Tag Archives: Dungeon Crawler

Tougher than Fire Dragon Hide A popular premise is that games are becoming easier. Wizardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls might demonstrate why this argument is so common. Sir-Tech’s famed Wizardry series used to come with ...

Industry has a way of watering down transgressive works. Take Children’s and Household Tales, the 1812 collection of folktales assembled by the Grimms Brothers. Far removed from the modern versions we might associate from studios ...

The 1997 release of Diablo remains one of the definitive interpretations of the dungeon crawl. Trading traditional turn-based combat for real-time action, exploration was elevated by the incorporation of procedurally-generated environments. The game’s loot algorithm ...

2014’s Monster Monpiece garnered attention when publisher Idea Factory International was obligated to omit eighteen card images for the stateside and European releases. While some rancorously objected to the edits, this was a necessary evil, as console ...

Across its three-decade long history, the three-dimensional dungeon crawler has been surprisingly resistant to change. Take a look back at 1989’s Dungeon Master or 1991’s Eye of the Beholder, and you’ll find a framework that ...

Pedigree is often accompanied with elevated expectations. That’s likely the case with the PlayStation 4 and PC release of Zanki Zero: Last Beginning. Uniting several members of Danganronpa’s development team with Lancarse, the team who ...

Why the Hell is Everyone so Nice Here? Great, I’ve died and gone to hell. But waking up in the demon world isn’t all that bad. Instead of the charring flames and unspeakable torture that ...

Always a Tough Act to Follow Technology is often used to automate simple tasks. It’s engineered to remove tedium, so users can focus on more interesting elements. But 2007’s Etrian Odyssey cleverly challenged this assumption. ...

With a rich history that spans almost four decades, dungeon-based role-playing games (or DRPGs) have been especially prevalent across the last few years. Standout titles like Stranger of Sword City, The Lost Child, Ray Gigant, ...

Following the success of 2010’s Hyperdimension Neptunia, developer Compile Heart’s output drifted toward the formulaic. Beyond a structure split between visual novel-based storytelling and turn-based combat, the Toshima-ku based studio integrated a copious amount of ...