Let’s face it, we all love diving into a good old retro-style RPG every now and then. And when said RPG focuses on crawling through a dungeon with who-knows how many floors, wooing the local ladies and furnishing your own house, who could resist taking the plunge and diving into a new game? Definitely not this gamer! Read more in our Dungeon Dreams review below!

Platform Used For Dungeon Dreams Review: Metabox Prime P650RP-G, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB GDDR5 VRAM with G-Sync, Intel Core i7-6700HQ Processor (6M Cache up to 3.50 GHz), 16GB DDR4 2133MHZ (1 x 16GB)
Developer: Jacopo Lorenzetti
Genre: RPG, Dungeon Crawler, Dating Sim
Price: Free to play Demo
Rating:

When I first saw Dungeon Dreams, it totally reminded me of old-school RPGs like Shining Force and the console Final Fantasy games. I admit it was the characters drawn in beautiful Anime-style that initially caught my eye, but when I looked past those and at the game itself, I could tell I was going to have a good time playing Dungeon Dreams.

The premise of Dungeon Dreams is, you are a new adventurer in the town of Ecallia and, after being made fun of by the local dungeon veterans, you head off on a quest to become stronger. You do this by exploring the dungeon situated to the North of the town and taking on the enemies that reside within.

Sounds simple enough doesn’t it? Well don’t get complacent when venturing inside the dungeon. I did, and found myself dead pretty quickly! It was totally my fault though: I went into the dungeon with complete beginner’s equipment (thanks to the reminder that popped up as I entered the dungeon telling me I hadn’t equipped anything yet) and also totally by myself.

I Needed A Team

Dungeon Dreams utilises a party system whereby you gain more members in your dungeon-crawling team to help defeat monsters. These team members can be found around the town of Ecallia, and some of them are simply sell-swords who will join you for a price, whereas others need some convincing through multiple choice dialogue. I personally loved seeing the options pop up as to what to respond with as they’re often very amusing comments and always very well thought out by the writer of the game.

Different class-trees are also present in Dungeon Dreams which adds an extra bit of challenge and depth to the game. The main character, named Alec by default, can choose either a Fighter, Scout or Mage tree. From these trees you can choose to progress further to classes such as Paladin, Assassin or Necromancer to name a few. Each tree has it’s own spells and skills to choose from which will aid in your frequent trips to the dungeon.

Where Are The Girls At?

Dungeoneering isn’t the only thing to do in Dungeon Dreams. As I mentioned before, you can traverse the large town of Ecallia and engage with the townsfolk. These townsfolk all have their own routine they follow such as going to the bar, or hanging out at the town bridge. And not only that, but there are five girls in the town who can be romanced via a dating-sim type system. You need to be mindful of your words and make the right choices to woo them successfully. I thought this was quite a novel idea as I’ve not played a dungeon-crawler where you can also work towards getting a girlfriend.

And to give the game even more incentive, you start off with your own house that can be furnished by purchasing furniture. There’s really quite a lot to do in Dungeon Dreams and in it’s current Beta phase, you can play for 11 in-game days or up to the thirteenth floor of the dungeon. And also if you post your final score via social media and tag it with #dungeondreamsrpg, you can win a copy of the final release.

There are a few little bits here and there that could be elaborated upon, but as it’s still in beta, one can’t expect a fully polished version.

Final Thoughts

The whole concept of Dungeon Dreams really packs a punch from the dungeon-crawling to the dating-sim aspect. It’s great to see a retro game like this that lets you have so much control over the world. Be a jerk to the townsfolk or butter them all up, it’s your choice.

You can download the demo of Dungeon Dreams via the link at the top of this review completely free and start your own career as an adventurer. If you ever had an interest in 16-bit JRPGs way back when, Dungeon Dreams will take you for a pleasant trip down JRPG memory lane.

Dungeon Dreams Review Score

4 stars – retro gaming at it’s best with a couple of little tweaks required