Dungeonmans

TL:dr; There is a game here, with a solid foundation. Unfortunatelly, the forced humour is not funny and the forced death mechanics even less. Only on sale and if you have nothing better to play. Graphics: 7/10 Graphics is decent on a first glance, but something about it is offputting. Either small fonts, lack of status signaling, I can't quite tell you what exactly - but something is missing here. Sounds: 7/10 Seems like sounds used by public libraries, which is fine by me. Music is meh, no VO. Otherwise sound does not seem to be any issue here. Gameplay: 4/10 Ok so meta progression with building the academy is good concept, on paper. In execution however, most of these rooms are visual or one-time use and it is hard to understand what you are gaining by actually improving them. Combat and movement is pretty standard, which is good. Magic is very limited, skills, and skill trees are virtually not existent. So few passive skills in here. Items fall into two categories - useful and useless. Thrid category is Legendary, a rare drop that you will maybe see once or twice. There is no smithing or alchemy other than via npcs, enchanting is limited and very weird, although some of it is nicely tied to the academy progress. So far, there is nothing very bad in here, although it would be great to have more skills and some decent crafting/alchemy mechanism. But then two major issues. The major mechanics of the game. Meta progression is tied to your character dying. Which sounds okay until you play a bit and realize that your best run ended out of the sudden because in the dungeon where you were wiping the floor with enemies, one of the encountered champions killed your well equipped toon with two hits. Since you don't know monster stats, since you don't know how hard they will hit you until they do, since you can't neither guess how hard monster is nor run away from the enemy, your character will simply die in this encounter. Initially I thought that it was a skill issue or bad rng on my part. But that happened to each and every character - one champion mob (a stronger version of regular mob) suddently killed them in few hits. I've realized that game enforces death of your character very early in the adventure, by simply spawning overpowered mobs without warning. And that just feels bad. Sure, die because you were too cocky. Die, because you run out of potions or forgot to use a skill or used it too early. You get dungeon sense warning about group of champions, but you will most likely be able to get them. You do not get a warning about a single champion mob with a company of a regular monster, which will kill your character in two hits. It is not cool. It does feel bad. It breaks your immersion, breaks your progression, forcing you to start over (but you can't use the same name for a toon again!). What's worse is that even if by a miracle you will escape that particular enemy, and try go elsewhere to grind exp and gold for better gear, you just cannot do it. You do not get a chance to enter lower level dungeons, you can ignore or clear them instantly for miniscule gain. And if you go to another similar level dungeon... you will encounter another toon-slayer at some point without a warning! So in conclusion, the main mechanics of the game that forces hero death is very not fun. But you know what else is not fun? The second major issue with this game is the build-in humour. Or rather, total lack of it. Skill names and descriptions, Item names and descriptions, dialogues, flavor text... it all is supposed to be funny, but is dreadfully lame. It is hard for me to think of other game with humour that bad, maybe only Dungeons of Dreadmor? So in conclusion you get a game, that could be fantastic, but crappy humour and forced sudden death just ruins it.