Dungeon crawlers are a standard sight with VR releases, which makes the truth that Pixel Dungeon stands out from the group all of the extra spectacular.
A number of the finest VR video games are those you possibly can sink both a couple of minutes into, or a few hours, and it by no means seems like your time is wasted. Pixel Dungeon is one such case; a dungeon crawler with a decidedly retro-inspired aesthetic. Participant fashions, environments, and enemies make the most of voxel-like graphics throughout three totally different dungeons – with extra coming in later updates.
What’s it?: A retro-inspired dungeon crawler, for solo or co-op play
Platforms: Steam, Quest (reviewed on Quest 3)
Launch Date: Out Now (Quest)
Developer: Suplife Video games
Worth: $19.99
At its core, it is a easy dungeon crawler. Gamers spend 15–20 minutes crawling via certainly one of three randomly generated dungeons, primarily based on a classical dungeon, a mystical library, and interconnected floating islands all accessible at launch, with extra coming in later updates. You should utilize weapons connected to each hips and your shoulders, additionally stowing sources gathered within the dungeon – particularly, therapeutic apples and hand grenades – in a pack strapped to your chest.
Alongside the way in which, gamers cope with puzzles, struggle off enemies, and collect gadgets and tools. Discovering keys helps you to unlock Loot Chests that can drop randomly rolled weapons that might be added to your stock after leaving the dungeon (deaths assist you to preserve earned weapons).
Even accounting for the restricted variety of tiles that dungeons may be constituted of, totally different rooms can have any variety of secrets and techniques. False partitions that may be bashed down, ropes that may be climbed to convey the participant as much as the rafters. Pits gamers can drop down, stuffed with enemies and treasures each. Every of the three dungeons comes with its personal occasional distinctive gimmicks, unique monsters, and completely totally different remaining boss encounters, too.
Visually, Pixel Dungeon appears to be like beautiful, and it runs nice on a Quest 3. When issues get hectic in multiplayer on increased difficulties, the efficiency holds up with none noticeable dips, even if you may be surrounded by a veritable horde of spiders. Whereas the sport’s visuals won’t be technically spectacular, it nails that facet the place it counts, with each a satisfying artwork fashion that makes it straightforward to learn what is going on on at any given time and rock-solid efficiency.
Fight is easy, however feels responsive in observe – particularly with ranged weapons. Crossbows pressure you to manually reload by pulling again the string, and really feel unbelievable to make use of by easily reloading rapidly within the warmth of battle. Bows and Magic Wands really feel equally nice, too. If something, melee feels a bit undertuned in comparison with ranged weapons at increased difficulties; although that is balanced out a bit with the power to throw melee weapons straight at enemies alongside the usual hack-and-slash. I have never encountered any noticeable points with controls, monitoring, or the like – even the bag on the entrance of my chest is not a problem, regardless of some preliminary considerations I harbored as a consequence of some latest VR experiences.
In between runs, gamers can spend gold to improve their unlocked weapons – both rising their base injury, or to reroll their randomized perks. Perhaps a crossbow will deal additional injury when hitting a weak level, or have a 50% probability to fireside 3 arrows without delay. Maybe your axe will deal 50% additional injury to bosses throughout two mixed perks. Each run will grant you XP, and with every stage up you possibly can make investments right into a ability tree over time. Probably, dodging an assault at simply the proper second offers you invincibility, or when revived you will have extra well being accessible earlier than therapeutic.
You will not discover an excessive amount of depth by way of “builds” – everybody will ultimately max out the identical ability tree. That is good contemplating, so far as I may inform, there isn’t any choice to reset your allotted ability factors. It is nonetheless sufficient to make the sport have an actual sense of development, past an indirect sense of getting “stronger”. It additionally implies that even when different gamers you queue up with could have comparable setups, relying on what has dropped for them, there’s nonetheless individuality in how gamers deal with the sport of their distinctive methods.
Talking of multiplayer, we spent just a few hours trying out multiplayer on-line with some randoms, and located a pleasantly easy expertise. Personally, I can not report noticing any lag spikes, and total connectivity has been nice. Voice chat can also be clear as soon as the in-game music will get turned down – the default setting is barely too loud to parse different gamers, which might be my one most important subject with the expertise. Even then, it seems like a nitpick.
As of launch, Pixel Dungeon’s consolation choices are relatively spartan; gamers can modify between snap turning, easy turning or no turning in any way with out actively turning your physique.
Pixel Dungeon can require some verticality; ropes and ladders require you to manually climb them, and generally pitfall traps would possibly drop you a number of tales beneath your self with out a lot warning. Due to this, we’d warning VR gamers to solely play the sport in the event that they’re assured of their VR legs, not less than with the choices accessible at launch.
We additionally tackled just a few increased issue dungeons and it is a blast, particularly in a gaggle setting. Presently, the gameplay loop revolves round tackling tougher and tougher issue dungeons, gathering 3-star tools with particular perks as you go; whereas there are solely 3 dungeons to do it with at the moment. Even for those who solely do every dungeon a handful of instances, likelihood is you will not see all the pieces they’ve to supply. Suplife does not have a proper roadmap, although it claims that gamers can count on a fourth dungeon to be added sooner relatively than later, with extra updates to return. Even simply accounting for the state of the sport at launch, it is arduous to say the quantity of content material is not ample, all thought of.
Pixel Dungeon – Last Verdict
Put one other approach, Pixel Dungeon already seems like a whole bundle. It is enjoyable, polished, and packs a good quantity of content material to play via at launch. Even when the promised post-launch updates by no means got here, I might nonetheless be prone to return to the sport within the weeks and months to return.
Although it is nonetheless early days, the truth that I can immediately queue right into a foyer weeks after launch relatively late at evening bodes nicely for the sport’s exercise, too. Pixel Dungeon is precisely the kind of sport that is straightforward to advocate to anybody in search of one thing to strap into, whether or not they’re solely in it for a shorter session or in the event that they plan to spend a Saturday evening getting sweaty with some pals.
UploadVR makes use of a 5-Star ranking system for our sport critiques – you possibly can learn a breakdown of every star ranking in our overview pointers.
