Rating of
2/5
If ‘Gauntlet’ Was Written By 'Saturday Night Live'
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 07/24/16
“Dungeonland” is a rather unique multi-player take on an old formula, published by Paradox Interactive. Unfortunately, Paradox has done an unbelievably poor job of maintaining their game, which released in 2013, rendering all of its novelty moot.
Presentation
“Dungeonland” features cartoony polygonal graphics. Characters and enemies are all distorted and ugly, seemingly for comedic effect. Environments are fairly predictable and unexciting, though they are at least not drab brown-and-gray affairs due to the game’s theme park aesthetic.
The audio is mediocre in every way. The sound track is completely forgettable, the sound effects are average, and the comments uttered by the game’s player characters and Dungeon Maestro are grating rather than witty or clever.
Where “Dungeonland” absolutely fails, however, is technically. The game launched in 2013 and has had intermittent server outages since at least 2015, when the MeltedJoystick Crew tried to play this for our weekly Online Co-Op Night. I fully intended to take on the role of Dungeon Maestro (and even bought the DLC providing more DM tools), yet when we went to play, it was impossible to host a session. The game’s forums show some level of responsiveness from Paradox, as they pop-in every 6 months or so to say that they ‘fixed’ the server issues, but then the servers go back down for long periods of time. The game is, essentially, now an offline only experience. Even worse, though, is that after the MJ Crew paid money for a 4-pack in order to play this game, it went Free2Play, providing us with very little for our money. Fortunately, we bought our 4-pack for next to nothing during a sale.
Story
“Dungeonland” has an incredibly weak premise, and no narrative elements outside of said premise. Apparently, a crazed jester, who has taken the mantle of Dungeon Maestro, has either built or taken over a theme park in a stereotypical fantasy kingdom. The DM and his park invite groups of heroes to participate in blood sport against swarms of monsters for their own entertainment, with the promise of cash prizes.
And that’s it. The DM and heroes occasionally spout one-liners that are painfully un-funny, but beyond that, there is no ongoing narrative structure or character development. The core heroes, a Black fighter, a horse-faced rogue, and an obese mage try too hard to go against the norms of generic fantasy Hack ‘n Slash games. The whole thing seems like an incredibly earnest, yet simultaneously incredibly dumb “Saturday Night Live” sketch that would be received by the chirping of crickets rather than peals of laughter.
Gameplay
I wanted to play “Dungeonland” for the ‘Dungeon Maestro Mode,’ which originally allowed one player to torment a group of three other players in asynchronous multi-player. Unfortunately, due to the game’s perpetual indecision whether to be online or offline, DM Mode doesn’t work, and I wasted money on the DLC.
Thus, what remains of “Dungeonland” is a 3-player local co-op game, which I thought would be adequate ‘entertainment’ for an evening or two for Nick, Chris, and myself. Unfortunately, Nick couldn’t be motivated to even pick up his controller after his disappointment with the game losing its online features, so Chris and I decided to tackle it as a duo. Unfortunately, “Dungeonland” is vehemently a 3-player game, so in Nick’s place, we got a braindead AI bot as a companion.
Playing as the hero team in “Dungeonland” is very much like playing that old-school abomination, “Gauntlet.” Enemy ‘Spawners,’ a type of purple caterpillar that poke their heads out of the ground, appear at various points in each stage, which are viewed from top-down perspective. Spawners produce blobs of other enemies until they are killed, and killing all enemies in a given area is necessary to move onto the next area. Scattered in each stage are chests filled with coins, and characters can also pick up potions to refill their special attack count and food to refill their health.
Collecting gold, however, doesn’t really amount to much. It can be spent in the game’s item shop to unlock alternate sub-classes for each hero as well as a handful of alternate special attacks and passive bonuses. Weapons and armor can also be purchased with coins, but they are all 100% cosmetic with NO stats, which makes them completely pointless.
Also, like “Gauntlet,” “Dungeonland” is mercilessly difficult… and not in a ‘fun’ way. Players all share a set pool of extra lives, and playing with any number of AI bots on a team is a guaranteed way to lose them. If a hero goes down, another hero can run over and revive them for a short period, thus not wasting a life, but since enemies just keep coming until the Spawners are gone, reviving allies is a fruitless endeavor. Bosses, likewise, require perfect coordination between all three characters, making them nearly impossible with any AI bots on the team… and I’m only talking about 0-Star difficulty.
Each of the game’s meager number of stages can be played on 0-Star, 1-Star, 2-Star, or 3-Star difficulty, with further options to make them even harder by limiting the number of lives the team starts with. With a team consisting of Chris, myself, and a Bot, we could barely make a dent in 1-Star. But even if we could, the core gameplay just isn’t particularly fun. Running around, shooting/slashing/burning extra-spongy enemies in order to earn meager prizes and experience a non-existent story is just tedious and repetitive instead of pleasant and enjoyable.
Overall
Even now as a Free2Play game, “Dungeonland” doesn’t offer anything intriguing. While the asynchronous Dungeon Maestro Mode held promise, the fact that the game’s online capabilities are about like Schrodinger’s Cat has removed that as an option. What’s left of this dried-up husk of a game is repetitive, brutal hacking and slashing in order to experience lame ‘humor’ and earn worthless prizes. Nobody should waste their time on this turd.
Presentation: 2/5
Story: 1/5
Gameplay: 2.5/5
Overall (not an average): 2/5
