Dredmor or less
Dungeons of Dredmor is an indie Roguelike created by Gaslamp Games now available on Steam. Despite commanding a minor price tag of $5 dollars Dungeons of Dredmor is anything but light on content offering hypothetically infinite hours of game-play with randomized dungeons, loot, enemies, bosses and 34 skills in which to mix and match to create a hero truly unique each game.
The premise of the game is simply, you are a young male with large eyebrows sent to the depths of the titular dungeon in order to defeat evil lord Dredmor. When you start up the game you have the ability to choose three difficulty settings, if you want perma-death on or off and then assign your hero 7 of the 34 skills. Do you want to be a classic warrior with the ability to smith and go in a berserk rage with two axes, or maybe you want to be a powerful wizard with an interest in fungus and blood magic? The choice is up to you.
Far warning: this game is hard. Granted is is not as punishing as classic roguelikes such as Nethack, it is still a challenging game offering old favorites like boss monsters, traps and monster zoos. Despite only having 10 levels you will be exploring each for upwards of 30 minutes to an hour and at any time you may be overwhelmed, causing you to have to dealve into the dungeons yet again. The game is not meant to be beat in the first sitting, its meant to be a process of understanding challanges, items and monsters so each time you may go a little further.
In addition to stapes of the genre there is also crafting skills such as smithing and tinkering allowing you to create new items from seemingly worthless dungeon items as well as a side quest system accessible from randomly generated statues in the game.
Graphically Dungeons of Dredmor is average. It's a shame that the character can look so good but still not be able to show any of the gear you equip. This is clearly a problem with updating the graphics of a roguelike as i've never wanted it from any of my Nethack characters (shown here: @).
Musically the game is hit or miss. While i love the tunes offered i have heard people muting the game as little as 20 minutes into it.
As of 19/07/2011 there are also a number of bugs such as music changing in contact with monster zoos and the steam overlay not working, however Gaslight Games has stated on their twitter that a patch is incoming expected sometime after the 20th of the July.
In closing, Dungeons of Dredmor is a fantastic game for only $5 dollars. Assuming you only measure the quality of a game in time spent (shame on you!) you will be getting more then your moneys worth. If you are a fan of the Roguelike genre then Dungeons of Dredmor is a must purchase however longtime fans who have acquired the amulet of yendor time and time again may find the game too easy for their taste.
