Been thinking about dungeons a lot this week, lads.

Nope, I've no idea either. Probably some residual Elden Ring I need to get out of my system.

ANYWAY...

Knightmarecore.

I've had a proper urge to get into dungeon crawlers, or DRPGs, recently. You know the sort - first-person, grid-based movement, create a party from scratch and then head off into a dark dungeon, battling classic DnD monsters, levelling up and finding treasure and loot. I've always had a soft spot for this sort of thing. Brought up on a diet of C64 text adventures, Fighting Fantasy books and Knightmare on the TV, it is honestly quite baffling that just haven't dived into this genre properly before. I love heavy metal music, artwork and imagery, From Software's recent works and pre-Souls titles like King's Field, playing Mork Borg whilst listening to Dungeon Synth. Dungeon crawlers should be a perfect fit, right?

So, I put a shout out on Twitter and a few trusted sources got back to me with some recommendations. The kind of sources who, when they recommend a specific game in a specific genre, have an opinion that holds a bit more weight. When these people got back to me about DRPGs, I knew I was in good hands.

I needed the help. Prior to my tweet for help, I had tried to just go it alone and hit two immediate brick walls. First of all, there's a shitload of them, spanning about forty (!!) solid years of videogames. Secondly, they're absolutely bolt hard and usually rely on a bit of external reading - usually an instruction manual that you're unlikely to have if you're relying on emulation. I was feeling my way around in the dark, in real life and in one of the many dungeons, and eventually I found myself at the point where I wanted to throw in the towel.

Wizardry 6 and 8

A disastrous start. No comment on the quality of the games - in fact I had Wizardry 8 recommend as one of the very best games around - but these two didn't set me off on the right foot. I found out that Wizardry 8 was the final part of a trilogy and my shit brain won't let me start something without going from the very beginning first, so I fired up the SNES version of Wizardry 6. A Japan-only release but with a full English translation patch, don't come at me if it is some particularly bad version, Wizardry community, as my choice to play this version was largely influenced by the fact that I have a lot of nostalgia for the SNES and almost none for the Amiga.

I died in ten minutes. Then I fired into it again and survived for a little bit longer, achieved just as little and died for a second time. A quick look at a few guides to try and get me over the hump found that they talked a lot about grinding, which I'm not opposed to but I was struggling to even get my foot in the door on that one. I put my big boy pants on, opted to skip parts one and two of the trilogy and made the jump to Wizardry 8.

Which didn't work. Apparently it is a bit of a dickhead to get working on modern hardware. Now was not the time for tech support (even though I did try a fair bit, so hit me up if you're some kind of expert in getting Wizardry 8 working on Windows 10.) so I moved on to another recommendation.

Undernauts - Labyrinth of Yomi

I was informed that this was an excellent 'first' dungeon crawler by this review over at Paste Magazine. They're not wrong. Perhaps because it is a newer title and there's a bit more in the way of modern quality of life stuff but also it lays out a lot of the core, fundamental mechanics of the genre in a really easy to understand and simplistic way.

You're in a gigantic... thing called the Labyrinth of Yomi, which is full of resources, mined by brave souls who also have to fight the hordes of monsters that live within it. You have a base camp within the labyrinth, which is where you go to get new quests that act as a means of progressing the story and pushing you onwards into new biomes throughout the game, as well where you can build your squad of monster fighting dungeon crawling lads.

That's basically all there is to it. The aesthetic is very dull by-the-numbers anime stuff but offsets this by being fairly horrendous and violent from time to time, with a little sprinkling of J-Horror into the mix. Monster design is varied, as well as the biomes you traverse. The thing that kept me on the hook, however, is the fact that it is fairly light and breezy with the character classes - it is impossible to snooker yourself because you can re-spec whenever you want. Hell, it is practically encouraged. Struggling in a particular area or getting lit up by some enemy types? You can just completely re-tool your party to be able to deal with the exact scenario that is causing you bother, for free. No penalty.

It feels a bit cheap but it is definitely something you are SUPPOSED to be doing, rather than feeling like you're gaming the system. After my experience with some other games within the genre (and especially after trying Wizardry 6 only hours earlier) this felt like a nice baby step into what can be a very brutal and obtuse genre. It has a cool vibe and is pretty compelling, with you always wondering what is around the next corner and I think in the DRPG genre, that is extremely important.

Wizardry: Tale of the Forsaken Land

A bit of a bloody belter, this one! Had it described to me as one of the more underrated games in the genre and, after my bad experiences with VI and VIII, I was thinking that perhaps the Wizardry games are a bit too much for someone who is still finding their feet in the genre but this strips a lot of the Wizardry formula back to basics and streamlines a lot of stuff to the essentials. It's almost like Wizardry: The Arcade Game.

It is a beautiful looking game. Hand-painted background and character art mixes with some solid 3D dungeons which are full of varied monsters to battle, each one has that 'Dragon Quest' thing where they've all got a charm about them - great designs and animation really brings them to life, before you mercilessly slaughter them.

The soundtrack is what really surprised me. It is genuinely one of the best PS2 OSTs, a mix of ambient beats in the dungeons, uplifting tunes in the various vendors in the hub area, some emotive character/cutscene themes and some absolutely ripping battle music. Have a listen to these two.

Underneath the brilliant presentation are some really compelling systems. The battle system seems like a standard JRPG affair until you unlock the Allied Assists, where two of your team can team up to provide either defensive, offensive or support moves that can swing the tide of battle in your favour. For instance, if you stick all your warriors on your front line and have all your weaker classes on the back one, one of these Allied Assists will see your back line actually throw an attack out that will negate an enemy attack on one of the front line members, a nice deviation of the usual tank strategy. The best thing about these AAs, as we'll now be calling them, is that they unlock and improve based on how much your team 'trust' you as their leader.

Trust is a big part of Wizardry: TotFL. Every character you recruit to your party will have different beliefs, such as disliking cowardice or getting upset if you attack harmless enemies, so by ensuring that the decision you make in cutscenes and the way that you handle fighting and exploring will increase or decrease your level of trust. The more trust, the better AAs you can use. It's not just a case of picking your strongest guys but making sure they're the one you have the strongest bond with, too. In a genre notorious for either 1- pre-cooked generic create-a-character party members or 2- elements of permadeath, this is a genius way to increase your emotional attachment to your party, giving you access to better moves as a reward but increasing the stakes. You really don't want to lose your best boys.

It is certainly less in-depth as some of the classic Wizardry games and is clearly aimed at a console (and interestingly, Japanese) audience, but although there's a lot of streamlining of the systems here, the ones that a present are really clever and really addictive.

Normally, whenever I hear someone chat about a 'hidden gem' of a game, I've usually at the very least heard of it. I knew nothing about Wizardry: TotFL before I started playing it and it is certainly on track to challenge my top 10 PS2 JRPGs list. On a system that had plenty, that's high praise indeed.

Orcs & Elves

Okay, cheating a bit with this one because I had actually played it before. I played the JAVA version on my Sony Ericsson W801i and, to be fair, had forgotten everything about it apart from the fact it was by id Software and it ran on the engine that powered Doom RPG, which I also played at the time. It was weird because I don't really remember what the mobile version looked like in any detail but I still got a fair hit of nostalgia off the DS version.

This is the dungeon crawler stripped back to the absolute basics and a perfect fit for a handheld. You walk around a grid-based dungeon, hitting things until you can hit them harder and survive things that hit you harder whilst finding loot, solving puzzles and unlocking doors.

That's it. The DRPG experience laid bare.

For what it is, however, its just so polished and it nails the three things that attracted me to the genre.

1. Compelling exploration

2. Addictive progression

3. DUNGEON VIBES

You just wander around an increasingly more complex labyrinth until you get to the very end and fight some big bad and honestly, that core of the dungeon crawler is good enough to have spawned an entire sub-genre. Is this maybe TOO stripped back? I get the feeling more seasoned veterans of the genre will find this one far too basic and get tired of it quickly but as a bit of a newcomer it is exactly what I needed to scratch this particular itch and it definitely gives me an understanding of how you can build on this and create a richer, more complex experience. Playing stuff like this - games that might not be 10/10 best examples of the genre - can sometimes be really important for helping you appreciate other titles (or find stuff that you DON'T like in them!).

Shadowgate VR

I recently played through the original Shadowgate, which was a decent if obtuse puzzle/dungeon crawler hybrid and I highly recommend Shadowgate 64 to anyone, so I had to try this on my Oculus Quest.

It is fantastic.

It's not really a dungeon crawler in the DRPG sense (in fact, it probably has more in common with The Crystal Maze and Knightmare TV shows than anything else) but it IS a dungeon crawler. As in, you're in a dungeon and you have to explore it, avoiding traps, solving puzzles and chucking fireballs at a host of enemies within.

It doesn't have the compelling exploration, as you really just walk from puzzle room to puzzle room, solving each one and progressing in a linear manner.

It doesn't have any levelling up at all, never mind anything resembling 'addictive progression'.

It does, however, have DUNGEON VIBES for DAYS. You're literally IN a dungeon! Everything is fairly cliché but that's really what you want - big fuck-off spiders, beholders and dragons to deal with while you avoid deathtraps. It also happens to be a really quite impressive VR experience too, being very aware of the medium's strengths and weaknesses and sticking to the good stuff, offering some very creative ways to increase the immersion.

I think all of this is just a manifestation of me trying to recapture a really specific aspect of my childhood and this game manages to make me feel like I'm IN Knightmare or IN Deathtrap Dungeon and, for some reason, right now, that's where I want to be.

THANKS FOR READING.

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