Drawngeon is a single-character real-time dungeon crawler with an unusual aesthetic (everything is hand-drawn (perplexingly a lot of that is in low-resolution)). It’s also the very definition of a hidden gem, or maybe not a gem but a solid game that should have a slightly higher profile. That said, it doesn’t help that the initial impression of the game can be slightly lacking. When I fired this up for the first time I almost uninstalled it after playing for a bit.
It offers 3d mouselook, one of the most useless and most distracting features in any dungeon crawler. So shut that off before you even begin playing. I also would advise you to check out whether you’re okay with the buttons, at least they are all configurable. For fun you can switch to a non-rendered view, it’s basically playing the game just in map mode, which highlights amusingly how most dungeon crawlers can be played like this and sometimes are when a map is very dominant in your viewscreen. Still, you would lose a lot by not seeing the visuals here, so put 3d-rendering back on.
The game’s setting is just your common generic fantasy, although it has some slight horror touches here and there, more through the visuals and some enemy design. As for the story, I’m not sure there is one. There are some ending slides that imply something bigger, but I leave that for you to discover. Overall though it’s the usual, you’re dropped into a fantasy town, there are dungeons and towers and what, you go in there, kill monsters, get loot, get back to town for safety, grow your character, and eventually find the thing that triggers the ending.
Character generation is extremely simplistic, check one of three classes (Warrior, Wizard, or Rogue, I mean Trickster), your gender, your name and if you played through the game already you got some meta points, which you can use to buy extra stuff (best of all are the experience orbs, which allow you to level up fast for a couple of levels).
Character growth on the other hand, while looking simplistic in the beginning as well, is a bit more involved than that. It’s still not complex, but there’s more going on. Every character has a skill tree, that’s a bit different between the three classes (but some stuff is the same for everyone) as the Wizard for example can improve spells. Every level up you get skill points, which you can use to improve something on your skill tree, from spells to abilities to basic stats. But that’s not where it ends. There’s one ability on every skill tree (well, two actually) that allows you to eat items for health (the first time where you can eat money to heal), and in its upgraded version you get health and permanent stat upgrades.
It doesn’t end there though. When I first played and discovered this I thought it was the way to easy town, but then gimped my character almost immediately because I didn’t realize it adds both stats upgrades and downgrades. So you have to strategically eat items to build your character and play around to not make your character too weak in some parts.
So far I’ve played through the game with one class, Warrior, which is easy mode. Both Wizard and Trickster are neat too, but also brittle and easy to kill even if you try not to die, and since the game has perma-death, it can be a bit annoying if you lose your progress because of that. I wish the game allowed me to deactivate perma-death. While the game description says it has procedural dungeon generation it doesn’t really feel like a roguelike. The starter town is definitely fixed, but I haven’t played enough with other characters to see what is random in the dungeons.
What it feels like a bit is like a dungeon crawler equivalent of Diablo, which is both good and bad. It has a core gameplay loop that is slightly addictive, go into dungeons, kill everything, collect loot, but on the other hand the deeper you get into each dungeon the more you realize how repetitive they really are. It’s just more monsters, more loot, and often a few new visuals, but never any different type of dungeon trap. There are no teleporters, no dark fields, no anti-magic fields, no spinners, no locked doors, and almost nothing that makes spelunking in more complex dungeons exciting.
In a typical roguelike this is often offset by a couple of other mechanics, an impressive array of items with different effects, discovering what potions do by drinking them, learning about new monsters and how they can kill you. But Drawngeon is a bit limited in that regard and doesn’t really play either to roguelike strengths or those of handcrafted dungeon crawlers with their better dungeon design.
That said, it’s still fun to play. For one character maybe. If you finish the game with all three classes, it looks like you can unlock the fourth class and I’m wondering whether it is worth it, as the game does get a bit repetitive, and while I had fun checking out the Wizard and the Trickster class, I’m not sure they offer enough to play through the whole game again. But the first playthrough was definitely worth it (4 to 5 hours if you try to do everything).
The Entropy Pump 