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Let's talk about Dungeonmans. I've been meaning to make a long post about this game forever, it's one of my favorite roguelikes, and just a plain wonderful dungeon crawling rpg.
Dungeonmans is a PC, turn based, single character rpg with permanent death and a persistent world that remains even if your heroes die.
It's a roguelike dungeon smasher that was Kickstarted successfully a few years back, and later released at the very end of 2014. In the last year and a half, it has been repeatedly updated with new content, features, and fixes.
So if it released over a year ago and I didn't do a big OT style post for it then, why now? Well partly because I'm lazy and OTs take a bunch of work
But also partly because I've been playing it a bunch again recently and it is criminally unknown even among roguelike fans. If you love building up super powered heroes and destroying enemies by the dozen, this is one of the best.Dungeonmans began life as a teeny tiny XNA project a million years ago, I stumbled across it completely by accident because I was in the mood for a roguelike game, I was burned out on the genre classics, and even in that proto-game state, Dungeonmans was showing the glimmer of some ideas that I'd been waiting to see in any roguelike game.
This was a good long while before tagging every indie game on Steam with 'roguelike' became a thing, mind, and there really weren't a lot of other games that scratched that particular itch for me (tough tactical combat, permadeath, interesting character builds, cool loot, etcetc).
When Dungeonmans finally launched, it managed to fulfill the promise I saw when it was just an early experiment, and since it launched, it's been improved on regularly with updates.
So let's get into it, I'll go over the major features and why I've been playing it on and off for years now.
The Dungeonmans Academy:
The major conceit for the game is the presence of a school for heroes. Every character you create begins at the same Academy, and the Academy grows over time, even as your characters die. This type of meta progression has been done in several other games (roguelike and roguelite alike), but if you're not familiar with the concept, it acts as a relief valve for difficulty.
If you hate losing all of your progress in permadeath roguelikes, Dungeonmans is a really good intro to the genre. The Academy gets built up over time, and eventually your starting characters are bristling with enchanted gear and hopped up stats, so you can smash through the early game (and even the mid-game if your Academy is really buff), which gets you back to progressing towards victory much more quickly than normal roguelikes where you start from scratch.
Also, if you're busy turning your nose up at the concept because that's not ~true roguelike difficulty~, there's an Ironmans mode that blows the Academy up. You start out in the ruins, and that's it, one run, victory or death. On top of that, none of the Academy upgrades or items work, so it's harder because of that as well.
The persistent world actually extends beyond the Academy, there are towns you can find in the wilderness and improve, if a monster kills you in the wilds, it founds a new dungeon as the boss, if you die in a dungeon, the monster that kills you becomes the dungeon lord.
If you die in any dungeon, your next hero can recover a part of that fallen character's essence and gain some power - and if the fallen hero was high enough level, you can actually recover some of the loot they were carrying and maybe even an upgraded, hero-infused version of the weapon they were wielding.
Character Customization
Dungeonmans is a skill-based RPG, there aren't hard-set classes. Instead, you pick skills from 11 different Mastery lines to build your character.
The Masteries cover the usual RPG class styles you'd expect - Fightermans, Wizardmans, Rangermans, Necromanser.
But there's also more unusual specialities - Bannermans is a spear and shield wielder that calls down enchanted banners to control the battlefield and blasts enemies with starlight (or performs dope ass dragoon-style jumping attacks).
Psychomanser is a combat monk that's a mix of psionic and martial artist - literally fling weapons at your enemies, make them bleed, and then kill them all in a single dashing turn.
The Southern Gentlemans is a refined barbarian that politely serves refreshing drinks up to his foes (seriously), until he gets angry and drops literal F Bombs all over the battlefield.
Something I really, really like about Dungeonmans is there's next to no fat on the skill tree. There are 92 different skills spread throughout the Masteries, and the vast, vast majority of them are powerful, multi-purpose active abilities.
There are passive skills, but they too tend to have significant impact on your abilities, character, or how you interact with the world.
My first impression when I started playing was that there were 'too few' skills, but I quickly realized that almost without exception, every single skill in the game is powerful.
They all scale with your gear and your stats, so they're all useful from the beginning of the game to the end.
On top of that, there's no passives of the 'add 1 point to gain 0.3% more X'. Everything is chunky and strong, useful in many situations.
Experimenting with all the different Masteries and combinations of their skills is a lot of fun, and gives the game a lot of legs - plus it lets you try something new every time you kick the bucket.
Exploration
When you create your first Academy, you generate a new continent. The continent is then filled in with forests and mountains, plains and roads, towns, ambushes, hostile encampments, dungeons, caves, towers, ruined fortresses, crypts, and ancient temples.
The farther you travel from the Academy, and the deeper (or higher) you venture into dungeons, the tougher the enemies get, and the better the loot gets.
At the farthest corner of the continent, you can (eventually) face the final dungeon to beat the game.
It's also possible to find new dungeons by bribing innkeepers in towns, or if you really want a fresh look, the Headmaster in the Academy can recreate a new continent, but you get to keep your Academy and all its upgrades intact.
Clean and Simple Controls
A lot of roguelikes have a nasty reputation for being impenetrable, Dwarf Fortress style.
Dungeonmans is not. You can play it with keypad and keyboard, with mouse, or even with a gamepad.
There are very few keyboard commands to learn, and all the main ones are accessible via the character sheet you can open with the Spacebar.
Open your powers menu and drag skills onto the hotbar, or press shift-# to assign them.
R to rest, F to shoot, E or I for equipment, and uh, that's about all you need to know really.
If you're a keyboard commando, you can customize the hotkeys and there are some more advanced functions (switching skill hotbars, fast travel to stairs, direct access to other character sheet menus, etc), but none of them are necessary to play.
Tactical Combat
This is why I love Dungeonmans, and why I've been playing it for so long. The RPG buildup stuff is great, but it's the huge range of monsters and dungeons combined with all the skills that makes for really entertaining combat.
Something that was driving me nuts about older roguelikes was their 'ascii text having erotic @@ sex' style combat. You could basically bump into enemies and that was about it. More recent roguelikes have improved on that, but Dungeonmans really nailed it for me.
Not only do your skills have a lot of flexibility and power, the enemies you face have a huge variety of skills. On top of that, there are Champions that are more powerful and have their own unique skills as well. The most basic 'move and attack' or 'move and shoot' style enemies exist of course, but there are enemies that make you stop cold and figure out how to handle the situation when you spot them because they present that much of a threat.
Another thing - Dungeonmans has a real focus on ~heroic adventure~, so in general, your hero is a bit tougher than most roguelike games, and if you know what you're doing, it's very possible to play the game extremely quickly despite being turn based.
That isn't to say that it's easy mind you, the game does still have teeth, and it can and will kill you repeatedly if you play sloppily.
Difficulty
This isn't actually an explicit 'feature' of the game, but it's something that kind of arose due to the way the game is structured.
So because of how the Academy works, and how character creation Perks are chosen, it's very possible to make the game harder or easier to suit your tastes.
If you're new to roguelikes and you have a hard time with permadeath, you can lean on the Academy, and over time your starting heroes become mega badasses. If you're persistent, you'll make it through and beat the game.
But! If you're a vet, or you beat it that way but you want a tougher challenge, there's a lot of room to make the game more difficult. Playing on Ironmans strips out the Academy entirely. Or you can start with an Academy, but don't play future characters. Or you can pick starting character perks that make your life harder.
I like this for a lot of reasons, for me personally, it's meant I can keep challenging myself with ever-more ridiculous setups, but for newer players, I really think it's a huge boon, and makes the game a lot more welcoming, especially if you've ever tried a permadeath roguelike in the past and bounced off due to the difficulty wall.
Really, really good music
Shades of Sakimoto all over the place. It sounds like a mix of Final Fantasy Tactics and some lost 16 bit rpg that you never played.
Don't take my word for it, go listen!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZUKhFHDpqc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhuSRf7LlzY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkWSzsPhSfI
https://soundcloud.com/overclocked-records/sets/zircon-dungeonmans-ost
Composed by Zircon: http://zirconmusic.com/
And a bunch of other stuff. Did I mention the absurdly ridiculous loot?
You probably already picked up on it, but Dungeonmans has a bit of a sense of humor. It isn't ~whacky goofy in your face~ comedy, but it's a bit tongue in cheek about the whole concept of lone adventurers plundering dungeons and smashing monsters. Read the flavor text on, well, basically everything - skills, items, enemies, it's quality.
I could keep going for ages, but this'd end up way too long.
If you've tried roguelike games in the past because you like the basic concept, but couldn't get into them, give Dungeonmans a try. Likewise, if you're already a dungeon crawler or roguelike fan, but you haven't heard of it, dive in.
