Dungeonland

Dungeonland is a simple hack and slash adventure. There are three classes; warrior, mage and rogue, each of which has a few sub-categories. Mage can be Fire, Ice, or Electric. Rogue can be Assassin, Archer, Gunner. Warrior can be Vanguard, Lancer, Defender.

There are basically two game modes. One is your usual hack-and-slash, and the other reverses the roles where you are the Dungeon Master and are in command of the enemies. The actual levels are limited, but enemies are randomised which makes you come back to them.

Notably, there's no experience to be gained for killing enemies; only coins which can unlock abilities. When you choose your character, you equip an offensive perk, defensive perk, and a potion type. You can also buy new weapons, armour and hats, but these are just cosmetic changes and add no attributes at all.

You are accompanied by two other players too who can be CPU controlled if you play single-player. Weirdly, you don't seem to be able to customise these players at all so are stuck with the Fire Mage, Warrior Vanguard and Assassin Rogue.

The game is meant for multi-player, and the AI controlled bots in single-player don't do enough to help on any higher than the lowest difficulty. They aren't totally incompetent but at certain times they struggle. If you fail to revive your team members within the time-limit, then you lose a life from your shared life pool. Lose all lives, and you have to restart the level. There's one level where you have to keep moving to avoid the saw blades and your team-mates don't quite get it. If they die, you can't get to them to revive them so you just throw away lives quickly. They do struggle on the bosses too which require slightly different battle strategy to take them down.

When you are the Dungeon Master in Dungeon Maestro Mode, you lay out traps, monsters and spells in order to defeat the heroes. When you start a game, you select your arsenal from your owned cards to form a deck, and a hand is dealt to you in each section which limits what you can send out. At the end, you take control of the boss as the last line of defence. It's a great idea, but again, the fun is very limited in single-player but will provide a high amount of fun among friends.

Overall, Dungeonland falls a bit flat as a single-player game, but it wasn't really designed as such. With a few improvements here and there, it could have been a great single-player game too.