Heroes of the Monkey Tavern

Basic, no-frills dungeon crawler that's nonetheless competent, especially on sale. Recommended.

My experience of 'blobbers' (that is, first-person dungeon crawlers where your party moves as a single 'blob') is pretty limited. I've dabbled in a handful but never got to the end of one. It's a genre that I like more in theory than in practice - although I like the idea of them, I find many of them too long, too punishing, or both. Enter Heroes of the Monkey Tavern, which captures most of the key aspects of a good blobber (including both non-trivial combat and some environmental puzzles) but streamlines the whole thing. In some ways this is a bad thing - you choose your characters' classes but after that have no say in what happens when they gain levels - but mostly works out as a net positive, at least for me. You only ever have quite a small number of abilities and consumable items. Combat is mostly one-to-one (or one-to-blob, at least) with none of the ridiculous being mobbed by 396 enemies that you get in some games (that's not an exaggeration either). While the game isn't easy and it does make you work for some of your wins, with even routine grunts presenting a credible danger to your party, it's not so difficult than even an inexperienced novice like me can get through it with some effort and cunning cheese tactics. It also has an easy mode (which I probably should have used, in hindsight). A playthrough clocked in at just under 8 hours for me, thereby managing to avoid not only excessive difficulty but excessive length too. Is it a classic of the genre? No, probably not. But not every game has to be. What it does manage to be is a mostly enjoyable few hours of first-person dungeon crawling that's accessible enough for people who haven't spent countless hours honing their skills in the likes of Wizardry.

This has the makings of a good little dungeon crawler. Visuals are nice, flow is very similar to Eye of the Beholder (and similar). Not heavy on the puzzles.... However, one aspect makes me downvote this game. Spells. You can only equip ONE spell in each hand. "Thats pretty normal for a game like this" you might say... however, there is not quick or simple way to swap them out during combat. Even super old dungeon crawlers would let your spell casters equip a spell book, that when used, opened a small list of your spells to cast. And then there are classes like the paladin.. you either use a shield, or a heal spell. Not both. Really ruins several of the classes in the game because of this, and just feels bad.

Если сказать одной фразой, то это - Legend Of Grimrock для бедных. Здесь есть всё, что было в первой LoG(не говоря про 2 часть), но меньше и хуже. Тем не менее, прошёл с удовольствием, в отличие от LoG, который утомлял своими головоломками. Здесь их меньше и по силам даже любителю chat gpt. Не большая продолжительность, как и цена, также способствуют быстрому усвоению, рекомендую всем любителям Dungeon Crawlers, но не гурманам.