Dungeon Scavenger

[h1] A Refreshing Dungeon Crawl[/h1] One of the things I hate about modern old school dungeon crawls is the grind. Why do all that work for a cheesy story? We old schoolers had to endure this in the early era of RPGs and many of us don’t want to go back. Thankfully, with this game grinding is optional. The combat is balanced enough so you can finish the main quest in about 5hrs. If you want to grind you can. There is an option to keep leveling up your town and to do endless meaningless tavern quests. Obviously, such grinding is expected if you want those achievos. If that’s what you are after…. expect a good 40+hrs of game time. No doubt the replay factor is all there. The dungeons are always randomly generated. It would have been cool if there were new random boss battles for each level you bring the town into, but I don’t expect much from a 5-dollar game. The price is just right for this small adventure

I'm old. It's true. I didn't actually ride a mastodon to school, but only because it took so long to push the boulder out of our front cave. I'm so old I grew up playing rogue-like ascii symbol games. So, in this new world of advanced 3D and VR graphics games, my heart remains open to the simple classic of a pure dungeon crawler. And here it is! Dungeon Scavenger doesn't make you ferret out complex, multi-branched plotlines. It's just a straightforward crawl, kill and level dungeon game. And it does it really well. With a nice variety of ever-increasingly strong monsters and some variance in mechanics (such as each "pet" you capture and put in the zoo increases the power of the next one you capture), you can have a nice, pleasant trip into a straightforward dungeon and kill to your heart's delight. It's not bare bones, though. The skill gradients are quite developed and there are more "perks" that compound the power of the skills. Plus, it's a single character game, so you can concentrate on trying the different variations to maxing your character. Multiple different classes makes replaying interesting. The actual main storyline is pretty quick, so it's all about the crawling. Battles become pretty easy once you hit a certain level, so the game offers different levels of difficulty to compensate. I really love this little game for its simplicity and playability. And the nostalgia, of course. It makes me feel somewhat better for never getting that ride on the mastodon way back when.

Liking this game so far! Have found some pretty serious bugs, but developers fixed them the same day. If developers keep this level of focus, I can see many people enjoying this game.

RECOMMENDED : Ratings 8/10 (Very Enjoyable, Great price to enjoyment ratio). Dungeon Scavenger was a really fun and enjoyable Rogue-like dungeon crawler that I enjoy very much. This game provides an interesting twists the the regular rogue-like dungeon crawler, using many different game mechanics. There is also great replayability because the user can chose to play one of 8 interesting classes, which are extremely different in all aspect. There are also 4 different difficulty mode and the "Impossible" difficulty is as the name suggest : it's impossible to play it directly. The challenge is to support your character in the impossible mode with money and other resources from your other character. I spend many hours farming "skill point potions" using my other characters and then sending them over to the character in impossible mode. Getting all the achievement is extremely difficult in this game, because of the last achievement called "The Elf". This achievement require you to maxed out all ability skills for a single character which is close to impossible. To maxed out all your ability skills, you will need 160 skill points. However, when you get to maxed level (level 30 for your character) you will only get 60 skill points. So, you will need another 100 skill points which can only be obtain by farming "skill point potions". This is a rare drop at the lowest level of the dungeon, by killing bosses. It can also be obtained as a quest rewards but will require quite a bit of work as well. So, I played all 8 character with different profession to maxed level, and used them to beat the game for all the profession achievements. In doing so, I also saved up on any skill potions that I obtained, and then send them over to one character to increased the skill level for "The Elf" achievement. It took me several days of farming just to get this. Considering that it was only selling for $5, and I played 96 hours on this really fun game, just to get all the achievements. This game more than exceed my expectations. I definitely recommend this game if you want to spend many delightful evenings on a fun-filled $5 game.

This is a menu- and numbers-heavy Mordor/Demise-like RPG. If you haven't played Mordor or Demise I wouldn't blame you, so in more generic terms, it's a hack and slash RPG with randomized dungeons and slightly randomized (basically elemental affinities) equipment. This is *not* a roguelike, modern or otherwise. There is only the most cursory resource management: "stamina" dictates how many steps you can take in the dungeon before you start taking damage, but there are myriad ways to extend, mitigate, or ignore it. There is, of course, the ubiquitous gold, XP, and HP. Experience raises your level, progressing you along a linear track which grants passive bonuses, and also apparently gives you points to spend toward "perks," though maybe this is a feature of the DLC since I've yet to find the interface for doing so. What's notably missing is a special resource like Mana, or even Vancian spells per day. You can cast anything at any time you want. This is extra puzzling considering you can cast your spells while outside of combat, giving you buffs that last til you leave the dungeon or rest. Except... there is no mana, so it's just about remembering to cast these, not actually making the tactical choice to use resources to cast these. In other words, why aren't these just always-on passive bonuses to relieve the tedium? With no resource management, combat feels strange, since you just spam the ability that reports the highest damage. Magic schools are actually just big, monolithic spells, so if your character can use "Fire Magic" it means they can cast "Fire," which does fire damage and applies a stacking burn. Each spell also comes with a side-effect, like Fire's burn, or Stone's ability to reduce the physical damage enemies can deal. But that's about it. All the spells do the same damage, so it comes down to elemental resistances and/or which debuffs you need. Each encounter seems to be the same, tactically speaking. It's you (and your pet, if you capture/summon one) versus one enemy. Never more. There is no decision on kill order, debuffs, crowd control, anything. You kill the guy in front of you. That's it. There are a plethora of skills and stats and mechanics, mostly straight out of Mordor (but who cares since they're cool mechanics like monster capture and the Zoo), but with the rubber-to-road game being so extraordinarily basic, it's a struggle to really, well, care. There's not even a sense of actually exploring the dungeon, since it's just a 2D grid you click around on, one square at a time, that shows you an icon for fight, treasure, or event. Whoopee. In the end, there is, overall, just not a lot here. You can do 1v1 fights ad infinitum, and get better at 1v1 fights ad infinitum, but that's about it.

Looking good. A nice little dungeon crawler game, that relies mostly on combat and random events occuring in the dungeons. There is a lot of classes to choose from and the game can get pretty complex at the start. But once you get past that point it's strangely addictive to try and reach the lower floors. Recommended.

SHORT REVIEW This is an old school Dungeon Crawler in a randomised dungeon and the “plot” is basically “go and clear the dungeon out”. Its very simple and makes a good “filler” game between something a bit more substantial. PLOT: Basically “go and clear the dungeon out”, its that simple. COMBAT: Very basic “point and click”. GRAPHICS & SOUND: Okay but nothing to write home about. Certainly more than adequate for the game though. The monster graphics on the top levels are poor but improve markedly the further down the dungeon you get. REPLAY VALUE: Excellent, multiple character classes and the dungeon is randomised. ISSUES AND BUGS: None. Works “straight out of the box” and appears to be bug free. ACHIEVEMENTS AND TRADING CARDS: Partial integration with the Steam platform, Steam achievements for those interested but no trading cards. VALUE FOR MONEY: Excellent as the game is very reasonably priced and the DLC is included with the base game as standard. It doesn't tend to come round with much of a discount in sales but as its only 1/10th the price of a new AAA release to start with that's hardly unexpected. LONG REVIEW This is an old school Dungeon Crawler in a randomised dungeon and the “plot” is basically “go and clear the dungeon out”. Its very simple (possibly a bit too simple if I'm honest, a little more variety in spells would have been nice) but manages to remain a challenge at the same time. The have managed to maintain the difficulty at the right level throughout. If you clear each dungeon level as you go you stay on the power curve, there is no need for the “grind” that some games suffer from. Clearing a level gives you enough equipment and XP to progress to the next without the need for replaying levels multiple times. I really like the fact that this game is totally honest about what it is. Its an old school Dungeon Crawler in a randomised dungeon and the “plot” is basically “go and clear the dungeon out”. It doesn't try to be anything else.

TL;DR: Simple and relaxing dungeon crawler that can see you putting in dozens of hours on a single class run, let alone twelve of them. Dungeon Scavenger is one of those gems of a game that fully embodies the old adage of 'less is more'. Although the forward face of the game makes it seem like an outdated slog, in practice it proves to be a highly enjoyable experience. Gameplay consists of moving a highlighted square across a randomized grid layout with encounters that differ every time you rest and/or reset the dungeon through events; whereas combat is simply pressing buttons with the goal of maximizing damage output and minimizing damage taken through the use of class-specific spells and enhancements to increase your strength or hinder that of your enemy. While seemingly lackluster at first the combat will eventually reveal itself to be far more involved through its use of varying enemy resistances, and a sizable amount buffs and debuffs to utilize or defend against. Meanwhile the Inferno DLC provides a full-fledged expansion which introduces a variety of new additions to the game that greatly increases the diversity of gameplay. Sure, 10 levels, some perks, more equipment, and buffs for said equipment doesn't sound like much at first; but really it more than doubles the amount of content available for you to play with. Ultimately, Dungeon Scavenger is a nostalgic and relaxing game that you can really sink your teeth into for a ridiculous amount of time. At the time of this review I've managed to clock in over 30 hours, and while I've finished the main quest a few times I haven't come close to beating the DLC levels. (Mostly due to my incessant need to only do Ironman runs.) Paired with the fact that I'm currently working on completing a run with just one of the twelve available classes, I expect to enjoy this game for a lot longer. Did I mention that it has touch support? Slap it on a mobile device if you're so inclined. Otherwise, I highly recommend it even if you want nothing more than an easy time sink from the game. It's a little over (CAD)$13 for both the game and DLC, so you can't go wrong on the investment. Edit: I forgot to mention my great appreciation for the developer consistently updating the game with many quality of life improvements and bug fixes. Thank you for your hard work!

This is the most 1996 game I've played since 1996.

This game may look a bit basic, but it is surprisingly well made. I love how all of the "damage rolls" are displayed before you pick your action. This turns an RPG into more of a strategy game, since you can do the math to determine what you want to do next. Great game to relax to.