In "Dungeon Marathon", you're running through dungeons (dubbed "gyms" by the game) to find the exit. Your health bar is always depleting, and depletes faster when you sprint. Obviously, huge chunks also come off your health if you come into contact with enemies or traps, though not every floor has both. To get the best rating on each floor, you need to collect all the apples (which restore your health), as well as avoid being hit by an enemy. Most of the traps don't seem to bar you from a three-star rating, but there is one specific trap (the traveling pucks - not the official name, just what I can think to call them off the cuff) that will bar you from a three-star rating if it hits you. Getting three stars is ideal, especially on Hard mode, since this is what will unlock extra characters, gold payouts, the ability to carry two items in addition to armor instead of one, and a bigger wallet. In order to win the game, you need to three star all the floors in the final gym.
On normal and above, there is a poison mechanic that comes into play. Each apple gives you a certain % of poison, and when your poison level reaches 100%, that character is permanently dead for the rest of that run. You reset your poison level to 0% by purchasing a detox potion for 999 gold in a cave neatly placed behind the other purchasable items. This is the only way to actually lose a character, as regular death in a floor just makes that attempt a failure. I only ever lost a character once, and had the three backup characters when it happened, so I don't know with 100% certainty what happens when you have them all permadie - my assumption is that it will erase your progress for that run and you will need to start over. It's also worth mentioning that sometimes - and it does seem to be a totally random event - all the apples in a floor will be replaced with some other kind of pickup. They act the same, in the sense that they restore your health, and you need to collect them all to get the three star rating, but they don't have any poison vvalue attached to them. I have no idea what triggered them, if they showed up and I re-entered that floor, they'd be gone, so from my understanding, it's totally random.
Although characters have different art to represent their classes (the game has a Warrior, Valkyrie, Wizard and Dwarf) and slightly different stats (ie. the Wizard is the fastest, but has the lowest HP), they essentially end up acting as nothing more than extra lives. I only lost a character to permadeath through the poison mechanic once - the Warrior on my Normal playthrough. I ended up finishing with the Dwarf. On my Hard playthrough, I used the Warrior, and never needed to substitute in another character. It would have been nice to have the Hard mode unlocked from the beginning, simply because of how easy the other modes are. If you have any interest in the game, I would recommend against doing what I did, which was starting on Easy, and starting with Normal. The game isn't much more difficult in Normal than Easy, and then if you like it enough after completing it on Normal, you have the unlocked Hard mode to clear.
There is a good amount of floor recycling going on here, several floors are the same as previous ones, sometimes with nothing more than color swaps or additional traps/enemies being placed to add intensity to the same layouts. Other times it'll be identical layouts, except the start and finish are put in a different section of the floor, or there will be a switch where a key was on the other version of the almost entirely identical layout.
The game is good for a quick distraction, though it feels like it's a mobile game due to its simplicity. This isn't a bad thing, I'm only stating this because I was surprised to see it wasn't actually a mobile port, but a title that is currently only available on PC. I chose to play the game on Easy at first. I didn't think I would get hooked like I did, and was just looking for something to kill an hour. Once I cleared it on Easy (which took about 90 minutes), I was greeted with a screen telling me to beat the game on a harder difficulty. I enjoyed the first run enough, and still had time, so I went back through it on Normal to see if anything was different. Aside from the poison mechanic, it's the same game. Also, since I already had knowledge of the floor layouts from just beating it on Easy, Normal only took me 45 minutes, and when I followed with the unlocked Hard mode, I beat it in ~40 minutes due to the time saved of not losing a character.
The only difference I could tell between Normal and Hard was that on Hard, monsters will kill you if they touch you, and traps do a lot more damage. The game is very much on the easy side. It could have used more mechanics to make the play more lively, for example if there were hazards that could only be avoided by jumping (there is no jump mechanic in the game, which does make the decision-making process when running a lot simpler than it otherwise could have been). It also would've been better if the game was an auto-runner on all floors, the top-down levels are auto-runners only but the game would've been more challenging if even the isometric floors were auto-runners. As it is, if you ever feel overwhelmed during an isometric floor and you have the space, you can just stop and plot your course. There is a map of each floor that's available for viewing from the floor selection screen, but there is no way to view this when playing a floor. This does add some difficulty to the game since you need to memorize the layout in order to be successful, but it isn't a huge boost in difficulty. Again the game overall is very much on the easy side. I would have liked to see more obstacles at play here, and for enemies to have attacks that needed to be avoided.
The fairy achievement seems to be glitched right now, they're the only ones I'm missing. Kill one, no achievement. Kill two at once, no achievement. Kill three at once, no achievement. The rest of the achievements are things that you're likely going to be forced to unlock if you play on Hard, since on the lower difficulties it didn't seem like three-starring every floor was essential.
I played in 1920x1080 resolution with no frame issues. No input response issues, and I tested with both keyboard and a 360 gamepad, which was instantly detected. I liked the sound effect design, especially the sounds when picking up apples, but most of the music is very much forgettable. The art is simple, but it gets the job done. If this had more in the box and a higher degree of difficulty - in a fair sense, not an "overtuned for the sake of being overtuned" sort - this could have been a really outstanding title. As it is, I'm comfortable giving it a 7/10.
Hard difficulty, final gym:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGjQlxI4G4M
