Desktop Dungeons
QCF Design | PC & Mac
Desktop Dungeons is a rogue-like that’s supposed to take around 10 to 15 minutes to play. With a meta-game unlock / progression system. That was in publicly available free beta for 3 years. And has Super Meat Boy parody boss, and goatpeople. Plus an original tileset made by Derek Yu (the creator of Spelunky).
It’s also really, really good.
“Rogue-like” is a term that covers games from Spelunky and Rogue Legacy, to Dwarf Fortress, and Desktop Dungeons. So what kind of game is this exactly? Like most traditional rogue-likes, Desktop Dungeons is a turn-based, tile-based game where you are exploring a dungeon, fighting monsters, and trying your best not to die a pitiful death. Unlike most rogue-likes, each dungeon run is designed to take 10-15 minutes, with a larger progression system that exists outside of each individual run.
The other neat mechanic is that you heal and regain mana by exploring (uncovering dark tiles). Once all of the tiles in a dungeon run have been revealed, that’s it — no more regen. But of course you have to explore to find monsters that you can fight, new items, and other loot. This makes exploration a very carefully balanced tradeoff — I can either try and fight this high level monster here which may (read: most definitely will) kill me, or I can explore, using up my precious unrevealed tiles, to find better enemies to fight.
Somewhere in every dungeon is a level 10 boss monster which you must defeat to escape. Beginning players typically start wandering around killing level 1 monsters until they level up, progressing to level 2, and so on. This works on easier difficulties, but as the difficulty increases, players are forced to plan more carefully. Killing a monster that is higher level than you rewards bonus XP, so you are heavily incentivized to try and punch above your weight class. On higher difficulties you it is mandatory for success.
The metagame provides all sorts of nice unlocks that feel really meaningful. Different classes (that all play very differently), different races, items you can choose to pay coins to bring into the dungeon to help boost you past a particularly difficult level, and other sorts of augmentations for your dungeon runs. All of this (including new enemies and bosses) are slowly revealed through the player as they play more and more dungeon runs. The developers wrote about this deliberate decision during development:
The pool of available enemies is also reduced for new players — there’s only five different monsters for beginners to worry about, and they’re completely robbed of the game’s nastier effects such as poison, mana burn and instant petrification. Elements are added appropriately as the player gets better and starts winning sessions — people who are comfortable with the warrior tree will be required to start fighting enemies with physical resistance, while those who unlock magey types will be required to deal with golems and the ever-terrifying dungeon goat.
In a situation where new players already tend to complain about Desktop Dungeons’ extreme difficulty, narrowing the ruleset is an absolute must so that gamers can get to grips with critical components first. Getting thrown into the deep end can be exciting, sure, but in today’s heavily saturated freeware arena it’s natural for Joe Player to need a little more convincing before investing time in some backwater, Roguelike-like project.
Hence the need to keep dungeons, characters and even items locked away until players successfully prove themselves ready to use them. It all seems to have worked out reason well: the unlocks provide a meaningful long-term goal for players to aspire towards and usually reward dedicated players with a more complex and rewarding game experience rather than just an “easier” one.
One other thing I’d add is that the total scope of the game is much smaller than a game like Nethack or Dungeon Crawl, which makes it far easier to learn and keep in your head. While looking things up on the wiki can definitely be useful, you are not constantly running into new monsters that disembowel you in new and terrifying ways. Just the same set of monsters, who are still terrifying. My biggest objection to games like Spelunky or Nethack (besides the fact that I am just godawful at them) is that when you run into a new trap or monster type you often feel very helpless, and that happens a lot. Desktop Dungeons is hard, but in (what feels like) a fair sort of way.
I wrote about this game briefly while it was in beta back in August of 2012. It’s recently become available through Steam, and while it’s gotten a fresh coat of paint, it’s still just as good as before. Play it and marvel at the incredible tuning and balance. And have a great time dying.
