Dungeon Maker: Hunting Ground

"A creative entry, with good time-killing potential for those who enjoy it"

Dungeon Maker is as its title suggests: You, as some guy in a village, build a dungeon. The object is to get stronger and stronger monsters to live in it (giving you better benefits and loot), through the use of design skills and creativity. Rather than putting a focus on the idea of simply going through a dungeon and killing things to get their stuff, this game puts a focus on making said dungeon bigger and bigger, until the most powerful of monsters will live there. It takes the traditional hack'n'slash dungeon crawler and turns it into an almost Sim-esque experience, creating for the player a scenario in which they support themselves through a rather unique profession.

Graphics: 8/10

While nothing terribly special, the graphics are appropriate considering the potential scale and context of the game; They are stable, which is more than can be said for even worse-looking PSP titles, and serve to give the player the image of what they're doing accurately and in a stimulating fashion. Basically, the only real "graphics" are in the dungeon itself (the town consisting of going point-to-point on a picture), with adequate 3-d graphics and virtually no load-time or lag, no matter what may be happening on-screen.

Story: No Rating

In any other game, I would say that this story is not a story at all, but rather an ongoing task simply given to you. There is no real storyline to this game; You are simply given the task of creating a dungeon and using the cashflow from it to make it bigger and better. I hold no fault with the game for this, as there are plenty of SimCity's and Sims games out there that function much in the same manner.

Gameplay: 10/10

The gameplay is perfect, though not in the way people would think. Considering what you are doing, and how you must do it, there are no flaws in the way things work in Dungeon Maker. You talk to people, you buy necessary materials, and you use them to improve your dungeon. No real control issues or shortcut problems, and there is at least enough variety in the weapons, add-ons (called "roots"), and magic to make things interesting enough to make you want to see just what kind of things will come to live in the potential lower-floors of your dungeon.

Sound: 8/10

The music is all right, in that it fits the game and doesn't have any sort of issues such as being overly-soft or too loud. However, I find some issues with it in that it changes often, said changes being triggered when enemies are found, and when they're absent for longer than a minute. It's not that the music is bad, it's just that you really never hear all of it, because it switches almost constantly during the gameplay.

Controls: 9/10

Controls work perfectly, but there are some issues with the camera being assigned to the same button as the "block" function, which basically means that a stray move of the analogue stick/d-pad while blocking will skew your camera angle, but such is easily corrected by pressing any of three buttons that set the camera based on Player, Target, or Default (North-South map orientation). Not really that much of an issue, but it can get annoying when you're really into it.

Overall: 9/10

An excellent game, made for those who like to be creative but not so much as to get bogged-down in the details. Dungeon Maker offers both the opportunity to create your own game, while challenging you by giving you criteria as to how to influence the difficulty and rewards. I think it is a good entry into the library of PSP titles, because of its refreshing offering of such creativity and open-ended-ness with no issues concerning the execution of said concepts.

Should you buy it?

I would say yes. For those of you that like to make your own things, create your own challenges and still get surprising, game-enhancing results, this is the game for you. It takes the creativity of game-creation and delivers a unique, very "portable" experience that can be picked up and messed with whenever, however you like.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 06/26/07