Popup Dungeon

Pop Up Dungeon is a turn-based strategy with a charming look. The levels build themselves as you move; it's essentially like Fog Of War with visual flair. Once a battle starts, you are basically limited to that area. Afterwards, you can freely explore the dungeon until you find the next battle. There's usually 3 battles and then you can choose to exit or continue looting.

There are traditional characters like mages, warriors, archers etc, but then some joke ones like a Cat with Cheeseburger attack, an internet troll, a computer which says "my body is Reggie". You can create your own designs and download other user's creations. The attacks are represented by cards but it's not a deck-based game. You get the same choice of cards each turn unless the cards are limited use, or if a card has given you special cards.

When you boot up the game, the first thing you are greeted with is a terrible user interface. I initially clicked on a "Create" menu which I think is a modification screen, but I intended to start a standard game. You need to click on the treasure chest to go to the actual main menu to start a game. In this area, I was staring at the screen, wondering what I should be clicking.

In between battles there's a bit of "story" which tries to be too humorous so can be confusing what is going on, especially when you aren't used to it. I think it presented me with some options and was basically asking if I wanted to skip the tutorial. After completing the tutorial, I think it was asking if I wanted to unlock everything straight away, or if I wanted the rewards as I progressed through the story.

The main mode has 20+ floors, although I saw people quote 5 and claim the game only takes a few hours to complete. I only got to floor 7 and spent 14 hours. The floors are composed of a few maps with a few battles on each one, with some dialogue sequences in between the maps.

The initial "floors" just play themselves. You can just select an available card, it autoselects so click again. There didn't seem much strategy since often you could only use 2 or 3 of 4 cards in your hand, and the fourth might be only played in certain conditions. Even when it does start to get more difficult, I often just replayed when I failed, making the same decisions but got a different outcome. I think most of the moves don't rely on random numbers too much, but there are cards that definitely do. These can have severe consequences such as the ones with a chance of death. So you might have an attack that does low damage but 5% chance of instant death. This really sways the battle when used against you and you lose a character.

You are always outnumbered so losing a character is a massive deal. I also felt that some characters were designed for damage and others more of a support role. So if your damage-dealer is defeated, then you are instantly in serious trouble. You can choose up to 5 party members and the game seemed to suggest using fewer. With the limited move-sets, it doesn't seem a good idea (or interesting) to not choose 5.

Characters are revived when you succeed in battle, but failure makes you restart the map. This means you can easily lose 30 mins of progress.

When you earn items, you double click to equip them to the suggested player, but sometimes the suggestion is to sell. So the mechanic of double-clicking to sell or equip is a bit confusing. Equipment doesn't carry over from floor to floor. Why do you get loads of good loot when defeating the boss at the end of the floor? You get excited for finding good loot, only to instantly lose it.

You unlock other modes when playing through the story. Eg endless. At the end of each floor, you earn a charm from the Gashapon machine which gives bonuses that do carry over.

You can switch out your party members in between floors but you have no idea what kind of creatures you are up against. I thought I had a good combination of characters until I got to a boss character who then destroyed me because he had extreme defence against physical attacks. Switching to magic and ranged characters then swayed the battle the other way and he didn't pose much of a threat.

I initially thought it wasn't clear if you can actually manually select a target and even the Steam forums had several questions regarding this. You have to drag the card up, then choose a target. It can also be confusing if statuses prevent you from selecting the target you want.

Often it can default to an opponent further away and makes you wonder if that really is the best decision. If enemies are out of range, the default suggestion is to attack an object or even one of your party members! I dealt massive damage to my own members multiple times.

You cannot walk through allies which means you often struggle to navigate through doors because you need to move them through in their turn order. To be honest, doors aren't the only problem; there are loads of objects that litter the levels. These can be smashed in, or outside battle. Ones with a coin drop gold. Outside battle, you click to destroy them, but when battling, you need to choose an attack card. What is the gold for anyway?

There are reactive skills which auto-trigger on a condition. These can mean you get attacked by moving into close proximity or they could auto-dodge. When there's loads of statuses, traps, skills, it seems very difficult to predict what will happen and actually apply a strategy. The Steam page boasts 1500+ abilities, but is that a good thing? Again, it makes it hard to learn.

The game seems very clunky overall, difficult to apply strategy, and takes too long to play. I also found my computer running quite hot whilst playing but there were only a few occasions of visible slowdown.