Dungeon Maker: Hunting Ground

"Making dungeons is fun, but hunting really isn't."

Dungeon Maker: Hunting Ground is more of two games is one to be quite honest. On one level, you have your standard dungeon crawler. You start every day in town. You buy weapons, you get spells, you get some potions, and then you go to a dungeon. There you kill things, grab loot, and fight bosses. Then you go back to town and repeat. Nothing new, right? Well what if I told you that you make that very same dungeon you are exploring in.

On a graphical level, DM:HG isn't good, but it isn't bad either. The town you live in is rendered in 2D, it's more of a background then anything else. It is just drawn there. Each shop is a nice little shiny dot, that looks well...shiny? All in all, the town is nice on a 2D scale, but you would think they could create a nice 3D town. All the characters in town are drawn just like the city. These people look fine and all. Nothing really to complain about.

The dungeon however, is in 3D. Your character and the monsters look pretty good. Once again, nothing really to complain about, but the graphics could have been much better. One fault however is that of the dungeon itself. While all the various creatures look fine, the walls and floor are very repetitive. They look nice, but you can only see the same stone wall so many times before you grow tired.

The sound is a disappointment to me. There is no voice acting. Everything must be read. What a shame. The monsters make a few sounds, and weapons make sounds when they hit stuff, but it is all very generic. The music is very repetitive. You will hear all the songs the game has within the first hour of playing. There are maybe 4 or 5 songs total, all of which are hardcore rock, and all of which stick out from the relatively peaceful pace of the game.

And now we get to the meat of any game, the gameplay. Oh what you can say about this game. To put it simply, for all of you who do not like to read the detailed descriptions of reviews, here is the shortened version:

Combat is boring and repetitive, while creating a dungeon is complex, fun, but eventually loses its magic.

There, now leave my review. Wait, some people here actually want to hear the meat of things? How interesting. In that case, lets see what I can tell you.

As the first half of the game's title implies, you create dungeons. You do this by buying various corridors and rooms from a shop in the city. In the beginning of the game, do not expect to buy much. The prices will seem outrageous, and you won't be able to afford much. Your first few levels will progress slowly. Do not fret. In time, money will come into you like fat people ingest McDonalds. Towards the middle of the game, you will have so much money that the store can't keep up with you. You will constantly find the store running out of those much needed supplies you need to create a floor with. So in the beginning, you will build your dungeon slowly, in the middle you will build your dungeon quickly, and towards the end you will be back to a slowly paced dungeon build.

Building your dungeon is simple in theory but complex in practice. You build your dungeon by taking the pieces you bought into the dungeon. From there, whenever you hit an end of a corridor with nothing attached to it, you create a new corridor. You do this by bringing up a menu, scrolling down to the piece you want, and selecting it. And then by some magic the corridor appears. Do not ask me how your character manages to fit enormous stone rooms in his pockets. It has baffled scientists for years.

That should be simple enough, right? Wrong. While placing corridors and rooms is easy, getting the dungeon to be designed right is not. It's like legos. It looks easy from the outside, but once you start building you learn that something isn't right, so you destroy the whole thing and rebuild.

One reason the design is so complex is that there are many kinds of rooms and corridors. You have 2 end corridors, T shaped corridors, and + shaped corridors. Same goes for rooms, but they also have simple one entrance rooms. Rooms also get more complex in design. You have doors on the right, on the left, on the middle, and various sides.

Then you have room and corridor upgrades. When you first put something down, it is wood, with nothing in it. You can upgrade corridors with things like stone or marble. Rooms can become treasure rooms, storage rooms( you cannot actually store things in them), bedrooms, guest rooms, libraries, and many other designs.

But don't worry, it gets more complex. Trust me, this written version makes it look like rocket science. It really isn't that bad in game. The game gradually introduces you to new rooms and corridors so that you are not overwhelmed.

Different rooms or corridors attract different monsters. Different monsters drop different things. Different things sell for various amounts or may be needed for a quest. Room and corridor placement also effects what monsters spawn there. Monsters do not like +'s, nor do they like being by the elevator which takes you between floors and the town. It takes a lot to satisfy these monsters. But my experimentation, and hints from an old man in town, you will gain the knowledge to produce amazing dungeons.

That was just the dungeon making part. What about the combat? Do not worry, this should be much shorter. The dungeon part was the NBA star in size, while this is the horse racer person.

Combat is simple. You press one button to attack, one button to block, and one button to cast magic. You mash the attack button to kill enemies, you hold the block button to block if you have a shield, and you use the magic button to select a spell to cast. It is very simple. Which also means it is very repetitive. In the beginning it is fun. You have one or two floors in your dungeon, how hard could it be? Imagine wading through 10, or 15 floors of monsters. Oh, and if you're looking for a quest item? Make that 10 or 15 floors a day.

Quests are given by various NPCs in the game. They will tell you to go find such and such item and bring it back. It sounds easy, right? Normally, these items have about a 0% chance of dropping. You will kill hundreds of monsters, looking for one item, only to find it, get your reward, and realize your reward really wasn't worth it. Though you do need to do quests to progress, few of them are really worth it.

The game is broken into days. Each day starts off by allowing you to go shopping and look for quests in town. From there, you head to the dungeon. After you leave, you go back to town, do some more shopping, sell your loot, and go home. Your house is actually interesting. Not only are you a master dungeon maker, fighter, and attractive(the girls in the game go nuts over you), you're a master cook! By taking the remains of animals you killed in the dungeon, you can brew various mixtures to create meals. The meals in this game are equivalent to leveling up in an RPG. These give you stat bonuses which improve your health, magic, strength, and all that other good stuff. After your meal, you sleep, save, and start the next day.

If what I said to you so far seems repetitive, well, I cannot tell a lie, it is. In the beginning of the game, I was ridiculously excited. Creating my own dungeon, 20 floors deep!? This is amazing! And look at all these spells! That wore off by floor 7 or so. The game is fun, and the few boss fights there are are all fun, but the game as a whole is repetitive. I do not see much replayability. You can destroy a level of a dungeon and rebuild it for a better score, but overall it isn't worth it. By the end of the game, you have no need for money that a better dungeon and more monsters will bring.

Overall this game is a 7/10. The graphics and sound are average at best. The gameplay is fun for a while, but grows to be boring. I recommend renting this game first. If you have fun playing the first 2 or 3 dungeon levels, it's worth a buy. The depth will surprise you at first. You will probably get through all 20 floors in 2 weeks or so. That's a long time if you ask me. It takes a while on the first playthrough. Just don't expect a second.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 12/25/07

Game Release: Dungeon Maker: Hunting Ground (US, 06/19/07)