Dungeon Cards

Of the odd mix of new apps I have tried in the past 2-3 weeks, Dungeon Cards is the winner that I think is worth talking about.

About a year ago, I wrote a post about some of the smallest board game layouts possible, and whether anything really interesting can happen in a space that's 3x3 or less.  That's where this cute little retro-graphics dungeon crawler comes in.  Yes, it's a 3x3 grid where you are the main character and you can only move up, down, left or right and choose which other cards to interact with.

It is deceptively simple, and your first few games will probably fizzle out quickly, but once you learn how to make better choices, it is entirely possible to get those 900 points to unlock Dungeon Three.

Basically, there are weapons you can use, mobs to fight, obstacles (bombs, dynamite, poison, flamethrowers and spikes) to avoid, chests to open, gold and rubies to pick up, and potions to heal up again.  The virtual deck of ever-changing cards is very well designed and scales up smoothly to create ever-increasing challenges.  

The flamethrowers rotate 90-degrees clockwise with each of your moves, and you can move into them when facing away from you to burn the things the flamethrower is pointing at, but sometimes taking a 3 HP flamethrower right in the face is the least bad option of the cards surrounding you.  

Mobs do their full HP of damage to you if you bump into them, but you can pick up the weapons (which have HP of their own) and use weapon HP to reduce foes before taking them on directly.  Some weapons also affect the card behind the one you click on.  If you are holding a weak weapon and want to pick up a stronger one, there is an icon at lower right where you can turn your current weapon into gold so those precious HP don't go to waste.  Always minimize your risks and optimize your outcomes.

So maybe you're at 8 of 10 HP and you grab a 9 HP fire wand, blast a 7 HP zombie, do the other 2 HP from the wand to a 4 HP mushroom, fight it with your hands taking 2 HP damage (you're down to 6 HP) then grab a 4 HP red potion and heal up to full again, then go back to collect a few coins, and more mobs appear.  It's a very interesting progression, and an oddly stress-free game overall.  Just calculate the best move and try not to get cornered by things that have more HP than you can handle.

There are some powers that get unlocked along the way and even some alternate characters with slightly different abilities that you can switch to.  It looks like this one has a lot of replayability, and it has some good gag cards that pop up along the way.

Here is the developer's basic video about it.  What's not obvious in the video is that the movement is triggered by tapping on cards adjacent to your character card, including the flamethrowers igniting; the effects coming from the upper left are the unlocked powers that recharge by various means.  I give this one a thumbs up for being unexpectedly interesting compared to so many others I have tried and uninstalled recently.

Here is where my guy finally ran out of options...