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dkirschner's Dungeons of Dredmor (PC)

[July 18, 2016 03:47:29 PM]

I played the tutorial and thought I'd soon get to this 8 months ago now! That's what happens when I get the bright idea to play a game at work. It doesn't happen. Except today. I re-played the tutorial, and played a couple games of Dungeons of Dredmor. Long story short, I died a few times and got bored.

Dungeons of Dredmor is a funny roguelike. It parodies all manner of RPG mechanic and trope. For example, you get quests by praying to shrines of Inconsequentia, Goddess of Sidequests, and they are utterly ridiculous stock fantasy stuff like "Azanoth the Usurper must die! And when you kill her, take the Ring of Fancy Runes and return it to Mrrgl the Mermaid in the River of the Merfolkian Peninsula." Then I think Azanoth or whatever item you need spawns in the level and you can happen upon completing the quest.

Weapons, armor, other items (and there must be hundreds), spells, etc., etc. all have silly descriptions that made me laugh plenty. Character creation is pretty wide open. There are like 100 perks you can choose, from like Swordsman (good with swords) to Pirate (you get a high Caddish stat), to Communist (this is hilarious; I leveled up enough to get the "Dialectical Materialism" feat, which gives you random Communist skills for a while). You choose like 7 or 8 perks, so there is a huge bunch of types of characters you can create. I chose pretty basic ones at first, then goofed around with some sillier sounding ones.

So you enter the dungeon, move square by square on the grid, find treasure, and kill monsters. Basically. It's a roguelike, so duh. Each square you move technically is like a turn, and enemies will take an action when you do. There are a bajillion items, and your inventory will fill up quickly. This was a source of frustration for me because you find so much shit all over the place. I started ignoring all reagents, then ignoring food because I was gaining levels and getting way strong for where I was and didn't need it. So it turned into pixel hunting on the ground and tedious inventory management after a little bit. You can sell items and buy more at stores and vending machines.

There are all sorts of other wacky things in the levels that I found. There are satanic transporters that teleport you around the level; there is a shrine to some fish god where you can make offerings of fish; there are statues of Dredmor (the titular big baddie) that you can smash for XP; there are tons of treasure chests, crates, and barrels to smash for loot, and more. If you like loot, you'll like this game. But you have to like to micromanage it a lot too...

I quit in the end because I found a set of "wizard keys." Intrigued, I used them and they whisked me away to my own private realm. I couldn't figure out exactly what to do there. There was a portal control, so I clicked it. It prompted me to type a name in, so I typed Aa and a portal opened. I shouldn't have done that because I got teleported to what I later learned was "Diggle Hell" and promptly massacred. The enemies usually aren't too difficult or unfair, but what the heck?! Why did I get teleported to Diggle Hell with overpowering enemies? Well, if I were to play again, I'd avoid messing with that teleporter.

When it comes down to it, there are much better roguelikes out there. Dungeons of Dredmor is fine, and I really like the humor, but if I want to die repeatedly, I'd rather do it in Spelunky or FTL. Glad to finally get this out of my backlog.