Hello everyone!
Out of boredom, I decided to spend some time on the Google Play Store searching for something interesting. After a bit of mindless scrolling, I saw a game that was completely random and it caught my interest called Dungeons of Dreadrock.
Dungeons of Dreadrock is a puzzle based adventure game made by Christoph Minnameier.
The primary aim of the game is to progress through a set of dungeons by solving the puzzle that each dungeon has to offer.
Since the game is primarily not a story driven one, the storyline the game has to offer is pretty brief. To summarize it, you (As the main character) go into a place called Dreadrock mountain to save your brother from being used as a sacrifice. That is basically the entire summary of the game's storyline.
Even though this storyline is short, it does elaborate on a few things like why the main character's brother is being sacrificed. The game doesn't appear to have a bunch of random plot holes, even though the story appears to not be based on a very advanced plot.
He was chosen to 'slay the undead king'
How the game primarily works is that you go into a dungeon, solve the puzzle, move on to the next dungeon, and repeat.
The game follows some of the classic formula for puzzle areas in adventure games for the most part like activating certain switches, retrieving the key to the next stage, avoiding traps, setting items in a specific order, and so on.
There are teleporters in the game though. I don't know if every puzzle area in an adventure game has that.
Basic teleporter mechanic: Go into one point, appear at another one
It is also possible to slay enemies with a sword (Or rather, a dagger that the game calls a sword for some reason). There is no health bar in the game, you die from a single hit.
Even though you get a dagger to kill enemies with, you can't kill some enemies with them.
Like that big guy. You'll either have to avoid combat or use other means like traps.
After clearing a number of levels, you'll be able to throw your 'sword' which allows you to deal double damage to enemies or solve some puzzles where you'll have to leave something on a pressure plate for example, but there is nothing else available that you can use.
But you'll have to be careful when throwing your dagger though, because you can't advance to the next stage without it in most levels.
And yes, your own dagger can kill you if it hits you when flying through a teleporter.
Normally, you can't go back to a previous leven once you've completed it. But there are some stages that allow you to go back because the solution (or a part of it) is in the previous stage.
Also if you feel like you messed up on a certain stage, don't fret. It is possible to reset a level back to how it originally was.
On another note, movement in the game is based on tiles like in Crypt of the Necromancer for instance. You can only move one tile at a time at a certain pace. Some enemies move at the same place as yours, some move faster while some move slower.
The graphics in the game are pretty admirable. It uses pixel art, and a pretty neat one at that.
I also admire the little details that were put into the game. Details like the sounds of objects sliding across your ears (If you're using headphones) depending on your character's position or how far you are from the object and bloody footprints appearing on the ground when you walk through an enemy that died recently. The footprints then fade away after walking around for some time and the blood from the enemy dries up after a while.
There was also an Easter egg of Shovel knight in the game. Unfortunately, he couldn't make it through the hundred dungeons of Dreadrock mountain.
Oh, and I also took his shovel too.
There is also a narrator in the game with some voice acting, and I'm a fan of that. The narration is actually nice to listen to and I didn't mind it at all even though it was a sentence I've listened to before.
I also love these little fourth wall breaks in the game too.
A thing that I didn't really like in the game were the controls. They are a bit tricky to use.
The game has two different control methods which are swiping and a d-pad. The buttons on the d-pad felt so small and were difficult to press. Meanwhile, swiping was slightly annoying because it would misread my inputs sometimes and this was somewhat difficult to use in situations where I had to quickly escape an enemy.
But this was not a big issue and wasn't much of a hindrance to the gameplay.
I also found the solutions to some puzzles to be a bit too simple. However, there are still a number of levels that are challenging to solve.
Also I really hate this dude.
After playing this game, I enjoyed the experience it had to offer. For anyone who's a fan of puzzle games and looking for something to try, I would recommend giving this game a shot. Overall, I would rate this game a 7 out of 10.
And that's all folks. Thanks so much for reading as always :)