Desktop Dungeons is the GOAT roguelike that's full of goats

Each week, we send out early codes of selected games to members of our App Army and ask for their feedback. One top pick this week was QCF Design's Desktop Dungeons, and award-winning PC roguelike that's squeezed itself onto tablets.

Let's see what our App Army had to say...

Sjoerd: Desktop Dungeons is a true masterpiece. I've never thought I would enjoy a game like this, but shortly after I started playing it I fell in love. The art style is amazing, the puzzles are challenging, and the gameplay is just fantastic.

You play in 10 minute sessions, which is ideal because that way you can just play it in between other games. I know $9.99 sounds like a bit much, but it's definitely worth it.

There are, however, a few annoyances in Desktop Dungeons:

• There's a useless "exit" button for quitting, but it doesn't fully close the game when I press it, so it's way faster to just double tab your home button and swipe up.
• The messages that are written on the signs and come out of people's mouths are a bit long and tedious. I ended up skipping a bunch of them because I didn't feel like reading them.
• When you attack an enemy that's too strong, you die. I've pressed the attack button by accident a couple of times when I had almost won. A confirmation of whether you like to attack an enemy because it's too strong would be really useful.

In any case, Desktop Dungeons is a great game that I'll be keeping on my iPad for a long time. It's a must-play!

Kainen: Roguelike you say? RPG too? Bite size gaming on the go? Sounds like my cup of tea.

Desktop Dungeons has loads to do, and humour that hits my funny bone every time. The looks and sound design is old school, but they really hit the spot.

I've found it hard to put it down in the past few days. The randomly-generated dungeons are fun, and the focus on levelling your character to defeat all the monsters is great.

There are evil goats too, but only a few. Goats... why goats? Worth picking up in any case!

Gabriela: It's a game that's hard not to fall in love with. For the most part it benefits from the level of challenge and its twisted sense of humour - I love how the vampires are bankers or how some of the bosses are evil goat!

However, something I found really annoying is that there's no real save feature, so I never know if Desktop Dungeons is going to save or not when I exit, since the exit button doesn't work properly either.

I also feel like the buttons in the game are too small in general, and it's really easy to miss-click an attack.

Newmanator: This game is tough. You need to start planning from the moment you start a level. You don't want to kill willy-nilly because, by the time you make it to the "boss," you'll be underlevelled and lack the damage and resources to win.

The combat is spot on. There are no surprises when it comes to damage dealt by you or damage done to you. That serves to make this game even more frustrating because you can see what every enemy is going to do to you before you make your move. It is very predictable and mathematical, but in a good way.

Is the interface fiddly? Yup. Have I attacked something without meaning to and lost at the last second? Yup. Do I still recommend picking it up? Yup.

I've played for six or so hours and I've barely scratched the surface. Desktop Dungeons is truly addictive; it makes you feel like you grow with each loss.

Quincy: I'm not a huge fan of "roguelike" games, but Desktop Dungeons is a pleasant surprise. I love games that aren't afraid to make fun of themselves, and here you get retrotastic graphics and ridiculous dialogue at every turn.

The gameplay is simple enough, and the tutorial goes a long way to make sure you're battle ready. I love that you can cloud sync and play the game on your PC - it adds another level of awesomeness to an already fun game.

There's a lot of strategy involved in successfully completing each dungeon, but it's not difficult to the point that you're going to toss your tablet out the window.

It's worth the price of admission for sure and, as the others have stated, goats!

Newmanator: Goats for sure. I am a HUGE fan of roguelikes, and this one is ace. The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth is still my favourite, but this one has to be the best iOS roguelike I have found. It comes in quick bursts of joy that fit the device perfectly. Ben R: I play a lot of roguelikes and RPGs, so I already had a good idea of what to expect from Desktop Dungeons. What I wasn't expecting was such a good sense of humour and how it never takes itself too seriously.

After a few tongue-in-cheek tutorials, and feeling full of myself after what I thought was simplified gameplay, I proceeded to die. A lot. As with all roguelikes, this game is difficult, and you WILL die!

While the game does allow you to see the outcome of your attacks before you use them, you still need to think strategically about your battles; will you spend the mana to get a fireball in, or risk taking a big hit to your HP with a regular attack? These are the kind of questions you ask yourself in this great roguelike.

Olivier: To create a good roguelike, it's necessary to mix a few key ingredients: randomly generated dungeons, different races, different classes, treasures, major difficulty, and permadeath.

Desktop Dungeons manages to weave all of these elements together, while also adding intelligent puzzle mechanisms. Each move you make is important, each attack must be carefully considered, and it's this philosophy of tactical turn-based combat that's the strength of the game.

It may not be easy to access for newcomers to the genre, but old hands won't be able to let go.

Taylor: I enjoy how you can see the results of potential battles before they happen, so you can think strategically on how to clear enemies. As everyone's mentioned, it's really funny with a lovely art style that reminds me of Paper Mario and Tap Heroes.

There are some remnants left over from the desktop version of the game that are a tad frustrating though. I often see 'Hit Shift,' 'Use Ctrl+G,' and others notifications for functions when I "hover" over them with my finger.

Also, there's no orientation adjustment, and all too often I find that even when the game explains things it doesn't really tell you all that much. I'm still trying to figure out how to work the Blacksmith after two hours, if that says anything.

As a bit of a personal gripe, I kind of dislike how the character portraits sometimes look... grotesque? One of the Wizards, for example, looks like he got his head smashed in by a rock and is trying to pick his nose with his tongue. It seems off to me.

Desktop Dungeons is a good game at heart and I think that's what matters most.

Alex_Gol: I'm not really familiar with these games, but the word 'Dungeon' in the title brought Dungeon Keeper to mind. In Desktop Dungeons however, you're solving dungeons rather than tending to them.

The game blends a bunch of puzzle mechanics with its RPG roguelike nature. By unveiling unexplored squares, your character restores health and mana, but so do the damaged enemies. You need to carefully plan your every move in order to save up potions and unexplored tiles for each boss fight.

In fact, the game unlocks a puzzle mode later in the game, which provides specific dungeons with setups that can be completed in a limited number of ways, which is pretty neat.

The controls feel a bit cramped, especially when checking passive status buffs and debuffs, and the enemy menu bar, which conflicts with your hero's pop-up action bar.

It's obvious, as Taylor mentioned, that Desktop Dungeons has been ported over from PC due to the keyboard hotkey commands that can be seen on the picked-up spells, full screen, and screen rendering settings.

These might give the impression that the hotkeys are for special bluetooth iOS keyboards, but unfortunately that's not the case. I've tested it on my Brookstone iOS keyboard and it just doesn't work.

Overall, Desktop Dungeons is a refreshing, challenging, RPG roguelike puzzler.

AcesHigh: As someone who only recently began setting my virtual feet into the often absurdly demanding realm of roguelike RPGs, I definitely felt intimidated as I booted up Desktop Dungeons for the very first time. At the same time, with all I'd heard about the PC original I was also gleefully excited.

Now that I've spent a good couple of hours in this game's exceedingly fine company, I was blown away by just how "grown up" Desktop Dungeons feels. Better yet, I'm delighted to say that it isn't anywhere near as daunting as I'd first feared.

On the surface it's deceptively simple, but if you dig a little deeper you'll soon find that there's more than enough depth and nuance to keep even the most experienced adventurers engaged for dozens of hours.

While most roguelikes aren't that deep outside of their trademark dungeon crawling and combat, Desktop Dungeons provides a wealth of depth post-spelunking. With your own kingdom to build and expand upon, there's tons to spend your hard-earned loot on here.

Desktop Dungeons is deep, massive, and a hugely engaging timesink. I really couldn't ask more from a roguelike, desktop or otherwise.

The App Army have spoken! If you'd like to sign up, please have a gander at our App Army application article. Did you pick up Desktop Dungeons? What do you think of it? Let us know in the comments below!