Dungeon Warfare

 
Developer: Valsar
Steam Release: Nov 2015
Hours Played: 9.3
Similar To: Defender's Quest / GemCraft: Chasing Shadows / Sentinel 4: Dark Star
Rating: 5/5 Parsnips

GAMEPLAY

Borrowing a few ideas from another masterpiece in TD design known as GemCraft:Chasing Shadows, this superb offering throws in so many innovative ideas of its own that it ends up being a much different game. Yet, like GemCraft, it allows so many different fun strategies to win that it's surely set to be another cult classic. Rather than a tower defense game, you could rather call Dungeon Warfare a trap-defense game as, much like Orcs Must Die, you attach contraptions of various kinds to the walls and the ground in order to slow and destroy the meddling creeps. Traps themselves are indeed very similar to those found in OMD. Darts fire from walls; spikes thrust up from the ground, slime slows them down and plates push enemies to their doom down into the abyss.

BALANCE & PACE

A level will first show you the map and the path that creeps take so you may peruse and plan at your leisure. As many are maze-like, you may need a crate or two to block routes and force enemies to take a longer route where enemies are open to more damage. Coins drop as deaths occur and are automatically placed in your coffers for upgrading towers on the fly. You also get to place free permanent spring-traps on cooldown. The game is a massive amount of fun, especially when you see your plan and strategy working and coming together. Use of corners to place dart-traps; push-traps and harpoons to knock or drag enemies down into bottomless pits and spikes placed menacingly at certain choke points all help to win the day. Shunting the enemy to their death towards deadly carts on tracks is also good for a laugh. 

PRESENTATION & DESIGN 

Dungeon Warfare is produced in the pixel-art style and may even remind veteran gamers of the dungeons in Gauntlet. Of course it is stable, fluid and works swimmingly with the absence of load screens. Sound is also a huge positive with the cry of dying creeps being ripped apart and falling to their death ringing in your ears as you play. This and the pounding, relentless marching soundtrack all adds to the rich atmosphere and never gets old. The menus are plain and simple and although the rune system may be a little puzzling at first, once you've figured out the reward system it all falls nicely into place. Traps and levels are designed in such a way that failure always means a fresh opportunity and never a chore. 
 

PROGRESS SYSTEM

Like many tower defense games, Dungeon Warfare tracks progress via a path on a campaign map. In this case towers that are named but not numbered represent the levels. The number of waves in each level generally get more numerous as battles get progressively tougher. When it comes to difficulty, this is all managed by the excellent rune system. The runes are a selection of about a dozen hexes that you may or may not activate in order to handicap the level making it harder. (One, suitably called Breeze, makes it easier.) Obviously the more you select, the harder the level gets. The pay-off is that the tower symbol that represents the level on the map screen gets more decorated and ornate depending on the runes you switched on. There are a total of 45 levels in the campaign altogether.  
  

CONCLUSION

Without doubt, Dungeon Warfare is up there with the big boys such as Defense Grid and the aforementioned GemCraft. But, with little touches like a wave indicator running down the left hand side and runes abounding (not to say its simple pixel-art style) it seems to pay a great deal of homage to the latter. Its marvellous customization regarding the runes is an additional feature that chimes with GemCraft and adds to its greatness. With bags of character, more entertaining traps and huge dollops of humour, it clearly does away with the deadly serious vibe that Gemcraft emanated and some may even say is a better game as a result. For my tuppeny worth, I'd say they are equally worth the attention of any serious TD player and are equally seriously good titles.