Hail, Traveler! If you’re anything like me, which I hope you are, you’ve spent countless hours sitting around an old kitchen table roleplaying dungeon scenarios with your buddies. Tabletop games, like Dungeons and Dragons, took us all on adventures and fueled our creative sides for much of our youth and continues to do so in our decrepit old age. In the modern world, though, video gaming has taken over much of those player bases and provided us with interactive methods (and in-game calculations, thank god) to explore that same adventurous mindset. In fact, an entire genre has been built around such endeavors. Behold! A paltry list of the best dungeon crawler games approaches, roll for saving throws.
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Darkest Dungeon
Who would’ve thought Darkest Dungeon was a dungeon crawler? Genius. One of my personal favorites, Darkest Dungeon takes a classic mold of genre past and cracks it, then rebuilds it in the same general shape, but slightly different. Uh, it’s a 2D scroller. Not just any 2D scroller, mind you, but a difficult, Lovecraftian masterpiece. Praise Cthulu, this game rocks. Okay, so essentially, Darkest Dungeon takes everything you like about dungeon crawler rpgs and brings the stress of real life into it. That wasn’t a joke, it’s a game mechanic. That’s, right, stress management. Turns out, barely surviving a warren full of demonic pig men that puke on you for fun, is stressful. If one of your characters gets too stressed, they have a heart attack and die, in the dungeon. Yeah! Awesome, right? You can alleviate stress through pious reflection or debauchery, take your pick. Keep in mind, however, that characters develop lasting psychological quirks and contract illnesses you need to deal with. I suppose good things can happen to you, too, but they don’t. I could write an entire article on just how great this game is, but I’ll spare you the effeminate school-girl gushing. Instead, go buy the game! Any major console, nearly any handheld, it’s everywhere. It’s as worth it as a L’Oréal commercial.
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Divinity Original Sin
Dimly lit dungeons and crimson courts not good enough for you? How about more dimly lit dungeons with a side of Bicky Go Boom!? Ha. If you’ve ever played the game you might’ve chuckled at that remark. Anyway, this title is just as amazing as the first. The game is gorgeous, the voice acting is okay, and there is a TON of things to do. Divinity harkens back to classics like Baldur’s Gate in that, it’s mostly blind exploration, you encounter tons of random characters, and staying alive can be challenging. With a host of different spells and abilities that react to your environment, the chaos can get out of hand quickly. Once, I wiped my entire party by accidentally pulling a barrel in range of a trap with telekinesis. It exploded, setting off every trap in the vicinity, killing my well-spaced-out squad. The developers are tricky. The best part about Divinity, though, is that it’s a multiplayer dungeon crawler, up to 4 friends drop-in drop-out. Please, play this game and see what all the Bickies go Boom about. Bring your friends.
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Don’t Starve Together
Another co-op dungeon crawler, Don’t Starve Together is a blast to play with friends. It, too, plays host to demonic pig men. That’s an odd tidbit we should probably explore, but not today! Today, we talk about the odd Tim Burton art style and gothic overtones found in one of the best survival dungeon crawlers out there. Basically, you and your friends join a room and start collecting materials while exploring the map, being careful not to upset your weird monster neighbors. Do this for a while, and you can survive the night by building fires. Collect even more, and you can build a science machine! You know, for doing the science that everyone pretends is fake! Um, collect even more stuff and you can invent your way into a reasonable homestead with plenty of resources. Build weapons, take over the map, and laugh as your friends starve to death when you could save them. There isn’t much more to the experience aside from rampant betrayal and a few special events found throughout the world, but I won’t spoil those for you. It’s really, really hard to be bored while playing a game this dark and mysterious. 10/10 would talk to my dead sister’s spirit again.
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Path of Exile
I mentioned PoE briefly back in my hack and slash games article but didn’t really get to go into too much detail. So, here’s a great opportunity. As one of the best dungeon games for PC, it has been officially ported by Xbox and Sony onto their respective platforms. It doesn’t take any more convincing than that. But, just in case you’re a hard sell, it’s also completely free-to-play. The only paywalls are for cosmetics and some inventory spaces, but you truly don’t need to spend a dime. This game plays a lot like Diablo and similar games, but it has an insane depth of content that is ever expanding. You can expect of a lot of repetitive gameplay from this crawler, but the story is halfway awesome and the quests are fairly interesting. You start out as an exiled character of certain origins that washes ashore on Wraeclast, a terrible island full of tons of things that want to kill you. I think it’s based on Australia. Danger. Danger. Danger. You kill stuff, loot it, skill up, and become more bad ass. What more could you want?
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Transistor
The final crawler on this list is a bit interesting. I truly believe that this game wanted to be so much more than it is. Despite its welcoming fan reception, I wasn’t as engrossed as I should’ve been. It makes the list because it is really well polished. The cyberpunk atmosphere is something that is rarely done well in the game industry and Transistor knocks it out of the park. Though, the writing and voice acting can sometimes feel like a bad anime, solving puzzles, defeating enemies and exploring the vast world is fun. Many of the people I’ve spoken to about the title either swear by it or loathe it entirely. I think each player needs to make that choice for themselves.
What do you think of our dungeon crawler list? Are there any genre breaking titles you’d be interested in seeing here? Leave it in the comments!
