iPhone App: Sketch Dungeon

July 26th, 2009

Sketch Dungeon

= 3 stars

Wander a dungeon, killing baddies and collecting treasure.

The Good

Seems inspired by Gauntlet (food) with some modern improvements, namely your chararcter’s movement and firing isn’t limited to 8 directions. Missile weapons, different colored keys, treasure, mazes; it’s all here.
Variety through crazy enemies (love the giant rat and the snakes) and inventive level design (mazes, shoot-fests).
Zoom in or out from the maze by pinching the touch screen.

The Bad

The pencil on folder paper aesthetic – seen in so many iPhone Apps – occasionally hampers gameplay: there’s no reason for the walls to wiggle and menus appear in a hard-to-read handwriting font.
Not a fan of the controls: movement is controlled by iPhone tilt. A dual D-pad (movement on the left, firing on the right) would have been preferable, and it’s good for games to at least offer the option.
You must start over from the beginning each time you die. Some of the levels are very maze-like and not fun to play again, so the lack of a save or regular checkpoints becomes a detriment to repeat play.

Conclusion

Solid game with amusing gameplay, but the lack of progress saving really killed my incentive to see this game through to its end. As a result, I haven’t been playing it that much, despite a killer price of 99 cents. Hopefully a future update will fix this flaw so I can descend into this dungeon again.

iTunes App Store Link: