Dandy Dungeon
STAND UP AGAINST EVIL... FOR LOVE.
Free with IAP | dandydungeon.com
AND WE THOUGHT Yakuza 0 was going to be the weirdest game we’d play this year. This delightful oddity centres on a lonely, disillusioned 36-year-old salaryman, Yamada, who quits his job at a social-gaming company to be a bedroom coder. The game he makes is the one you play: a dungeon-crawler that accrues new features as he receives inspiration from an array of visitors including former workmate Yasu, his furious ex-boss and his new neighbour Maria, with whom Yamada falls instantly and hopelessly in love.
Dungeons comprise several floors, each set on a 5 x 5 grid, upon which you must draw a continuous line from entrance to exit. You can spend as long as you like working out the route, but once you’ve pressed finger to screen, you have a limited time to plot a course before you’ll receive damage — and you’ll take a hit for each square you don’t cross. Cash bonuses incentivise perfect pathfinding, and with Yamada’s level resetting between expeditions, you’ll need that money to buy better gear to survive later quests.
That loop may seem straightforward, but Kimura steadily gives you more plates to juggle and decisions to make. Yamada’s backpack, for example, only ever holds five items, each of which is subject to a cooldown once used and liable to break through overuse — but can you afford to throw away a vial of medicine for a thunder scroll? And would that rice ball you were saving for an emergency continue not be better served to a hungry ally who’ll brave the trials of a bonus dungeon to grab you some rare loot?
Like its designer’s earlier works, Dandy Dungeon has robust depths beneath the outer layers of nuclear-strength whimsy. Such a concentrated dose of off-kilter charm might be cloying to some players (admittedly, we’re in a reasonably good position to identify with a doughy 30-something in his underwear furiously tapping away at a PC), but you’d have to be a “bumbling turdbag” not to at least give Yamada the chance to win your heart.