When it comes to retro games, we rarely see anything grace our television screens that hasn’t been seen or done before. Almost every retro game borrows bits and pieces from long running genres in the hopes of drawing in the original demographic, often coming across as nothing but a shameless cash-in. That was my initial thought looking at Devious Dungeon; however, I could not have been more wrong.

At first glance the game looks like a Castlevania clone, with evil forces threatening your pixelated king, with you setting off as the lone hope to save the kingdom. Without much exposition, you’ll wander your way through a portal, placing you in the first of hundreds of levels to vanquish the threats before you. It’s nothing we haven’t seen countless times in the past, but it works as a paper thin narrative.

Each of the game’s levels are randomly generated and task you with exploring the winding 2D paths, seeking out the lone key that will unlock the next portal. Along the way, you’ll evade traps, dispose of a decent array of enemies to earn XP, and break in-game items seeking out precious loot. Because this is essentially a rogue-lite with dungeon crawling mechanics, death will come swiftly and quite early due to the overpowered and equally spongy enemies, requiring you to either exhibit cat like reflexes from the get go, or have to try and try again, slowly making progress. Unlike most rogue-lites, death is not the end but more of a checkpoint. Each new run allows you to select a starting area, with checkpoints being in place every few levels, with a boss battle in place at the end of each of the game’s worlds.

The combat is more of a throwback than I would have liked, with two primary attacks that essentially do the same thing and only differ much in terms of the animation your character completes for each swing, leaving little in the form of strategy. That said, most of the combat boils down to essentially running at the enemies head first and hoping you kill them before you take any damage, with the bosses being the only characters that offer any type of hints as to what action they are taking, making learning and evading the patterns kind of useless against the standard baddies. The good news is that the weapon and character upgrades come frequently enough that you’ll likely find yourself overpowered by the time you grind your way into the second world, leaving the enemies in bits and pieces as you joyfully run through the levels.

With over 100 levels in place and randomly generated encounters being used for each, you’d think that the game would grow stale early into the adventure, but that is far from the case. The armor and weapons you can purchase make huge differences in the damage you can dish out and take, making each new run feel like a small victory, even if you don’t make it further along the map. It is worth mentioning that while none of the weapons I have unlocked felt like a downright disappointment or step back from what I previously had, you cannot swap out the changes once they’ve been unlocked.

The game plays out in an old school fashion, with pixelated characters and assets inhabiting the randomized levels, each of which takes on distinct features from the various climates, such as frozen caves, lava flooded chambers, and the standard dungeon crawling fare. Visually, it works as a great throwback with its pixel perfect skeletons, ogres, and legions of undead; however, the sound effects, while equally old school, are kind of annoying, prompting me to turn them off entirely early into the game. I recently was the lone parent at my child’s bus stop and was privileged to be the witness of a group of elementary schoolers beating a flag pole with sticks, emitting a concert of noise that would bring a saint to swearing. This is what I thought of each and every time I had to bust open a candle stick or pot for the gold it held within. The one thing that saved me from playing the game in complete silence was the overly catchy background music.

If you follow my ramblings, you’ll probably notice that I rarely talk about the music found in games, because in all honesty it’s normally more of an afterthought when I am reviewing a game as a whole and will typically only stand out if it’s something that is overly annoying, plays into a mechanic, or in this case, is downright catchy. With a faster tempo that matches what is found in the Streets of Rage series used with the faint tones popular among the Zelda series, this is one that will get stuck in your head. Even my wife, who probably finds the in-game music more annoying than I do, was humming along while I got lost in the game world for hours on end.

While most rogue-lites are out there with the “git gud” style of gameplay, Devious Dungeon is playing the long game, rewarding those who persevere through the challenging worlds. It definitely isn’t going to be for everyone, but the throwback presentation meshes with the rogue-lite mechanics for something new, yet familiar.

9 out of 10

Pros

• Hundreds of Levels
• Rewarding Grinding System
• Catchy BGM

Cons

• Some Sound Effects Are Exhausting
• Combat is a Bit Dull

Devious Dungeon was developed by Woblyware and published by Ratalaika Games. It is available on NS, PS4, PS Vita, and X1. The game was provided to us for review on X1. If you’d like to see more of Devious Dungeon, check out the publisher’s site.

 

Here at GBG we use a rating method that you are more than likely familiar with – a scale of 1 to 10. For clarification, we intend on using the entire scale: 1-4 is something you should probably avoid paying for; 5-7 is something that is worth playing, but probably not at full price; 8-10 is a great title that you can feel confident about buying. If you have any questions or comments about how we rate a game, please let us know.

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