Going Back: Dungeon Hack

Goodness me, that rhymed. Lovely. Well, anyway, once again, it’s time to set the Wayback Machine, and the interesting game for this outing to the groggy times of yore is Dungeon Hack, the only official, licensed Dungeons and Dragons roguelike. Which is highly amusing when you consider how much early roguelikes (And even some modern ones) have been influenced by 2nd Edition DnD.

Dungeon Hack, released just after another title I’ve briefly dealt with, Dark Sun: Shattered Lands, uses an interface very similar to the Eye of the Beholder games. Similar enough, in fact, that I’m halfway convinced it’s the same engine, despite being developed by Dreamforge (Who, like SSI, created strategy and roleplaying titles, and did not survive 2001.) Nonetheless, it’s not the engine, so much as the visual style that impresses. There are several different level themes, all of them have a variety of different locks, tapestries, paintings, and gewgaws, and, if it weren’t for the rest of it, I would say that every run is a refreshing and different experience.

One of something like… An absolutely *silly* number of potential locks.

Unfortunately, I’m not saying that. Every run is, in fact, a tedious nightmare that often ends on dungeon level 2, due to the mechanical aspects of the design. Procedural generation has come a long way since the days of rogue, ADOM, and the like, and Dungeon Hack shows one of the weaknesses of early experiments… It’s predictable, and the difficulty curve is not so much a slope as one of the cyclopean steps of Great Cthulhu’s abode. As is often the case with roguelikes, there is a single, playable character.

But many of the monsters in AD&D are, in fact, balanced around groups taking them on. A perfect example of this is the main monstrous feature of the second dungeon level: The humble Ghoul. The Ghoul is normally a cowardly eater of the dead, picking on things it thinks it can eat, and making corpses when… Well, the corpses it normally feeds on are scarce. To aid it, it has a paralytic venom in its claws and fangs. Now, to be perfectly fair to the developers of Dungeon Hack, unlike in Eye of the Beholder, when your character is paralysed, they can still move (but not attack or use items), whereas if a mass paralyse from a Beholder hit in EoB 1’s later levels, you were pretty much dead.

The problem arises, then, from the fact that it’s corridors… And rooms. And corridors predominate. Corridors in which the other monster type that always inhabits the second level, the Troglodyte (in 2E, a stronger, but less intelligent relative of the lizardman) are very likely to ambush someone who hasn’t cleared the way behind them, and, even then, may get surprised by a respawn. As a Mage, you may just about have fireball at this point (Requiring a rest after every cast to regain it… We’ll come back to resting), as a warrior, you don’t really have any recourse except that old first person RPG technique of the sideways shuffle (Exploiting the AI in… Er… A room… To, er…Well, crap, that sort of invalidates it in a large set of situations, doesn’t it?), and it’s only as a Priest that you get… Turn Undead. Which, on the one hand, you have an infinite supply of. On the other, it’s not guaranteed to work, and you’re not guaranteed to hit on the attack that will break the Ghoul out of its “OhGodsAHolySymbolRunRunRun” mode Turn Undead tends to put it in.

Ghouls. There are many words I have to say about a lone adventurer fighting even small groups of ghouls. The vast majority of it is unprintable, even here.

So yeah, the difficulty’s a little sharp. Adding to this tedium is the predictability of monsters. Yes, you will always encounter Ghouls and Troglodytes on level 2. Just as you will always encounter Goblins and Orcs on level 1, with only the occasional Out of Depth monster to liven things up… Usually in a rather fatal manner.

And then, there are the keys. I mentioned before that there are a variety of different locks, and hoo boy, does the game use as many as it can. Each locked door has a specific key type. I’ve never encountered a situation where the key was behind a door, but each level becomes a case of three things: A sweep and clear, not unlike those annoying missions in Hero Quest and Space Crusade (Remember those?) where the victory condition was “Kill everything”; A hunt for various keys (Ice keys, flower keys, gold keys, chrome keys, platinum keys, bone keys, missing bull horns… The list is quite large); And, another staple of first person games and DnD RPGs of the time, either being a Dwarf, able to sense secret doors, or looking at the map, noticing large empty spaces, and wondering which of the walls you’re going to try and walk into will, in fact, turn out to be illusory.

Fun! It’s interesting to look at a game like this, because it has a lavish (if overacted) introductory cutscene (Involving the sorceress/demigod/secret deity… I forget which… Who sends you on the quest, and Sir Not Appearing In This Game, possibly the biggest, dumbest adventurer I’ve seen since Lands of Lore’s Conrad “The Scones Are Still Intact” McAdventurerson), a lot of thought put into a lot of locks and tapestries and statuary and fun things that mostly don’t have any bearing beyond looking pretty (Which I approve of), and yet… Once you get past that, there’s almost no balance, a steep difficulty spike on the 2nd level, and even less context than Angband or Nethack, relative contemporaries (1990 and 1987-2015.)

…I smell a cutscene, VO so fine!

Would I recommend playing it for enjoyment? Oh, Mystra, no! Would I, however, encourage budding developers to look at it critically? If you’re into procgen, licensed RPGs, and step/tile-based first person RPGs, yes. Because it is, to me, interesting to examine. Even if the examination can be… Rather painful.

I’ll get you, Ghouls. And your little frogs, too…

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Early Access Review: Delver

Source: wanna say bought? It’s been a while… @.@
Price: £5.59 (or thereabouts)
Where To Get It: Steam, Official Site
Other Reviews: Release

After my experiences with Barony, way back when, I felt somewhat burned out on dungeon crawling. But, of course, with a new year comes new updates, and one that happened while I was away was a content patch to Delver, a procedurally generated first person dungeon crawler that, like Barony, takes at least some of its inspiration from Ultima Underworld and their ilk… Along with a teeny bit from old Roguelikes such as Angband or Nethack, in which you, an adventurer, enter a supposedly shifting dungeon complex near a wizard’s tower that’s suffered a bad case of subsidence, to retrieve an orb attributed great magical power.

Okay, so it’s not *the* orb of great power… But, y’know, it’s a skullball, and it floats!

That, and potions not having a known effect, are basically the main nods to the genre Delver comes from. The rest is pretty much its own thing, and, despite some niggles it can’t really help but have, I’m… Okay with it! So, let’s get the niggles out of the way first: Equipment, and predictability.

Equipment, specifically weapons, degrade over use. And, of course, you never know when you’ll get the next one. I’m telling you this now, because… The game doesn’t, and it comes as a somewhat nasty shock when you look in your inventory and happen to notice that your Peachy Keen Sword of Being Quite Quick (Previously Excellent, doing 9 to 12 damage) has now become The Blunt And Cracked Whiffle Bat Of Still Being Fairly Quick (Doing 1 to 4 damage.) If armour suffers the same way, I have yet to notice, thankfully (THAT’S NOT AN INVITATION OR REQUEST!) Similarly, while the most recent patch went a long way toward controlling your ranged ammunition shortage (What with recoverable arrows, sometimes even from corpses), this, too, is a major concern you should keep in mind while playing: Save your wands and ammo for ranged enemies.

See that skelly in the background? That’s the *real* threat.

As to predictability, this is somewhat of a double edged sword with Delver. On the one hand, you know what to expect in each of the (currently) four or five types of dungeon you encounter, and so you know, for example, to save ranged stuff for the Caves/Dwarven Mines, in which Eyebeasts can ambush without a whole lot of warning, then scoot rapidly out of your range to throw fireballs. On the other, it becomes a case of “Yes, okay, Ruins, good fine, let’s get onto those orc type fellers down on Sewers 1 and 2, eh?” , and that can… Well, get a little bit dull at times. The door behind the fireplace in the underground bar is like an old friend, and I view the unstable ground over the lava pits of the Ruins to be the cackling rival, occasionally trapping me in a pit with no way out but death and reincarnation outside the dungeon despite the fact I know they’re there, god-dammit…

Still, there’s a fair bit that’s good about the game, and it is still in development. The tile based, pixellated look works quite well for Delver, each weapon type has at least a couple of swings, easily memorised, and each run takes anything up to an hour (Depending, obviously, on caution and skill), so it’s not a time demanding game (Something I, as I grow older, grow a little more grateful for each day), and the music is pleasant, fitting, and at times, quite dramatic.

Even the campground has… Y’know, *some* drama. That dang bard, hiding things and playing sad tunes… >:|

So, is Delver worth a gamble? Well, let’s think. Less than £6, for a start, does have story (in the form of notes, which I won’t spoil, because although it’s as simple as the game right now, there’s still some good, short reads in there about the poor sods who came before you), and, while it has been called shallow (It is, a little), that’s not necessarily a bad thing, so long as you know it’s not going to have you poring over loreposts in forums. It’s fun, it’s somewhat challenging, and it doesn’t demand you Get Good… Only mildly suggests it while stressing you’re there to have fun and relax.

…And I’m okay with that.

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