[table]
[tr][th]GOAL[/th]
[td]Playing any 5 heroes, destroy required monster spawners in randomly arranged dungeon room layouts filled with enemies, obstacles, traps, gold and experience-giving gems to get, side paths that lead to challenge rooms that give bonus choices upon successful clears and relic rooms to choose a relic, in order to go to the exit tile, and if applicable, defeat one of the five bosses.[/td][/tr]
[tr][th]EXPERIENCE[/th]
[td]Similar games include Gauntlet Legends for the Nintendo 64 (not beaten); Hammerwatch (beaten), and Heroes of Hammerwatch by Crackshell (endless), and Skylanders: Giants by Toys for Bob (beaten).[/td][/tr]
[tr][th]SETUP[/th]
[td]keyboard and mouse controls, fullscreen with with 120Hz, V-sync option off, normal default difficulty, and single player.[/td][/tr]
[tr][th]CONTENT[/th]
[td]5 distinct heroes movement and playstyle-wise each with their own light attack, heavy attack, and two special attacks, with their own ability upgrades during a run. 4 of which must be unlocked by reaching a certain hero level during a run, and spending 100 gold.
29 crawls with 5 dungeons per crawl, later dungeons take longer to finish as noted by the depth number indicating dungeon length and monster density and difficulty, with 8 distinctive themes.
In the 'Unlocks' section, dungeon gold can be spent and refunded freely, besides 4 heroes to unlock, there's 14 upgrades that make certain aspects of a run easier, and 34 relics, added by getting them during crawls; both types unlocked by finisheing achievements, with certain upgrades enabled once, and others can be enhanced various times, and relics to enhance their effectiveness.[/td][/tr]
[tr][th]BOUGHT[/th]
[td]Bought it on 2024 July 07 during the 2024 Steam Summer sale for 5.99$, if not discounted as of this Steam user review, is 7.99$.[/td][/tr]
[tr][th]ENDGAME[/th]
[td]Finishing crawl 5-5.[/td][/tr]
[tr][th]PLAYTIME[/th]
[td][b]1,765 minutes, or 27.916 hours[/b][list]
[*]Warrior (no boss relic), crawl 1-1 to 1-4: 84, 48, 41, and 41 minutes.
[*]Ranger (rat relic), crawl 2-1 to 2-5: 65, 62, 70, 120, and 40 minutes.
[*]Wizard (skeleton relic), crawl 3-1 to 3-5: 56, 86, 59, 83, and 80 minutes.
[*]Blademaster (grunt relic), 4-1 to 4-5: 54, 45, 43, 35, and 75 minutes.
[*]Grenadier (eye relic), 5-1: 55 minutes.
[*]Detour with crawl 1-1, Ranger, Wizard, Bladermaster and Grenadier: 29, 27, 19, and 21 minutes.
[*]Continued grenadier, 5-2 to 5-5: 120, 44, 94, and 79 minutes.[/list]
Playstyle consists of focusing on more luck increase and experience upgrades from hero level ups during a crawl, moving as fast as possible, lacking any strong hero preference. Grey common 'Coin Stack' used as a relic starter, which gold is dropped from critical hits on enemies, and focused on getting relics that revolve accumulating and utilizing gold to unlock faster. Never spent gold on 'Bossed Around' and 'Impatient' upgrades at all.[/td][/tr][/table]
[h3]MY POSITIVES[/h3][list][*][b][u]Ending the run attempt, the results screen shows achievements you unlocked and progressed in, satisfying seeing progress, even on attempt 1.[/u][/b]
[*][b][u]Heal items glow green when player HP isn't full, helpful on not needing to look on the health bar at the bottom left away from center.[/u][/b]
[*][b][u]There's a console command-like terminal by pressing the '~' key;[/u][/b] accidentally found this when trying to press the 'Esc' or '1' key. Don't really know what to do with this, but it's neat and charming.
[*][b][u]The mess of gibs during a crawl is satisfying to see progress-wise.[/u][/b]
[*][b][u]6 save slots![/u][/b][/list]
[h3]MY NEGATIVES[/h3][list][*][b][u]No confirm box on pressing the 'Refund' button in the 'Unlocks' section incase it was accidental;[/u][/b] suffered once doing this, not nice.
[*][b][u]Individually refunding gold on choices is impossible;[/u][/b] just wanna refund 1 or 2 things, not everything that's spent on, small but unnecessary amount of time spent when this happened.
[*][b][u]Room layouts during a dungeon seem to repeat after a few times going through a specific dungeon type;[/u][/b] would be neat if no new rooms, have non-challenge rooms be rotated or flipped to make it more fresh. Example, in the the first dungeon type, the 'Rat Tunnels', I frequently see the long corridor of empty bookshelves separated by 1 tile only vertically, would be nice change if seeing a horizontal variant.
[*][b][u]No info on how effective enhancing relics is with gold or from boost upgrades from finishing a challenge room;[/u][/b] it could be felt by intuition, or enough paying attention, however, the lack of clear info the enhancement differences gives uncertainty whether they work or if it's a placebo.
[*][b][u]Ranger hero light attacks work inconsistency while pressed next to a wall, making them somewhat less effective combat-wise unnecessarily;[/u][/b] it's one thing if maybe it's an interesting curse or side effect, but it's not.
[*][b][u]Relics not first time grabbed during a run aren't marked properly, making filling out the missing relics in the 'Unlocks' section more tedious;[/u][/b] wondering if the remaining relics are rare, or relics that are hero-specific, like the Ranger hero with the 'Broken Quiver' relic.
[*][b][u]Difficulty options lack info on differences between relaxed, normal, and hard difficulty.[/u][/b]
[/list]
[h3]MY EEHS/NEUTRAL FEELINGS[/h3][list][*][b][u]Game mechanic of getting 25% more gold on successful runs when finishing a successful run only while the game's running is not useful for those who only finish 1 successful run in a session, or finish multiple successful runs on and off during a day with multiple sessions;[/u][/b] partially it's because of how I play the game myself, not being able to use this reliably, and partially because it's a concurrent user retention mechanic being done like this which having mixed feelings. I wonder if it's better if instead of a temporary bonus, there's a small permanent gold earning accumulating over time for each successful run, maybe exponential? A gold earning increase every 1 successful run, then 2, then 4, and so on. Not too annoyed, since I enjoy the progression as-is on gold earning, but something to think.
[*][b][u]The next dungeon crawl gets unlocked when finishing the fourth level, not the fifth level in a crawl;[/u][/b] not feeling negative, just odd but harmless?
[*][b][u]No endless mode since crawls stop at 5 dungeons;[/u][/b] part of me wants to see how far I can go beyond 5 dungeons, rather than stopping and finishing a crawl.[/list]
Monster Crawl is a pretty thrilling game to play on the aspect of slaying a ton of enemies and making sure those monster spawners get destroyed before bailing, while keeping runs fresh from start to finish with the Guantlet-like framework. This Steam user review is a bit different from my other ones, and what happened is that [url=https://steamcommunity.com/app/2027510/discussions/0/666095887996449911/#c632318982806854160]the developer encouraged me to write a quick Steam user review after reporting on a memory leak because of having to fix a Unity vulnerability issue[/url], which isn't quick, but it's detailed to my liking. I wouldn't give a positive review if the memory leak presists, hence reporting this on the Steam forums, since the dev is responsive. I think it's fair to list my overall thoughts in exchange of encouragement.
Upon game completing, Purple Button has since addressed some issues, but it's understandable [url=https://steamcommunity.com/app/2027510/discussions/0/666095887996449911/#c632318982807133204]they aren't able to update the game more due to not selling enough to recoup development costs[/url]. I'm going to come back to this game in the future to do hero-specific only runs, as I enjoyed it so much I imagine fun ideas, like a rainbow dungeon type, randomly combine any dungeon types and their respective room layouts and stitch them as a fun amalgamation.
