The Case of the Dungeon Descent

I get so giddy every time I see this team post something new. I don't always love their games, but I can always count on them to be solidly made, cute, and have at least a nugget of an interesting conceit. Also, this one isn't IF but I wanted to mention it, The Daily Spell is my favorite word puzzle game of all time, and I wish every piece of literature ever could be adapted into its format.

What were we talking about again? Oh, yes, The Case of the Dungeon Descent. A member of what I've taken to calling the "place-and-time puzzle" microgenre, Dungeon Descent wears its Type Help inspiration on its sleeve, but I think its closest cousin is The Red Pearls of Borneo by Bushmonkey. Both games emphasize linking objects to a scene, rather than just people, and both are much more visually-oriented than Type Help. The difference is, Dungeon Descent puts the format into, essentially, a Dungeons & Dragons campaign, rather than WWII-era Borneo. I'm not accusing either of being some kind of rip-off, mind, but I'll mention that Dungeon Descent came first.

The plot of Dungeon Descent is interesting, it gets a bit metaphysical near the end, but I wouldn't classify the prose itself as anything special. It's mostly dialog, and much of it mid-combat at that, so don't expect any musings on the nature of existence or in-depth explanations of the universe's magic system. The game doesn't exactly hurt from that exclusion, though; sometimes, it's nice to just have a fantasy world where everything works exactly how you've come to expect.

This review is a fair bit shorter than my usual madman ramble, but don't let that dissuade you from checking Dungeon Descent out. It's a fun time, a neat little concept and some very striking artwork, but I can't say it really stuck with me like Red Pearls or its more distant cousin Kinophobia. That's okay though; I'm not always in the mood to watch The Act of Killing. Sometimes, I just want Simpsons reruns.