Dungeon Rushers Early Access Review

Introduction

The game combines dungeon crawler’s gameplay and turn-based fights and tries to make it in a fun way. As in all RPGs you can manage your team and craft mighty gear to equip them! And what’s more you can also build your own dungeons with monsters and traps and challenge other players to clean it.

Over the course of this epic quest, explore many dungeons and loot their guarded treasures. Build your own team by choosing the best hero combination to overcome traps and monsters lurking in the shadows. Upgrade the skills of your heroes to make them even more fearsome and place them strategically to achieve victory. Craft your equipment on your own with components gathered during your journey thanks to an advanced system consisting of six different craftsmen. Right now the game costs 9,99$ on Steam.

The Story

Elian is the main character and leader of the party in the story’s campaign. He works as a janitor until he decides that there must be a better way how to enjoy his life. He speaks of wealth and fame to his employer who laughs in his face. And that was the last day that Elian would settle for a boring life. He sets out to Rush Dungeons.

Over the course of the game, Elian will go into these dangerous crypts, manors, and caves to fight the monsters that dwell within. But he won’t do it alone. Several people will join him on his journey. My favorite was the character Pod, an obnoxious bard that takes advantage of people and thinks far too highly of himself. The story is very simple but you cannot expect something like Mass Effect from this kind of game.

gameplay

The game is easy to learn. Click to move, click to attack. It is refreshingly simple. The first thing I noticed about the game was its appealing graphics. Each of the characters is well designed, as is the backgrounds and interface. With the music added, it gives the feeling of classic dungeon crawlers and RPG’s. One thing I certainly appreciated was the humor. Some of the fights that take place between your party and an enemy are preceded by hilarious dialogue. 

Rather than relying solely on the random loot system to obtain gear, you’re able to craft equipment and items shortly after the tutorial. Due to my awful luck, I rarely found equipment in dungeons so the crafting feature kept the balance by allowing me to turn the bones of my enemies into new weapons. The ‘Shop’ allows you to purchase equipment and crafting items, just in case you need something to craft something immediately. These features are important because, without them, you would have to rely entirely on random dungeon loot survive or to simply play the game.

Not all dungeons are the same, of course. Some of the dungeons are randomly generated while others are pre-made. Of course, all dungeons are repeatable so you’ll never run out of something to do. The ability to make your own dungeons is also a feature. It encourages creative people to try their hand at creating a challenging yet fun part of the game.

difficulty and REPETITIVENESS 

However, the game isn’t nearly perfect. After only the first twenty minutes of the game, I had almost fully experienced all it had to offer. The monsters, the backgrounds, and dungeons all became a repetitive nightmare as the dungeons turned into a chore instead of enjoyable gameplay. Skeleton after skeleton fell to me in every dungeon. It was a painfully boring process that never seemed to end and had no significant payout, aside from randomly generated loot (basic crafting materials) and the typical dialogue between characters.

The game is painfully easy. It offers little to no challenge. Most of the strategy comes from managing your potions and stamina rather than the actual battles. Nearly all enemies thus far can be defeated in two hits and do very little damage. I had to actually go out of my way to failing a fight, just so I could see what the penalty was for dying. There wasn’t a penalty, but I simply just had to restart the dungeon. There is a heroic mode offered for each dungeon once you complete the bonus objectives for the normal mode but I found that it offered no more challenge and didn’t even offer a reward.

While there wasn’t any reason to change graphic settings or controls, I went to see if I could. Unfortunately, there wasn’t any option to. I could change my resolution though (which is an obligation for developers). 

What’s Missing

Something is absent from Dungeon Rushers that needs to make these carbon-copy dungeons enjoyable. I suppose that the missing piece of the puzzle depends on the player. Personally, I enjoy passive aspects of game and character development. By that, I mean speaking with other characters (dialogue trees are a necessity), choosing options that ultimately affect the main character, such as morality options and friendship choices. Even if that weren’t a part of the game, perhaps the ability to visit towns and walk around rather than just clicking the button that says ‘Shop’. Regardless of the player’s personal preference, it’s clear that something important is missing to the gameplay and I truly hope that it will be added in the non-beta release.

Conclusion

Outside of the game, the development team has stated that they plan to evolve the game based on the feedback of their players. This tells me that they care about the title and want to make sure that players have the opportunity to have a part in the development process. As far as I’m concerned, that’s as important as any in-game feature.

Dungeon Rushers is a game that has an amazing amount of potential to be fun. I would like to compare it to South Park: The Stick of Truth because the combat gameplay is so similar. However, unlike the other title, Dungeon Rushers isn’t able to keep me entertained after two battles, much less the five to thirty that it takes to complete some dungeons. Nonetheless, the game, in its current state, is well developed and I haven’t noticed a single bug, glitch, or sign of bad production. Despite that there isn’t much present in the game for a player to experience, the features are all well done and I think that the development team would be wasting a huge opportunity not to improve on what’s there.

Based on all of this, I would recommend the game in its current state to people looking to play a game as it develops to support the development team. If this were a game in its full release, I wouldn’t be able to honestly support it. But because it is in its beta stages and I trust the development team to fill in the lacking areas of the game, I can honestly say that this is a game that’s worth buying.