Dimlight Dungeon

I had chosen my fate before my hiatus of reviews, and little did I know it would be such an impetuous return; despite the game's minuscule length, I was repeatedly interred by its simplicity and non-partisan cheese. Combat is a slippery slope of stun-locks and spacing; if ever I found myself in the top left quadrant of an enemies range, I was as good as dead. This difficulty was exacerbated by my lack of dashing vertically, and moreover the ergonomics of 'WASD' and L-Shift is given too much credit, although that's a feature of the broader culture that I don't necessarily fault you for. The game is a mash-fest beater, a style of Nerve gameplay that's actually quite fun the more mindless it becomes; scrawny gamers love to feel physically validated by Mario Party mini-games, but if those were to add so much as a movement component to those games, it quickly loses its flavor and becomes too precise for its own good. Landing combos on a group of enemies might do well to give even more control of the situation so as to feel less managerial and essential to survival, and enemies could be given better ranged options to counteract that control rather than steal it upfront. Running through waves in Castle Crashers instills a sense of endurance rather than mindfulness, and without the sunk cost coin-op of arcades like Turtles in Time or The Simpsons, that endurance has been eased into modern sensibilities. This is a similar mood to the "musou" style of Dynasty Warriors, which is certainly a more playful, less serious tone, but a heuristic flow of fun nevertheless. Dimlight Dungeon gets a C for Crash Course Castle.