Dungeon Heroes

An obvious "my first game" release, Dungeon Heroes is a Gauntlet clone with some serious flaws that mar an otherwise functional little romp. Some classes have flawed interactions (the Knight has very little they can do to explosive spiders, for example). The range of enemies is spiders, which is a bit repetitive. The user interface choices are a bit unintuitive - it's difficult to tell when or if you've taken damage. Shops are placed early, and replace getting character upgrades for a level, which effectively reduces them to just choosing a fixed upgrade versus choices of upgrades. Refilling health at the end of a level is redundant - your friends can just help you back up, so it should only be chosen before the final boss (another spider). Given a few tweaks, this could be a fun hour-long little title. But as it stands, it feels half-finished; it doesn't need more features, it's a simple, free game. It just needs a little refining to be good. It has potential, but it's not quite living up to it.

Dungeon Heroes is a local co-op dungeon crawler where you can play as either Knight, a Rogue, a Mage and a Bard. I will preface my review by saying that I do believe this game has a lot of potential. The game was made by university students, likely as a group project. However, from the perspective of a player I feel like there are areas that could be improved. The replay value depends on largely who is willing to play this game with you, as the game doesn't feel as fun to play solo. Although this is an option which is nice for the lone gamer. The sound design is good, seems fitting for a fantasy RPG game. The textures are okay, but some of the lighting or shadows don't feel natural. It would be nice if different rooms had more variety such as cobwebs, different items, make them seem more ruined or mossy etc. Right now there are way too many crates and barrels that it doesn't feel even feel fun to break them. Another thing to note is that the coins aren't very visible on the stone floor. This could be easily fixed in different ways (such as giving them more contrast, making them spin, making them glow or giving them an outline just to name a few). It would be nice to have different difficulty options. Currently the enemies feel too easy and predictable. There is only one style of enemy: big and small spider. Sometimes the AI doesn't function, the enemies can ignore you. The Mage's familiar skill doesn't target enemies around it just directly in front so you need to be careful with positioning it. The melee characters don't feel good in this game. The combat feels lethargic, and the coins seem worthless since there are so many given. The character and UI designs are fine, but feel inconsistent. For example, they all have different eye styles. In the adventure log, the Knight is drawn in a different style too. I like the way the tokens look. Some of the animations are nice; like the loading animation, some of them feel too stiff. It feels too inconsistent. Overall, I do have hope for this game still. I feel like with some improvements it can be more fleshed-out and fun. The game isn't very original and as another reviewer pointed out, it seems to take a lot of inspiration from the Gauntlet game series. It could be a standalone with some more stylisation. I could see this being a party game, but it would need more polishing because in its current state it really feels like an Early Access release. [b]2/10[/b]