#2 - Deep Deep Dungeon

Game: Deep Deep Dungeon

Price: £1.19 / $1.99 | App Store |
Genre: Action, RPG
Developer: iQubi Inc.
Rating: 9+

Design: 5/10
Sound: 4/10
Gameplay: 6/10
Overall: 5/10

I'm Going Deeper Underground!
A very structured and challenging action game that contains tiny traces of RPG. After selecting to be a guy or a girl warrior, you must make your way through countless dungeon floors eliminating enemies, levelling up on xp, gathering gold and finding the exit. After every 10 floors you will face a boss battle and upon their anhilation, advance to a new dungeon with a new theme and new enemies. Along your travels you are free to return to the safety of your camp where you can stock up on health potions as well as purchase weapon and armour upgrades. Sounds like fun, right? Let's see.

Design
The game gets off to a pretty good start with reasonably well drawn characters and a pleasant enough base camp. However, things rapidly become repeated and you soon find yourself labouring through the same old dungeons eliminating the same old enemies. Some of the enemies are particularly well drawn, but for the most part, there's nothing special. The whole game has a very cheap look and feel to it, and though this does keep things incredibly simple, it damages the experience and leaves you frustrated. The attack screen lacks animation and creativity in general with the only saving grace being the inclusion of the timed tap to attack, with the yellow bar resulting in a hit and the tiny red section getting a critical hit.

Sound
The soundtrack is terribly repetitive and it's unlikely you'll have the game out of mute more than once! The dungeon maps have no sound at all, not even the odd eery, atmospheric SFX which would have been very simple to do. The SFX in general are quite poor and there is a real lack of variety throughout the game.

Gameplay
The aim of the game is to level up your character and conquer the series of dungeons laid out before you. The game's one true saving grace is that it is quite challenging whilst being very quick and easy to pick up and play. It will definitely have you coming back to it regularly. In my experience, in order to progress with any real chance of success, you need to repeat dungeons to gather extra gold and xp to upgrade weapons and level up. This gets quite tiresome, but the Shop feature can be rewarding as you use your new upgrades to slay enemies more easily. The controls are perfect for the game. A single tap to move and a single timely tap to launch an attack. It's also refreshing to see a game of this style being played in portrait, allowing you to play with one hand - perfect for holding on when on the tube!

Conclusion
If you're looking for an easy, pick up and play RPG styled game, then this is pretty much the best I have come across so far. Anyone new to the RPG genre might like this as a starting point, as it utilises the key elements in their simplest form, although I must stress this really isn't a true RPG. Overall this game is dissapointing although the release in its current form could have been a great starting point. In my honest opinion, it should be free for now whilst they make developments. However, there are far worse games than this on the App Store and some of them charge significantly more, so I'd not write this off completely. I've been playing it for about a week now and I am intent on completing it. Whether I'm enjoying the experience though, is truly debatable!