In Melbourne this week, I sat down for some hands-on time with Dungeon League, a new competitive dungeon crawler party game that goes into Steam Early Access today.
Dungeon League’s premise is simple: RPG tropes from Wizards to unicorns are gathered together and dungeon crawl as a sport rather than a career. The game type available with Early Access delivers short, pleasurable gameplay loops. Up to four local friends can team up or compete against one another – or in any combination of four players across up to four teams, really – in ten minute tournaments.
The full ten minute experience is made up of two minute gameplay bursts; in my time with Dungeon League, I played Deathmatch, Capture the Flag and Capture the Hardpoint rounds. The overall objective is for your team to win as many rounds as possible, thereby taking the overall tournament itself.
Each of the game’s six characters – a warrior, rogue, goblin, dwarf and the aforementioned wizard and unicorn – come with unique moves and skill sets. Moreover, only one player can select each character a time. As you play through rounds, you’ll level up, providing more skill points and currency in which to unlock or upgrade moves, or buy accessories like the Ring of Haste or healing elements.
I choose the warrior, and was happy to do so – he comes with the most health, though all of his special moves are locked away at first. I traded off a ton of HP for no special moves… at least, until the game’s first round was over. Using a controller, each special move is tied to a face button, with one button being the standard attack. Items are triggered with bumpers. In my short time with the game, I walked away feeling that at least four of the game’s six characters were fairly balanced; no one had a huge advantage over another.
The product of a one-man team, Sydney-based developer Achebit (aka Christopher Yabsley) does it all – level design, character models, the game’s score and voice over work – and it’s all surprisingly polished. Steam’s Early Access program seems the perfect way to further develop the game as well; I’m confident that early adopters will provide valuable feedback to improve the experience.
I’m not above providing feedback myself; while Dungeon League is great fun and the characters seem to have their own distinct personalities, they don’t really look all too different from one another. I understand it may be due to the limitations of pixel art, but my warrior had a chessboard pattern on his armour that looked remarkably similar to another character’s get-up. This was only made more confusing by the fact that characters respawn at random points on the map after dying, so I was continually looking at the wrong unit. For a game with such short gameplay bursts, it’s time you can’t afford to lose.
The one-man nature of the game also means those who adopt early will have to be patient; while a number of modes are planned for the game, only the tournament-style play is available now. If Yabsley gets sick or has his day job demands more from him, that means work on this game will be delayed. Still, for something so fun – in the fast, frenzied nature of #IDARB – maybe it’s worth the wait.
Dungeon League is available today on Windows PC, Mac and Linux via Steam Early Access and the Humble Bundle Store. It’ll set you back $10 USD.
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