Are You In The Mood For A Good Old-Fashioned Dungeon Plunder?

Dungeon Plunder ($1.99) by Dominic Duchesne is an old school style adventure game full of battles against Orcs, quests to rid the land of evil, and loot, lots and lots of sweet, sweet loot.

Players start by choosing a fighter. You can either play as a rogue, a warrior, or a mage. Each fighter has different abilities and special fighting techniques to use during the game. Well, sort of. Actually, the battle takes place on a slot machine.

Players pick from different icons to help win the fight. As you level up, you’ll gain abilities that increase your chance of winning, but the fight is somewhat of a gamble.

You can create up to four characters at a time. Each time you play a different fighter, you’ll see a new map that will allow you to fight different battles, complete new tasks, and find various amounts of loot.

Once you begin your adventure, you will be able to wander the land in search of your first dungeon. When you come across an enemy to fight, just walk up to him. The battle will begin automatically.

In battle, you’ll see a slot machine style mechanism. To start fighting, tap the “Spin” tab. Depending on which type of character you are using, you will select certain “reels” to keep. For example, the spin may generate two bottles of mana, a heart, an axe, and a staff. If you are mage, you’ll want to leave the axe alone. You can’t use it. So, you may want to keep the mana and the staff. Then, you will tap “Respin” to generate new items in the remaining reels. If you get at least two matching items, they are activated in battle. For example, if you respin and end up with two matching manas and three staffs, you’ll increase your mana, which is helpful in battle, and also attack the enemy for a certain number of points.

You will earn gold when you fight. Plus, each enemy is usually guarding a stack of gold that you are trying to get to. Some treasure chests reveal wearable equipment, but you can also upgrade your armor in one of the shops. You don’t have a whole lot to choose from, but upgrades usually increase your defense by one or two points.

Every so often, a building will appear that offers quests in exchange for big rewards. For example, one quest may require that you kill the orcs that are invading the land. When you have completed a task, you can collect your reward by returning to the quest building.

As you level up, you will be provided with skill points that you can add to your character in order to customize his fighting style.

The battle section of this game, which makes up about 90 percent of it, is very confusing. I still don’t understand how it works. Sometimes, I’ll see a message that reads, “You take 4 damage,” but neither I, nor the enemy will have their hit points lowered. I wish there were a detailed description of how the battle statistics work so that I know why I generated 3X spell damage, but my enemy didn’t lose any hit points.

Even though the rules are unclear, it doesn’t make the game any less fun. In fact, fans of old school dungeon crawl games, like Sword of Fargoal, will absolutely love Dungeon Plunder. It is easy to play and provides hours of mindless entertainment.