App Army Assemble: Dungeon and Gravestone - "Was this remastered roguelike worth digging up?"

Dungeon and Gravestone is a recently released roguelike by developer Wonderland Kazakiri. The game initially launched around five years ago, meaning the latest version is a remastered edition of the pixel art dungeon crawler. But has it aged poorly in that time? Or do the mechanics hold up? We handed our game over to our App Army to find out.

Here's what they said:

Oksana Ryan

I liked the look of this game and it had me happy for the first few levels. Then it all went pear-shaped. The most annoying thing was that the game didn’t save (at least I didn’t find a way to). Every time I got killed it went back to the village and start again. At first, I thought I hadn’t gone far enough to earn a save but I got as far as level 6 and still ended up back at the cave entrance. To be fair, the starting level was always slightly different but it didn’t make up for not being able to forge forward.

The mechanics of the game are easy to pick up, the design is colourful and easy on the eye, but the background music is very mundane and I turned it off. By and large, the game could be fun but the continual starting from level 1 is the thing that I disliked the most. A few fixes and it could be a fun game.

Isaiah Stuart

I can't say I'm a fan, unfortunately. The game lacks polish on several levels, especially with dialogue and text pop-ups, which are marred by frequent grammar issues and misspelt words. These things really grate on me as I'm a frequent reader. I know how to spot quality. For me, little errors like this will dirty my perception of the rest of the game, gameplay notwithstanding. The gameplay itself strikes me as rather boring and repetitive, the aesthetic as uninspired, and the "story" as vague and unoriginal. The combat is also not particularly interesting. It made me think of Rust Bucket in some ways, except I liked Rust Bucket. I do not like this and am unable to recommend it.

Brian Wigington

I REALLY want to like this game more but it just takes longer than expected to warm up to it. I understood going in that a roguelike can be difficult and at times seem unforgiving. I died upon attacking my first enemy. My second try lasted until around level 5 or 6 of the dungeon. I do like the simplicity of the combat and the blocky graphics with a depth of field effect. At the same time, the look of the game almost makes me want to rotate the levels to see what is around me. I felt that the controls were decent for the "hopping" style of turn-based/real-time action. The dungeon levels so far have been short and sweet with some easy and some tough mobs.

I found that attacking and backing up before attacking again kept me alive longer. I do like that there seem to be some health pickups at the start of each dungeon level. I did NOT like constantly losing all my money upon death (I do realize this is a rogue-like) and was left with a feeling of never achieving anything meaningful. I need to play a bit more to truly make up my mind on this game since I feel like not all aspects were well thought out. It looks great, sounds OK, and has acceptable controls overall. I think the difficulty may need a small tweak or perhaps more rewarding gameplay to make me feel like I am/can achieve something.

Mark Abukoff

This really is a very good looking game. It has a unique look to it. As has been said, the depth of field is gorgeous. Really eye-catching. It also has the humorous aspect of coming across the death-sites of other players and reading their last words. I don’t mind the countdown aspect… again it’s a rather unique (to my experience) aspect that adds to the challenge and fights the temptation to go through every room if you don’t have to and fight every enemy for the simple pleasure of fighting every enemy. My only real complaints (aside from the fact that I can’t seem to get past the fifth floor. I’m sure I’m missing something) are these. Without the ability to rotate the camera, you’re going to miss things that are blocked by terrain. And that’s a big point of failure in a dungeon crawler.

There are no save-games. I like a game that can be played in quick five minute blocks, but the point of that is to be able to drop it and come back to where you were. If there were more rewards, I’d be willing to accept that shortcoming. But the rewards aren’t that great. In-game currency takes a long time to accumulate. And when I first started playing this, I thought I was going to get a pared-down Minecraft Dungeons on my iPhone. And this game has that potential. But it would need to add more variety, to include some kind of quest rather than similar-looking level after similar-looking level, as well as addressing its shortcomings. It’s not a bad game. It has great potential. But it needs work.

Jim Linford

The game is really really gorgeous looking. Lovely depth of field effect on the game. First time I played the game I had no idea what was going on. I kept losing my life like a countdown timer? Didn’t know how to refresh it. Also, I kept levelling up but nothing came of it? It doesn’t hook me like other roguelike games like Soul Knight or Enter the Gungeon or even hades. But I did try again, got further and realised how to extend my life the only issue is you will die a lot but you don’t carry enough to buy upgrades. It seems retro hard is the order of the day. It’s a shame as a lot of effort has been put into the game. I’m guessing the sole developer knows his game too well so doesn’t see the need for tweaks or a tutorial. I got to a part with a jumping puzzle but couldn't get further. The solution wasn’t obvious and the camera angle obscured my view. Those Hoping like I was for a nice game you can sink your teeth into with lots to explore might not find it here.

Chad Jones

At the first run-through of this game, I can see why people are complaining about not having any tutorial in this game. I didn't seem to mind it, although there are a few things you learn the hard way (like that is water/lava, not fancy pixelated flooring lol). The music or sound effects won't blow you away. It sort of reminds me of Minecraft dungeons although not as polished. The controls take some getting used to, your character doesn't move as smooth as you would like, he moves (sort of hops) 1 block at a time. And I don't know how many times I've been killed by a baddie I couldn't see because of the textures of the map.

After poking around I found there's an easy and normal mode (although lava and boulders will still kill you on the spot, you can take more damage by enemies) and there is a board in town in which I think a lot of players will miss that will reward you extra gold for killing x amount of slimes, skeletons etc. but because there is no tutorial no one would really look for it. There's a lot of missed opportunities and it could be polished up a little more but I do keep coming back to it and trying another round, I just don't think I would have ever paid almost $6 for this game. $1 or $2 would have been a bit more accurate.

Jc Ga

I really like roguelikes. But in Dungeon and Gravestone, I just got bored; I haven't played it for long but have no desire to continue. My experience was as follows: from the first seconds, the player suffers a sound aggression and I challenge anyone to enjoy the game's intro music (or later in-game music). Next seconds the imitation of a retro game with the request for the player's name and then the voice telling him to wake up written on a black screen impresses only by its banality. The first images of the game are neither pretty nor catchy, simply intended to rush straight towards the entrance of the dungeon.

But dungeon exploration is the heart of a roguelike, so the player still can have some hope, but it is hard to find enough reason to be motivated to walk the rooms of this dungeon: the gameplay is repetitive, the controls slow and approximate, the characteristics of the objects are not explained, neither do the enemies. If only the game was soothingly repetitive, but not even: the hero's health points keep dropping on their own. The game seems to want to kick the player out by any means possible, and inevitably, boredom sets in very quickly.

Eduard Pandele

The good:

• It's a proper roguelike - explore floor after floor of an endless dungeon, gather gold, buy items, kill monsters, eventually find a monster that kills you instead, start over
• You lose everything when you die, but the good thing is you can return to the town every five floors
• There are nice touches like messages on graves, NPCs giving cryptic hints, and the world feels alive
• Despite everything, it's addictive

The bad:

Everything else. For details, read below:

• Nothing is explained. You level up in the dungeon, but that doesn't seem to advance any visible stats. You can't tell if a monster is stronger or weaker than you.
• Your hero bleeds all the time and will die if you won't find a fountain of blood to drink. (also, procedurally generated floors means I once died without finding any)
• The town and the dungeon floors are procedurally generated, which means some floors are empty and on some floors you get teleported right into an unwinnable situation and it also means the "puzzles" are not that puzzling (read: they're boring)
• Controls are functional but awkward, I often found myself dying because the virtual stick takes forever to rotate my hero
• It's hard to tell where things are (oftentimes the crates, monsters etc are obscured by walls - the isometric perspective is really bad)
• the fonts are microscopic on my iPad, and the menus are barebones and even puzzling.

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