Dungeon Maker (DS) Review

With the advent of high definition gaming, a lot of consoles these days don’t have “sleeper hits” or titles that you’ve never heard of that may be good. With the Nintendo DS though, several developers have been able to take advantage of the relative financial ease that Nintendo DS games can be developed with. Dungeon Maker is one of those games that, although it will never get much recognition compared to much more larger budget titles, is still worth trying out.

Dungeon Maker (known as Master of the Monster Lair in other territories) is the story of a young boy named Owen who lives in the quiet town of South Arc. However, disgusting and fearsome creatures have been infesting nearby forests on the outskirts of South Arc, and are slowly making their way into the village. Naturally, those residing within South Arc are questioning their safety and refuse to leave their homes. Owen, looking for his first job, naturally, comes across a talking magical shovel. The shovel then explains to Owen that he must “dig” a dungeon on the outskirts of South Arc in order to “lure” the monsters in and trap the monsters. The story isn’t amazing and it certainly doesn’t present itself in an interesting manner, using some pretty mundane dialogue in some scenes. It’s very evident that the game has been designed to appeal to a wider audience, while it ironically might alienate some older players.

The presentation of Dungeon Maker is fairly bare bones, and the style of the game probably lends itself towards the mechanics of the game’s dungeon building. Character portraits during conversation are of a very high artistic quality, but if I were to see these characters in another cartoon I wouldn’t recognise them as characters from Dungeon Maker. The gameplay itself is pretty much three dimensional environments with two dimensional sprites being used to represent the characters. Unfortunately this creates a really huge discrepancy between the two art styles making the characters look much more detailed than the (barren) world they’re in. Perhaps if the game utilised both pre-rendered backgrounds with the sprites it would suit, but the dungeon building mechanic really does require the pretty bare bones approach with the three dimensional environments.

The gameplay of Dungeon Maker is fairly repetitive. Basically, Owen enters his dungeon every morning (after buying certain supplies he may need), clears out monsters, expands his dungeon as he sees fit (or should I say, as the player sees fit) and then repeat it all over again. The gameplay, although seamless in it’s execution, is awfully repetitive and it really detracts from the experience. People who enjoy making things, though, will love Dungeon Maker. What’s perhaps the most charming about Dungeon Maker is that you can make the game as hard as you want it to be – don’t wanna encounter heaps of enemies? Then your dungeon can be built to attract less enemies (though it’s kind of deleterious to the game’s purpose). What I’m trying to get across here is – the gameplay of Dungeon Maker is extremely scaleable, you can make it as hard as you want to, while still making as much progress as you see fit. This element of the gameplay makes Dungeon Maker a great recommendation to almost anyone who is a fan of RPGs, regardless of their “level” of dedication.

Dungeon Maker is an RPG and because of this it has two things we should really expect – a battle system and leveling up. Dungeon Maker does the former like any other RPG, while the latter is something a tad, well, unique. Owen will be joined early on by two party members: A “slime” named Gloop and a young school friend of Owen’s, Kate. The battle system itself, though, is fairly boring. It does nothing new, but it’s not as interesting as the battle systems found in the recent Final Fantasy IV. Enemy appearances are dull, battles are bloated with REALLY slow text bubbles describing selections you’ve chosen. With these text bubbles comes something really worrying – you’re consistently wanting to move through the battles, and accidently may trigger another move (in the next turn) to be used by Owen, resulting in wasted MP. It’s design flaw that causes a lot of frustration. Something else of note is that there are no “levels” or “experience” in Dungeon Maker. Instead, you can increase your characters statistics by cooking foods from the meat you harvest from beasts inside your dungeon. Over time, more recipes are unlocked and those creating better boosts in stats require rarer “cuts” of meat from the enemies. It’s an interesting concept, but to be honest I just prefer leveling up. Gloop, the slime, mimics body parts in order to increase his stats. Interestingly enough, as you defeat more powerful enemies, Gloop can take on one of their body parts, essentially rewarding you for taking on hard enemies.

The interesting thing about Dungeon Maker is that players have a choice as to what music they want to be played when they are working on their dungeon. The downside to this is that the music is hideously repetitive, and really poorly composed. It’s lucky the DS has a volume slider because it really comes into play here. If there was an in-game option to turn the music off, then perhaps it would’ve garnered a few extra points in the audio department, but unfortunately the poorly composed MIDI pieces didn’t impress me at all.

Dungeon Maker is an average game; don’t get me wrong, but it’s just not something I’d really recommend to people looking for a decent RPG. It’s battle system is slow and cumbersome, the enemy design is channeling the already archaic Dragon Quest, and the gameplay, although fun, is simply way too repetitive to be fun in the long run. The dungeon building is pretty straightforward but you might feel held back by the amount of building you can do at any given time being fairly limited.

Sure, Dungeon Maker will provide you with lots of mileage but it’s really questionable just how much of that mileage you’ll run without wanting to give up.

Graphics 6.0

Gameplay 6.0

Sound 3.0

Tilt 6.0

Value 9.0