Dungeon Drafters is a Zelda-like dungeon crawl where you have unlimited lives and a classic SNES look and feel.
Dangen Entertainment provided us a code for their latest title, Dungeon Drafters and it is an experience that quite surprisingly felt both new and nostalgic. How can it be both? I know. it feels weird. Visually the game looks like some of the classic JRPG titles you would play on the Super Nintendo or even the Genesis, with an isometric dungeon crawl. This is most like some of the original Final Fantasy titles. That covers the nostalgia part of it, now on to the NEW. The combat mechanics are a blend of turn based combat, like a tactics game, and merges it with card abilities from a randomized deck. This cards perform actions like rappelling from one end of the map to the other or a flaming sword strike.
As you dungeon crawl through the various stages you will confront monsters and people to save. Sometimes the monsters will attack each other as well. The way to tell the difference is the color of the health bar. If it’s red, then you kill it with extreme prejudiced. If it’s gold however, you need to save them as quick as possible. If this part was explained somewhere I completely missed it. Each chamber of the map seems to get more difficult as time progresses so playing cautiously is important as you rarely get chances to heal. Most enemies can move or act two times per turn where the character I chose had three. Knowing this makes planning your moves even more important because you can force some enemies to lineup to make fighting them easier.
I plan on a minimum of one hour of gameplay prior to writing our reviews. This game sucked me in and somehow I lost almost three hours and had no idea, I was just having fun while slashing my way through the Glacial Library. Some dungeons are harder than others and I think choosing the library was a mistake this early in my gameplay because I didn’t even complete a single floor before getting killed. Interacting with NPCs leads me to believe we will unlock additional characters in our party through the story which will make stages like this one easier to traverse. Not only did I have a great time with this one but my son who was watching me play enjoyed it as well and even helped me understand some of the ability cards I was using better.
