100 flooring of being caught between a dreadrock and a tough place.
The Change’s portability and touchscreen have made it into an ideal platform for cell video games desirous to make the leap to the console area. One such instance of that is Dungeons of Dreadrock, an action-adventure sport with a heavy emphasis on puzzle fixing. All through its 100 flooring, you’ll slay zombies, throw rocks to activate switches, and leap into teleportation portals, whereas additionally being handled to temporary cutscenes now and again. Despite the fact that the premise is a secure however easy one, the gradual ramp up in problem makes for a reasonably compelling expertise.
The sport opens on a hearth scene the place a brother and sister are discussing the brother’s impending journey into the titular Dungeons of Dreadrock. The thought is that he’s to make the journey alone, however we be taught that nobody who has entered has ever returned, and so the sister goes towards conference by following her sibling into the labyrinth. Throughout your descent, you’ll come throughout hearth pits the place you’ll be able to kindle a fireplace and comfy up for a nap, and in your goals you’ll get a glimpse of your brother, the flooring forward, and the plight he faces. There’s additionally some narrated taste textual content hooked up to checking explicit objects on every ground and generally delivered as you enter a brand new ground. The general story does an honest job of pushing you to see the sister’s mission to completion, however it will have been good to see extra distinctive object descriptions as you delved additional into the depths of the dungeons.
Gameplay facilities on grid-based actions paying homage to one thing like Crypt of the Necrodancer. Geared up together with your trusty sword, you’ll be able to transfer into enemies to strike them, however some foes do take a number of hits to convey down. Many different enemies, like highly effective ogres and charging minotaurs are higher defeated by fireball and spike traps that seem on many flooring. Whereas most flooring are self-contained puzzles that target performing particular actions, activating switches in a sure order, and even discovering hidden passages, there are a good variety of cases the place you’ll need to backtrack up a ground to retrieve a selected object or also have a sure enemy comply with you all the way down to the following ground. I discovered these puzzles the trickiest since I wasn’t used to contemplating what I may need wanted to convey with me from a accomplished room to the one after it.
If Dungeons of Dreadrock excels with its gameplay and puzzles, it fails to impress with its visuals and sound design. The identical enemies, gates, switches, and tiles make up the sport’s 100 flooring, and aside from puzzle complexity, there’s little to distinguish ground 25 from ground 65. The top result’s that the flooring all type of mix collectively, making longer play classes a bit extra tedious. As befits its cell sport heritage, Dungeons of Dreadrock is unquestionably higher loved in small bursts. Apart from a jingle that performs through the interstitial cutscene between flooring, there’s successfully no different music within the sport. The sound results for slaying zombies, gates opening up, and even succumbing to one of many quite a few risks current are nice; you’ll really want the sound on that can assist you clear up sure puzzles, however the lack of music is unlucky.
The controls work nicely sufficient more often than not, however there are cases the place the sport fails to answer button controls after you’ve used contact controls. The identical factor occurs even for those who’re solely tapping the trace button on the display, which itself is a bit cumbersome to make use of. Nonetheless, it’s very welcome to have a touch system in place that offers you step-by-step options to every room, which suggests you’ll be able to full 80 % of a room, for instance, after which get a tip for the remaining 20 % you’re not sure about.
Dungeons of Dreadrock makes an admirable leap to Nintendo’s hybrid system. Throughout shorter play classes, the sport shines and affords a difficult however honest puzzle-centered expertise. The story is acquainted but satisfying, and the essential controls translate nicely sufficient to the console area. It may not Dreadrock your world, however these Dungeons supply a reasonably satisfying romp all the identical.