Sproggiwood

Sproggiwood is the bumper bowling of traditional roguelikes – it looks and plays like the real thing but is more friendly to beginners. It’s a turn-based overhead dungeon crawler with procedurally generated levels that, on a moment-to-moment level, plays just like Rogue, Tales of Maj'Eyal, Ancient Domains of Mystery, Nethack, and the like. Yet it also features unlockable upgrades and multiple dungeons, and, most importantly, death doesn’t mean game over. Defeat merely kicks you back to your town where you can gear up and try again.

At the beginning of each jaunt into one of Sproggiwood’s many dungeons, you’re given the option of choosing your character and their starting equipment. To roguelike veterans, dungeon crawling will feel familiar – your avatar moves one square at a time and enemies only move when you do. New weapons and armor can be found in chests and experience points let you level up. There are a total of five character classes, each of which has four unlockable special abilities.

Abilities range from pitchfork tosses and twirling sword strikes to invisibility and ogre summoning, and using them consumes energy. The energy bar is capped at five points and recharges when you defeat enemies. Because you can’t bank more than five energy points, the system incentivizes using abilities early and often. But you still need to play smart – if you waste all your skill points you can easily find yourself surrounded by enemies and out of energy.

Each class has a different playstyle, and there’s even potential to create customized builds depending on which skills you unlock as you level up. Experimentation is encouraged and the relative brevity of the dungeons means defeat is only a minor setback.

Sproggiwood also excels in terms of enemy variety. From classic splitting slimes to hard-charging horned beasts, there’s no shortage of foes. Often you’ll find yourself dealing with multiple varieties at once, and will have to decide which ones to slay first. It feels tactical without feeling overwhelming, at least at first.

Unfortunately, a few enemies in the later levels feel overly gimmicky, and strategy takes a backseat to getting lucky with the RNG. One nasty enemy type always spawns in pairs, and regenerates full health if you don’t kill both copies at the same time; these evil twins can be literally impossible to kill if you don’t have the right weapon or abilities. Another annoying enemy is a mushroom that opens doors that continually spawn more enemies. The solution, naturally, is to chase these fungi down and deal with quickly. The problem is that they often spawn outside of your visual field and then run into the fog of war, where they start spawning bucket loads of minions. Dozens of enemies can spawn before you have any chance of seeing them. When this happens it almost always means game over. Don’t get me wrong – I appreciate a nice difficulty curve as much as anyone. I just don’t think the developers quite nailed the balance here.

One of Sproggiwood’s selling points is that it lets you build a village between your runs through the dungeons; however, I found this aspect to be disappointing. While there are plenty of weapons to buy and perks to unlock, the village itself is little more than window dressing. There are only a handful of buildings to build and no options to upgrade them; likewise, new villagers do occasionally appear but there’s no way to meaningfully interact with them. The whole place seems less like a town and more like an ant farm with a few shop menus tacked on.

There’s also a story, but it feels like it’s primarily here because “this is a game and a game needs a story.” Although the character designs are admittedly very cute and I adore the visual style, I rarely felt invested in what the world’s denizens had to say. Thankfully most of the story sequences are brief – the story is there if you want it but easy enough to ignore if you don’t.

I played Sproggiwood on my phone and, in hindsight, that feels like the perfect place for it. It’s too simple to scratch the traditional roguelike itch, but the short runs and incremental progression make it a great mobile game. While the overreliance on RNG in the later stages is frustrating, Sproggiwood still presents a strong package overall and I’m happy to recommend it as a pleasant time killer. Just don’t expect Caves of Qud-like depth, because if that’s what you’re looking for you’ll surely be disappointed.