Shane Here's Dungeonfield is a sandbox-style RPG action adventure game that might feel a bit familiar if you've ever played Terraria. Plunked into a 2D, side-scrolling world randomly generated and populated with dangerous dungeons, and you'll need to smash, stab, dig, and otherwise destroy your environment to gather the supplies you'll need to craft and survive day-to-day. Turns out in a great battle, the kingdom was destroyed and all its people carted off to dungeons, and only you can save them. Right after you replant these tulips. And chase that kitty. And build a giant stone sign saying BUTTLORD and wait until your husband notices because that's how you show you care.
You can generate any size world you want, and choose to play to rescue and rebuild, or simply enjoy creative mode. If you've never played a game like this, you might want to run through the tutorial to learn the basics first. You move with [WASD], use [1] and [2] to cycle between available items, and click on most things to interact by hitting them. If the object, anything from the ground to trees and more, can be destroyed, you can pick up the remains by walking over it and using them as ingredients to craft other helpful items. Though you start out with just the basics, as you explore and find new materials, you can make a wide variety of items, from simple decorations to bling out the fortress I'm sure you plan on building, to tunnels you can link up to travel instantly anywhere in your newly generated world. Die? Don't worry. You'll just respawn at your last save/load point.
As fun and cute as Dungeonfield is, however, definitely has its frustrating... kinks. Destroying a tree base with anything other than an axe will render the rest of the tree magically untouchable, floating in midair, for instance, and you can traverse enormous bodies of water simply by running across the surface and holding down the jump key like a mad rabbit. More annoyingly, however, Swapping between items with [1] and [2] gets tedious when you have a lot of inventory to cycle through, and although the game tells you that you can use the mouse scrollwheel to cycle through items (which is true), it also makes the entire page scroll up and down, rendering it somewhat useless. Still, though the game could use a bit more polish and user-friendliness, it's still a fun little browser sandbox gem with enormous potential. The graphics are adorable, even when those same adorable monsters are chewing your face off, and exploring and saving people will keep you busy for quite some time. It's a simplified sandbox with a goal (namely, the rescuing of trapped folks), which is nice and casual, perfect for an afternoon, and if you don't want the added pressure of saving the kingdom, Creative Mode will let you explore with few real dangers through the addition of a whopping ten thousand hitpoints. Smashing, bashing, block-building adventuring in your browser? That's awwright by me.
The page keeps scrolling when you use the mouse wheel to scroll through your items!
It is really annoying.
Hi starbeamrainbowlabs. :) I actually mentioned that in the review, and even passed it along to the developer, who unfortunately decided not to fix it because there was the number key option apparently. It's disappointing, since it's part of that "needs polish" part I talked about.
Love the graphics, love the concept, HATE the inventory system and find the crafting system not super intuitive. Maybe that was on purpose, like, part of the game is figuring it out? In the meantime, I am just digging my way around obstacles, like God intended.
I came over to the discussion to see if anyone had found ways to workaround the frustrating parts of the gameplay, but looks like not so far. If the controls were less idiosyncratic, it would be more fun.
Hi Carny Asada. :) Yes, I believe in the tradition of Minecraft and Terraria as the game was inspired by, the intent is for you to have to figure out how to craft things through trial and error. Some like it, some don't.
Hints:
Not all dungeons have keys, but keys are common in the ones that do.
Many enemy spawn points can be destroyed/collected with the regular hammer. Block off the others. Ditto for dart shooters.
Almost everything can be destroyed. It's often easier to make your own path through dungeons rather than relying on what's there.
Build ropes or ladders at the bottom of long drops to cushion your fall.
Carry around a tunnel. You can lay it down to quickly rescue people. Simply pick it back up with the regular hammer to reuse it.
Resource Hints:
Wood: Walk along the surface and cut trees.
Iron: Common deep underground
Stone: Also common deep underground
Gold: Defeat enemies or loot chests in certain dungeons. You can also take advantage of deathtraps near spawn points to kill a bunch of enemies at once without risking your own safety.
Many thanks Bluemoose19!
@Dora Breckinridge
Thanks, I didn't see that bit :)
I played the game through long enough to rescue everyone in a large map (not recommended). It's a fun game, but it could stand to be polished up a bit. My main issue with it is that goals aren't tracked, and nothing changes when they're completed.
Here's a list of some features/bug fixes I'd like to see:
Track goal progress and reward completion (e.g. give reward when everyone's rescued)
Make new craftable items as rewards
Make convenience features as rewards (e.g. increase max health, give longer reach)
Make an autosort for inventory / containers
Make more female sprites; they're vastly outnumbered
Make keys available in all dungeon types
when uprooting chests or containers, make their inventories explode out rather than erasing them
Make trees growable
Fix the gold hammer; it doesn't do anything
Make water behave better (e.g. make it portable, make getting out of it easier)
Allow jumping at the lowest depth
Kind of reminded me of a 2D minecraft. Maybe that's just me.
Update