Drawngeon: Dungeons of Ink and Paper

classic rpg gameplay with a neat style

I really want to recommend this game for the novelty of it. It looks great, it's pretty stable and it's a perfectly functional dungeon crawler for its price tag. But, this is a case of the emotion response just not matching the quality, I just keep feeling underwhelmed. On the bright side, Drawngeon is a by-the-books Rogue-lite dungeon crawl. You explore randomly generated mazes collecting items to boost your stats to fight more monsters. But this loop is very much hindered by a lack of progression and guidance. Following a single tutorial quest to kill spiders I haven't seen another line of meaningful dialog or quests. The game takes place in a single town where dungeons are scattered throughout the buildings. At the bottom floor of each dungeon is a rare chest or artifact. But heck if I know where I'm supposed to go. I've completed 6+ dungeons but I don't feel closer to any goals. I can only guess at what the stats do, half of the items I don't know how to use, and the only way to know the level of a dungeon is to fight something and hope the creature dies before you do. At this point, I'm pretty sure I can beat the final dungeon because I'm OP... but I don't have clue where or how to find it. There is some cool metagame leveling where you'll gain more starting skill points and items but the difficulty just isn't hard enough to justify the system. Once you learn the mechanics, it's easy to stay alive. You're going to beat the game within a few tries... so why would you need an easier start? Despite the negative tone here, I really do like Drawngeon. It just feels like a polished ludem dare game or another rapid game jam project. It's a fantastic start to a game, but it doesn't feel like a complete satisfying experience yet.

Not Bad...fun little semi-rogue like, casual.... Only problem is the gaming fatigue....from watching drawings.. sorry all

First of all, don't let my hours fool you, I've played a good bit offline and on my Nintendo Switch. Now back to your regularly scheduled review. This game is quite good. It doesn't take very long to play through (maybe 5 hours, tops), but it does have enough randomization and such that it is very replayable. It does have a good amount of depth, with three unique classes, plenty of different loot, and several different types of enemies. I own it on Switch and PC, and I've beat the game once. It does have some roguelite elements, like when you die, you are dead forever, although you can use "metapoints" to buy loot to give you a boost on your next run. The run where I finally beat it only took me 1.5 hours, although it doesn't end your run just by winning. There's still plenty of caves and such to explore. Pro tip: Go into the caves and dungeons, and try and level your character up to at least level 10 before you go into the tower. Oh, and [spoiler] the ending is probably one of the most surprising I've ever seen in a video game[/spoiler] [h1] PROS [/h1] - lots of depth for such a small game - low price - unique style - cool (albeit short) story [h1] CONS [/h1] - gameplay could be a bit repetitive for some - very occasional minor bugs, never much more than slightly annoying though - controls with a controller are pretty horrendous, on switch it was fine because I could use the touch screen to drag things, but it would drive me crazy if I was only using a controller. The game is really made for mouse and keyboard. - some level design is a bit confusing, especially on [spoiler] the last part of the tower where the walls move. It drove me crazy for like 5 minutes until I figured out you can just walk through them [/spoiler] [h1][b]TL;DR[/b][/h1] You should buy it, it's a great value and a phenomonal game.

Ok, I know what you are thinking. This can't be a real game. Now listen - it's a concept. Wanna get some ideas on what you can achieve? Buy this game, play for a few hours and get inspired, then go and get creative. That's it - it's not meant for you spend hundreds of hours in it. You don't get monthly subs, new DLCs every week, none of that. Previous RPG experience required.

Игра будто сошла с полей в тетрадке. :3