Welcome to our review of Dungeon Rushers, a game best described as a 2d-dungeon crawler. The base premise of the game is a tactical RPG combining dungeon crawler gameplay and turn-based combat. You get to manage your team, loot mysterious dungeons, crush armies of monsters, and craft legendary equipment. But how well does it hold up?
Toilethumor isn’t always a good thing
The story is based around Elian, Elian, a toilet cleaner by profession, who aspires to lead a better life and joins the (almost) noble community of dungeon looters. In Dungeon Rushers, he’ll conquer dusty crypts, not-quite-abandoned mines, an untamed jungle, a deserted… desert, and even a Richelin-starred tavern. He’s joined by a wild array of strange characters on his journey to stop the dealings of a dark enterprise trying to monopolize the dungeon market. Sounds fun? I thought the same. The starting weapon of Elian was a toiletbrush, the first few levels had cheesy humor (which is fine) – and made fun of some RPG clichés, like dwarves being good with money (accounting and such).
The game is created by the guys and girls of Goblinz Studio – a French team who worked and made this game from home, working the magic of programming through the cloud. They use a lot of community input and freelancers for their projects – which is awesome, but can also be a double-edged sword. Since it’s a small team, they have to fight other dungeon crawling (N)indies on the Switch, and Dungeon Rushers does not stand out.
Gameplay
The pixely feel of the game is nostalgic, but we have seen better art on the Switch – and it’s strange they chose to get with such an art pallet. The concept art of the game and lots of the overworld art looks better than the in-game sprites. Dungeon Rushers uses a map system inside the dungeon, which reminded me of the old Dungeon Keeper (or more recent Impire) games. It’s a ‘top down’ view of the dungeon, in which a token of Elian hops around the map, triggering traps, enemies or random events. Each dungeon has it own bonus goals – such as No K.O.’s, or the maximum use of three abilities. Some of these feel really limiting, since some of the levels (especially after the first ‘boss dungeon), are way too hard without any proper leveling.
This was my main annoyance with the game – it felt too grindy. It’s not an actual word, but you catch my drift. The main purpose of Dungeon Rushers is not to rush dungeons and gain eternal fame as a dungeon looter. No, it’s to grind, grind and grind some more. Experience points are given out very scarce, so you’ll have to replay some of the early levels twenty-thirty times to gain a level and advance in the dungeon you want – just to repeat the whole thing again to advance to the next dungeon. Of course, there is an in-game shop and crafting system, which are fine (not that practical to use, due to the button mapping of the Switch version) – but it runs on random items and, you guessed it, grinding for the right ingredients.
Conclusion
Dungeon Rushers plays fine, if you look through the technical annoyances, like the button mapping and laggy gameplay I experienced in both handheld and docked mode. But if you are looking for a decent dungeon crawler, try out Darkest Dungeon (way harder, but more rewarding) or The Binding of Isaac, which are both reviewed on this site. But hey, if you like grinding for hours in a repetitive setting, then Dungeon Rushers could be the game for you (you can download a demo for Windows/Mac/Linux over here).
