iPhone App: Sketch Dungeon

July 26th, 2009

= 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: