Twelve Games of Christmas #8 – DarkLight Dungeon

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 20, 2010

The full version of DarkLight Dungeon was released today. And for ambitious dungeon explorers, it comes with a potential real-life bonus: A $100 prize to the first player to solve an in-game challenge.

So what is DarkLight Dungeon? It’s an indie first-person dungeon crawler of a definitely old-school western RPG persuasion. It features turn-based, menu-oriented combat; anti-magic zones; square step-based dungeon grids (but with smooth 3D transitions and particle systems); puzzles; trapped chests; exploration; and even *gulp* character aging.

The story (thus far as I’ve played) is hazy in the way that many old-school RPGs always were: You find yourself in a “village” (a small part of the dungeon) with no recollection of why you are there or how you got there. The villagers aren’t exactly sure what’s going on either. Armed with little more than a few gold coins, you explore the village, pick up quests, and start your heroic career bashing on giant rats. Among other things.

The game is classless; advancement is based on leveling up and putting skill points into your various abilities. Your character’s race, along with dungeon respawn rates, determines the difficulty level of the game. Abilities become progressively more expensive to increase as they get more powerful, which pushes me to spread my skill points around and make myself a more well-rounded character.

The game advertised over 200 items, 100 monsters, 30ish hours of gameplay, lots of player statistics, 44 spells, and 15 skills (with 20 skill levels each). The free demo gives you access to a little less than 1/5th of the dungeon, which grants you a significant amount of play time.

I guess I can pretty much stop now. At this point, you know whether or not you want to download it and give it a try.  If you do, click the following link and check it out:

Try DarkLight Dungeon

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