bit Dungeon II

Developer: Kinto Games

Release Date: December 15th, 2014
Purchase Date: April 9th, 2016
Days in Backlog: 319
Purchase Price: $0.99
Steam Page: bit Dungeon II

Welcome to my very first Backlog Blitz! I played bit Dungeon II in four 30 minute (consecutive) sessions - all of which are available on my YouTube channel. I am a fan of the pixel art style, so right off the bat I was on board with the graphical style. In fact that style is a big part of what drew me to this game that I otherwise knew nothing about. The world exists as a grid of interconnected but separate screens that you move between, much like the NES Legend of Zelda (and the similarities don't stop there). The part I found odd about how this system was implemented was that the screens themselves did not take up the full screen and instead, there were empty black bars on the left and right portions of the screen, making the playable area a square. However, these areas were somewhat utilized by the mini-map and some other icons extending out into that area; it just seemed like an odd design decision. The other design decision that needs to change: dialog boxes should stick around for longer than 2 seconds. I consistently had to talk to the same NPCs over and over to fully read what they were saying.

The game controls definitely took a while to figure out and get used to. I started out playing with my mouse + keyboard and with that setup you can move and attack with the mouse, but if you are moving with the WASD keys and you move into an enemy, that will also trigger an attack...sometimes. It seemed like if you walked into an enemy there was some sort of delay, so that made me want to constantly use the mouse only for attacking, but the mouse could also move me. And all of that relates to the melee weapons. The bows...just forget about it. If you were walking down and trying to attack an enemy above you by clicking, you would just fire arrows in the direction you were moving; there is no concept of kiting. I was trying to play the ranged game like you would in Overture (a fun game if you haven't checked it out) and it just simply did not work at all. Half way through my blitz I swapped over to playing with a controller since the game has controller support and immediately the gameplay was immensely more fluid. My guess would be that the game was designed to be played with a controller. I even eventually gave the bows another shot with the controller and while they were still sort of awkward to use, it was infinitely better than with the keyboard + mouse. If you're going to play this game, do it with a controller.

The gameplay itself is fairly fast paced (unless you're trying to kite some of the more difficult enemies with a bow...then it's a bit tedious) and keeps you on your toes. Generally enemies will re-spawn (although I don't think it happened every time) when you return to a room that you've previously cleared. The two major downsides to the gameplay (which are sort of the same issue) was the same-y-ness of it; both rooms and items, hence two downsides. The rooms were all basically the same with differences like which enemies spawned, but otherwise there isn't a lot of variety. Same thing with the dungeons. You had to basically bumble your way through the dungeon looking for the proper keys to open the doors that would get you to the big boss. Once you found the boss you killed him and moved on. One thing that could've helped out the dungeons a lot would be a map - at least of the rooms you had already been to - which could've made finding your way back to where you needed to go a bit nicer. The item variety was pretty low which was mildly disappointing, however I will say that the items you chose to use did actually impact the play style you had to adopt, so that's a positive.

I mentioned earlier that we would come back to the NES Legend of Zelda similarities and that's where we're headed now. The overall structure of the game is very similar, all the way to the core gameplay mechanic of screens that you move between which are distinct play areas. Also, you find little holes in the cliff that take you to single screen rooms much like Zelda where you can buy items, find base stat upgrades, and generally interact with NPCs. The dungeons were also essentially the same - with some additional details that Zelda didn't have. You entered the dungeon through a grandiose entrance and inside were a series of connected rooms eventually leading you to a boss room. The visual style of four walls and up to four doors in the middle of those walls was very Zelda-esque. There were also separate zones (nowadays they may be referred to as  biomes) that dictate the art style and the enemies that spawn. I think the zones also roughly correlate to the layout of the zones in Zelda (mountains/desert in the north, forest in the east, etc) however to me the really fun part was the mimicking of the puzzles. In Zelda there are at least two overworld puzzles where you have to know the correct sequence of movements to get through an otherwise never-ending repetition of the same room. The lost woods is the most memorable from Zelda, however there was also the one in the mountains. The mountain puzzle I found and was able to complete (after talking to the correct NPC and getting the sequence) however even though I found and talked to the NPC that had the lost woods equivalent puzzle sequence, I was not able to get that puzzle to let me through, which was disappointing.

For the most part, the game was not all that difficult and it was almost relaxing to play because you didn't really need to focus all that much in order to be successful. Depending on what you're looking for, that could be viewed as a positive or negative. In my opinion I see this as more of an indie casual game, so the fact that I didn't have to focus too hard and didn't die too many times (one time, actually, almost exactly at the 1 hour mark) was a positive. Honestly, the two hours really flew by as I was playing and it really didn't feel like I had been at it that long, besides the fact that my voice was getting a bit worn out from all of the talking. The game did crash once during my third play session, which was initially pretty disappointing. However, the game must save state fairly regularly, because when I reloaded the game I was exactly back where I had been when it crashed with no lost progress. The only other negative about the game was that there really didn't seem to be a whole lot of story - at least not that was told in the game. I read online that you were avenging your sister's death or something similar, but I didn't get that conveyed really at all from playing the game. As this is more of a casual game not meant to be super story heavy though, I think I can generally let that slide.

All in all I would say that I had a satisfying 2 hours playing bit Dungeon II. I think for the price I paid I got exactly as much time and enjoyment as I would've expected, however I don't know that I would pay much more for it. I also don't know that I'll be going back and investing more time in the game anytime soon. While it was enjoyable, it was just a bit too much of the same without enjoy depth to bring me back for more.

Check out the four part YouTube series for gameplay and commentary!