart, a puzzle game, that’s all fine and dandy. There’s enough to unlock that you’ll be busy for a while trying to get it all, and the multiple tile sets are humorous, to say the least.

A good time for anyone who likes roguelikes and/or point and click puzzle games a la Bejewled. And also likes losing a great deal, over and over again, until you finally figure out some way to squeak by with a victory.