Previous articles from this series
Introduction
My PC has already been burned out for over a year. In my current situation I can’t play anything but Indie old-school tactical enterprises. The Dwarf Run is one of those that has really caught my eye. It’s an adventure RPG turn-based game with a emphasize on unique battles. And when I say unique, I mean it. Almost every single fight has totally unique enemies and forces you to frequently change strategies.
Data
Difficult: Hard, Arena Hardcore (The hardest)
The actual difficulty: Pretty challenging
Number of developers: 1
Hours played: 52
Completed: 100%
Achievements: 100%
Deaths: A lot lol
Fun factor (scale 1-10): 8
First Impression
The first impression was one of the funniest I ever had. Right when you start the game, the main page pops up with the “Intro” playing in the background. It’s not a cinematic, but rather some kind of cut scene introducing all four heroes that will accompany you throughout the game. It all looks rather horrible and lasts for at least 2 eternities, therefore it really creates the old-school feeling that is so important to have in such games. Also the fact that the whole game was created by just one person makes you simply respect the game and give it a try… period.
Gameplay
You control a group of 4 adventurers (Warrior, Wizard, Archer and Cleric) from a third person view. When you’re not fighting, you have to solve quite a large number of puzzles, in order to advance further. They all are basically solved in a way: Pick up something/ find something/ use something on the found object. Classic adventure type of game that forces you to be creative. When you are fighting, you usually do that against totally unique enemies. The fights are done in a good old DnD fashion with slightly advanced rules. Every character has good amount of usable spells, which increases the amount of your potential moves greatly. It’s kinda hard to decide what it is you need the most in the fights now and spend your attribute/skill/perk points accordingly. I now know that it’s not viable tactics to underestimate any strategy game, since you never know when it will get even tougher, so I often times waited with the points unspent, until I really needed to boost something.
After around 23 hours the group is locked in a prison and is forced to take on the role of gladiators. All the equip is stripped away from you and you have to climb your way through numerous battles in order to gain some money to replace the rags you’re given with armor, and stones for real weapons. It took me good 26 hours to get past this section mainly because of the “hardcore arena” settings. If the game was challenging beforehand, this part was really hard. There were around 8 categories of enemies that you could have fought against. This was the first point where the battles got a bit repetitive (after around 30 hours of gameplay which is rather formidable!). With a seemingly infinite amount of battles ahead, all you had to do was to select the next needed item spell and attribute and just try to win any fight in order to boost yourself even tiny bit again.
The last part of the game takes place in a space ship. The sci-fi element was rather fun, even though the fights there were a bit shoddy. Anyway it was an OK end to the great game created by just ONE developer. Really, all the respect to that guy. Give him those few bucks. He deserves it.
Difficulty
The game was not easy at all. My brain really had to try hard to get past the puzzles and fights to the arena and when there, I was even forced to brainstorm for quite some time with my friend about what should my next move (item bought, skill boosted) be. The arena got pretty intense, even if slightly repetitive. Because most of the fights in the game are unique, you always have to think about new strategies that could be used. The developer really forced you to not use the same working sequence of spells and attacks all the time.
Summary
The story of the game is just shitty, let’s face that. Games though not necessarily need a good story in order to be enjoyable. If you want to tease your brain a little by both logical and funny puzzles, challenge it in numerous unique battles, or just experience well-structured old-school game with stereotypical but still catchy humor, definitely try this game out. Moreover you will support one single guy for his grand effort. I have to admit that I had to take break after I reached the arena and climbed through first section. The break though replenished my need to beat those hardcore fights that retrospectively gave new competitive element to the game itself.
