Dungeon

By: Paul Eres

On: November 16th, 2009

Dungeon is a game by a powerful tag-team: Mr. Podunkian (of The Underside fame) and cactus (of dozens of games per year fame). To quote Zarathustra in the forums: “a horribly hard platformer with bad graphics? This is indie people”

My favorite part of the game was the room titles, which I think were a great way of adding an interesting background story to a game without dialogue. It’s a short game, took me about 10 minutes to get to the end, while playing in a window and having a conversation with two people at once (one of them Podunkian). A good indie game snack.

“Dungeon is a tragic platformer about what can happen in a
castle, and how it affects people like you and me.” -cactus

EDIT: cactus has an update for us!

Sorry about the radio silence, we felt it was necessary to let this experiment live its own life for a while.

Anyway, this should pretty much make everything clear

And here’s a bugfree version of the game

Posted in Platformers, Windows | Tags: cactus, ThePodunkian

http://tinysubversions.blogspot.com Darius K.

Hah. I love the first quote there.
pleb

this game sucks.
Ezuku

TH;CNP
(too hard; cannot play)

Yep, the jump mechanic in this is just beyond me. I’m afraid I’ll have to wait for a let’s play of this.
http://achroware.com/ Broxter

Was hard. But not too hard.

Typically cactus.
http://0xdeadc0de.org Eclipse

this time I have to agree with pleb, very shitty game
http://adayinthemindof.wordpress.com Kyle

I shouldn’t think it was shitty. I liked the raw mechanics behind the platforming, because they were tough and transparently so. You want to crank up the challenge on your platformer? Cap the jump and step on the gas.

It’s like, you load up Jumper or Meat Boy or something like that and look at one of the real hard levels and your heart just sinks, but here, you look at a level, think, oh I can do that, and ten tries later you’re cursing at the screen. But it’s not impossible, and it’s not unfair which are key ingredients to me.

I also liked the story telling aspects, despite the overt minimalism. Yeah, what story there is is told through the room titles, and more than a few of those titles are tongue in cheek. But there’s some pretty clever stuff done as well, and the screen shot Paul has up there is exactly one of those moments where you think, hey, that’s pretty neat.

All in all, a good ten minutes I’m glad I won’t have back.
pleb

but jumper and meat boy were good
http://achroware.com/ Broxter

pleb, you’re a pleb.

I’m funny, me.
Aron

finished it in 5 minutes. Its not that hard.

Most difficult Room was “Leap of Faith” because the save spot was 2 screens earlier.
raelz

I don’t get why there’s so much fuss about capped jumping. It’s the movement and hitboxes that bug me.
TeamQuiggan

Yeah, I had some unfair deaths because of the hit detection, but that didn’t prevent me from completing this game. I enjoyed it and I liked the end.
Gilbo

Can’t clear the first jump, must have tried 100 times. I love me some cactus games, but I can’t get past that first jump, and I don’t normally suck at platformers. Is there something I’m missing?
cmspice

Story telling was pretty genius. I really enjoyed this. Jumping as a bit ridiculous at times and I almost gave up.
xot

I agree 100% with Kyle. Great atmosphere, simple mechanics, minimal elements, and creative levels. Second play was even better because I had built the skills to breeze through it. A gamepad is highly recommended.
Nikica

@Gilbo, maybe you missed the text that says “Z TO JUMP”.
Tog

@Gilbo, no matter how I try, can’t get past the first jump either. -_- Loved the art though, too bad I won’t be able to discover what else the game had to offer…
SicJake

Love the presentation, but that first jump ya, it’s a doozy.

Attention span wasn’t big enough to spend ten minutes mastering that first jump.

Presentation is great, room titles neat, graphics neato with music. Just ya that jump :p
RT-55J

The first jump is definitely the hardest in the game. The rest of it was a cakewalk in comparison.

And just out of curiosity, am I the only person here who got through the triple-spike room (“Pussy!”) on my first try? Looking at the forums, it seems like a ton of people were having trouble with it.
what

cactus and podunkian? what a bad combination. both do best when they’re working solo.
Cliftor

No one’s made a “Cave Story ripoff” quip yet? I’m shocked! Are we growing up or just forgetful?

Anyway, fun game. “A good indie game snack” sums it up perfectly.
what

of coarse not because unlike cave story, this game sucks
gfdg

he meant how The Underside is just a cave story ripoff
Fred

Cactus of “making a crap ton of awesome, original games” fame. And Mr.Podunkian of “spending years throwing together a cave story ripoff demo” fame.
http://www.4colorrebellion.com M Tucker

After tons of frustration and reading the forums, it looks like the reason some people can’t make the first jump is because of a bug. I followed the suggestion of a forum user and ran Dungeon in Windows 95 compatibility mode and though the game didn’t seem to run very differently, I made the jump on the first try after that. Now to see the rest of the game.
Monkeyman1138

How on earth do you get over the second spike on “The Perils of Self Doubt”?
Levi

the game is not hard at all, it’s way too short, why do people bother making games this short, no it is not artful, it’s a lack of effort, please stop making 30 second long games, and I might form shorter sentences in the future.
SirNiko

I enjoyed the game. I did not consider it to be that difficult. The only really challenging room is “Pussy!” and even then I would have done better if I hadn’t died in the next room and been forced to start at the checkpoint.

Room titles made what would have been a short and forgettable game into a satisfying way to spend 5-10 minutes.

-SirNiko
Pita

Unfortunately I’m amongst the people who can’t make the first jump. D:
http://www.roachpuppy.com Chris Zamanillo

I think there’s some framerate dependent code that’s messing with the jumping for some people.

@Levi: It’s a Mini-LD game, were you expecting a 20 hour epic? (Maybe Paul should note that in the review)
Cascade

how did you spell zaratustra wrong

he’s in the chat every day, you know this man
Paul Eres

wat, zarathustra spells zarathustra wrong, zarathustra is the correct spelling of the prophet he takes his name from, and he knows that perfectly well
Ezuku

Oh, just figured out why the game was so hard.

I changed the exe to run in Win 95 compatability mode and now my character no longer takes 2 seconds or so to accelerate and decellerate.

Dodgy.
Steve

So can you jump over the thing in the last room? Trying to avoid specifics. :)
Consumatopia

Yeah, but nothing interesting happens that I could see.
Dst

About a minute in I realised that this was a bad game, with a few good gimmicks. About 3 minutes in, following the 3rd repeat of a section where a missed, finely placed jump sets you back three screens I realised that the entire game is a cruel prank on the OCD nature of gamers. I then stopped playing.
You don’t have to finish bad games. Just walk away. Whatever ending there is is not inherantly more meaningful because you had to suffer to reach it.
tiglionabbit

Controlling a stumbling moron is not my idea of fun.
Bob

Not hard, just pixel perfect.
I liked the storytelling.
Zmann

Hey guys. This game purposefully makes itself impossible for some people. Like, the game is a giant troll. Read the linked thread for details.
http://www.roachpuppy.com Chris Zamanillo

Haha brilliant.
Swillo

I didn’t find the game all that hard (not as hard as I was led to believe, anyway).

Had that retro feel, which was kind of cool, but all in all I didn’t think it was much fun. Just a little artsy diversion, which is what I think it was intended as.
MasterGH

Well, I quite liked it. I didn’t have any issues at all with difficulty. I loved the way the jumping felt.

One thing…I jumped over the sword at the end, but nothing special happened. Is something meant to?
Zaratus

OK, seriously, at the very least if you are on Vista, put it on compatibility mode for Win 95. After getting frustrated on one screen for 15+ minutes, cursing out the controls and super acceleration at the slightest touch, while other times moving short distances like I want to, being very inconsistent, that fixed my problems, gave me normal controls, and I finished it no problem.

It’s *easy* if it’s running correctly for you. Especially if you’ve played IWBTG at all. =P
cm

Hahaha, the flags are death spikes. Amazing.
cm

Also, @Zaratus, when I use Win 95 compatibility mode the sound is different and the game has no checkpoints. It seems to run normally under Vista for me though.
Steve

Wow. People are pretty desperate to explain away why they are bad at something. Just get over it.
Ezuku

Hey, if you’d seen the way it was running for us, at least for me, you’d struggle too. The worst bit is that it looks like the game *should* be running like that.

Once on compatibility mode difficulty became easy.
Z

I wonder if any of these random posts saying various players suck are the creators goading things on?
Chronomaster

I don’t see what you guys are crying about. I’ve had a lot less problems with this game than, say Jumper. Yep, no music loading hitches/inconsistent frame animations/inconsistent hit boxes here.

Though to be certain the hit boxes are off. But, thank god they aren’t inconsistent like a certain series of games requiring complete precision in an imprecise engine.
J

That’d make the most sense, Z.

For me, the first jump is impossible (running Vista Home Premium 64-bit…yeah, I know, but it works for most things), but in compatibility modes for Win95, 98, and XP I have no problems with the gap. Unfortunately, the save point feature doesn’t work under 95/98, and the moving obstacles are much too fast under XP.
nik

The creators of this game, probably think of themselves as true elitists, make a game thats so crappy you can’t get past the first jump, so the plebs get frustrated=> emotion , and thus the creator is a true artist. He/she made a game that generates real feelings, and critics can go on about the game criticing on certain game-mechanics….

I gotta poop ! ;)

nice music btw