Pick up and Play: Dungeon, Inc.

Preface

OK, so this is the first in a series called Pick up and Play, a set of smaller titles I spend a weekend or so playing. A condensed series of games with interesting experiences or mechanics, little friction to get started playing, and ultimately I’d recommend checking out to people who normally don’t play games, or are looking for something a little different.

Let’s talk about Dungeon, Inc. Available on iOS and Android, this simple “management” game has you manage a dungeon: churn gold for profit, buy and upgrade rooms, as well as defend it from the knights determined to audit your business. You can even hire monsters to defend each room, upgrade them to improve their attack and defense, and help them as they fend off knights in ever increasing waves.

Dungeon, Inc.

So to start off, I’m a sucker for management games. I hold this belief that management games translate very well to a mobile platform. We’re not talking anything incredibly nuanced or complex as something like 4X, but the time required to set up, and leave it be is just enough. What this game brings with it’s simplicity, is an engaging gameplay loop. It respects your time, to a degree. I found a typical session to last about 3–4 minutes: promoting workers, upgrading rooms, and fending off a wave of knights. Even the rewards are fairly well paced, and are not over generous. As with most F2P titles, it entices some level of generosity during the tutorial, early levels, and returning player rewards.

The meat of the game are the audit battles. These are actually pretty cool, and offer enough engagement to entice the player back, but let’s face it, you can only tap the screen so many times before it starts to look weird, and this comes from the guy who plays Zelda in an Uber. The combination of various mechanics offer some extra high level strategy. Claiming insurance to reset progress, in order to get the cash to upgrade more long term benefits, requires some careful consideration, and a bit of risk calculation. As far as I am aware, this currency isn’t something you buy straight up, you have to play to accrue it.

On the subject of microtransactions, let’s talk about gems. The gems currency is used to revive employees, as well as purchase chests. Metallic chests grant gems, but at a fairly low rate that you need to grind it out to have enough, and even then, burning gems on chests isn’t a savvy investment. If employees die during a raid, using gems isn’t really justified either, as the revive timer is just enough to bring them back by the time the next raid is ready to strike. It’s more a matter of paying for convenience, and a faster gameplay loop for more immediate satisfaction. And it’s not like gems themselves are hard to come by. Apart from chests, Dungeon inc. includes an achievement system, where each accomplishment grants more gems. By the time I’ve bought into my second dungeon, I had over 200 gems to my disposal.

It’s fun to play. Go in, buy some rooms, upgrade some more rooms, promote some workers, survive a few audits, put it down and come back tomorrow. Where it struggles is in progression. The price to buy new rooms and dungeons increases quickly by the time you hit the third dungeon, especially if you’re not careful with how you spend your gold. The more you play, the more buffs and passives you can get to postpone that wall. That, or just buy your way to victory just by playing the game for much longer sessions. Too bad it’s a process, and a long one. Dungeon Inc. is designed to live on your phone for an extended amount of time, holding out the carrot just far enough that you either keep grinding it out, or bust out that credit card to bring the carrot closer.

One last thing: this game has a multiplayer component! Raiding player bases offer some more enticing rewards based on how well you clear their dungeons, as well as how well you can defend your dungeon. What it also illustrates is the difference in power between someone like me who made it to around #20,000 (top 10%) vs the top 500 players. Some can attribute it to P2W, but you’re still dependent on your available resources and RNG when it comes to upgrading rooms and promoting employees.

The Verdict

The game is all right. It does a few things different with whole mechanic of fending off Auditing knights, but still falls into the same design decisions made by other free to play games. And because the subtle nature of this game is to make money, you can’t really escape it. The art style and simple mechanics are fine, but there is this nagging sense of “sticking around just a little longer”, which is also by design. In the end, there is this wrestle with the investment of time and money, something you as a consumer have to come to grips with, whether that is up front or subconsciously. Download it and give it a fair run, but I wouldn’t spend money on it unless you choose to become invested.

Thanks for reading. Stay tuned for more from The Domus Project. Also be sure to follow me on twitter for info on future videos and articles.