+ Cool concept
+ Tough but fair
+ Retro graphics
+ Procedurally generated dungeons = replayability

- Random crap on traps make them practically invisible
- There's also a bit of luck involved

[Rating: 75/100]

Diehard Dungeon is a homage to the dungeon crawlers of old, mixed with some new, combined into a retro styled game that is not only aptly named but also a lot of fun to play.

Diehard Dungeon has you making your way though a series of dungeons, collecting gold keys and fighting various monsters and other enemies in an ultimate search for loot and glory. It has a surprisingly large amount of depth for a game with no story, and oddly enough, has a mini-game included that is almost worth the purchase price alone.

The game starts you off alone, in a dungeon with nothing. You quickly find your sword and a few stages later the Companion Chest. The Companion Chest stores your treasure (you never actually access it though) and will even help you fight your way through the dungeon. Upon your first boss battle you will also pick up a hand-cannon, which is literally, a handgun that shoots cannon balls. These make up your primary combat abilities in the game, with your sword being the focus ultimately. At the core, Diehard Dungeon is a hack and slash, but positioning yourself properly against certain foes is still important, as is proper use of the hand-cannon. As one might expect, with such a simple combat system the controls are also pretty simple.

Speaking of abilities, rather than leveling up and using experience points or any system like that; Diehard Dungeon simply has you find or win extra abilities. You can find them in chests that operate like slot machines, a mini “trap-door” game or just laying on the ground. These range from becoming fireproof, adding shrapnel to your hand-cannon or as suggested before, an ability that allows you to kill everything on screen in exchange for one heart of life by pressing B. These abilities are random and make all the difference in your ability to make it through the dungeon in one piece. This makes finding and collecting the abilities incredibly important, but also leads to one of the main downsides to the game.

While Diehard Dungeon is a blast to play, the name is very appropriate. The game uses a simple “heart” system of health, where each hit takes one away and you can add more (if you find some) along the way. That said, when you die, there is no check point; you don’t go back to the beginning of that dungeon room with all that you had when you got there; no, you go back, all the way back. To the beginning. With nothing. While this certainly makes death a big deal, it is frustrating when you seem to have a fairly decent start but then a really tough middle-range area in the game. Basically, if you get overwhelmed in a single room (which happened to me on a couple of occasions) you drop all of your progress from the last half hour and start over again; something made even more possible by the fact health can sometimes be quite rare. Does it add more weight to your death? Absolutely. Does it make you fight that much harder to not die? Of course. Does it make you absolutely want to stop playing the game for a few minutes after? You bet your ♥♥♥ it does.

Luckily the game does offer another mode of play to distract you for a bit while you let the anger inside you dissipate. The mini-game “Mayhem” is not only fun, it comes close to overshadowing the main game. Who would have guess that built within a dungeon crawler would be one of the better twin-stick shooters on the XBLIG service? Mayhem has you playing as the Companion Chest in a room that quickly fills with enemies. The goal is ultimately to get as high of a score as possible in only three minutes, but the “gimmick” is that your score multiplier only goes up if you don’t get hit. It is, simply put; a blast and you will strive to reach higher and higher on the leaderboard (I managed to take first place for an evening). The one downside to this mode is that quite often it seemed I was “being hit’ when there was no conceivable way that I actually was (unless the game punishes you for standing still). I was clearly not near any enemies (or crates) yet felt my controller vibrate like I was hit and saw that my multiplier had gone down as well. I’m assuming there was a reason for it that I just didn’t realize, but for the life of me I don’t know what it was.

Back to the main game, there is one other… issue that soured Diehard Dungeon’s experience. Despite playing through the game well (well? I kicked ♥♥♥) and killing everything in sight and breaking every crate open, I still made it to what I presume is the end of the game without enough golden keys to open the giant chest at the end; so I died and lost anyway. Looking at the developer’s website, “gold key rarity” is something that is planned to be patched in an updating coming any day now, so this is hopefully a non-issue going forward but it was incredibly frustrating to have gotten to the end and still lost because the game simply didn’t generate enough of a crucial item.

Death resetting everything is rough, but it is part of the game and what makes it work (even if you kind of hate it in the moment). A lack of a crucial item that makes an otherwise successful run a waste of time though is very, very close to being a deal breaker. Luckily for Diehard Dungeon, it was fun getting to that point and the mini-game Mayhem compensates for this oversight. Hopefully the patch will fix it, along with a lot of other changes coming soon as the patch is approved, but it is enough to take a great game and knock it down from where it should be; for now anyway.


Be sure to check out Nerd House Gaming for more reviews!

Transcript of my video review which is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iopAUD_dhTw

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“What would happen if The Legend of Zelda were to have randomly generated dungeons?”

This is certainly the question the man behind indie studio TrickTale must have asked himself many times before working on DieHard Dungeon. In this top-down 2D dungeon crawler, the main goal is to explore and survive a succession of randomly generated rooms populated by various enemies. Amassing gold, avoiding traps, and collecting golden keys are the things you will have to do to reach the end of each level, all the while fighting your way through the different rooms and trying to collect power-ups that are spread around.

In order to help you in this task, you are equipped with a sword which acts as a melee weapon, and a Hand Cannon which throws explosive projectiles. You will also be followed during your exploration by a magical chest, which acts as a companion and collects gold for you. After some time, it evolves and can become an active item, defending you throughout the levels.

The controls in DieHard Dungeon are fairly easy, and a simple tutorial will help you get the hang of things. The game is best played with a controller, as it was firstly meant to be played on the Xbox Live Indiegame Marketplace.

While it borrows most of its aesthetics from The Legend of Zelda, DieHard Dungeon is also inspired by another game that’s hugely popular in the rogue-like genre: The Binding of Isaac. Just like in Isaac, the player will be able to find special items that are spread around the levels. In DieHard Dungeon though, power-ups are available thanks to randomly placed chests that act as slot machines. If successful, the player is rewarded with a bonus, which he can accept, or refuse and reroll for a new chance at getting a better power-up. Some enemies will also drop tokens, which can be spent in a Token Well, giving the player another chance at getting better items.

Taking everything into account, DieHard Dungeon feels alive and responsive. The sense of progression is present throughout the different levels. The fact that the dificulty adjusts itself depending on the player’s performance gives him the feeling to be “fed” in a good way: the game grows with the player, and the challenge curve always feels right. The randomly generated levels make the game a new challenge to play each and every time. Unfortunately, unlike in The Binding of Isaac, you are not able at this time to input your own seed. “At this time”, because while the game has been released for over two years now, it is still in active development. TrickTale is constantly improving its creation by adding powerups, challenges, enemies, and by working on the game’s balance. One clever decision that has been made for example is switching the player’s speed from low to high when carrying a key. This change, which will certainly be available in the next patch will definitely help in the game’s dynamics by making the player’s escape a positive action instead of a struggle.

The main drawback with DieHard Dungeon though, is its lack of diversity in graphics. While trying a bit too hard to pay its respect to its elders, the game lacks creativity in getting a strong visual identity of its own, and therefore may look a bit bland for some people. This problem is felt up to some of the enemies’ patterns which act just like their grand-parents counterparts, or even the charge ability of the player’s sword. While it’s always a good thing to throw a wink at the games that made your childhood and help the player overcome enemies by putting him in a familiar place, it would have been appreciated to see a bit more diversity in this regard.

There are also a few points in which the game could benefit some tweaks, such as an in-game user interface showing your current collected gold, a timer that could certainly attract the speedrunning scene, or even simply an indicator showing the current level you’re exploring.

Despite these points, DieHard Dungeon feels really nice. The dungeon theme combined with the randomly generated levels, the variety in powerups, and the fact that the dificulty adjusts itself in real time makes it a game that is a real joy to play. The replay value is definitely great, and when you take into account the fact that the game is in active development, that it features a champion level (which is some kind of new game + once you’ve beaten the last boss), and even minigames, all that for a mearly $5, you get a game that not only is an excellent introduction to randomly generated dungeon crawlers, but can stand on its own with no problem whatsoever and definitely deserves your attention.

Yeah this is a real good Rogue-like / Zelda / Dungeon Crawler type game !! This game is pretty darn good ! It has decent controlls and good Pixel gfx ! I think its pretty challenging also and has a Pro Mode ! It has pretty much has most of the game mechanics as Zelda,so its very familiar. I would recommend useing a Game Controller thoe! So give this one a shot if you are Zelda fan or a Rogue-like fan !!!

Diehard dungeon is a rogue-like game in which you venture inside a dungeon and grab loot, upgrades and basically just slash your way through the monsters. You can choose your own path although some routes dont have that many differences. You will die A LOT in this game, trust me. It starts very slow and easy but it'll eventually get way harder and you'll rely on dodging and knowing your enemies to successfully beat a floor without losing any hearts. There are a few upgrades that upgrade your gun, sword or movement speed. The game is rather short BUT, like i said, you'll die A LOT so it'll provide you with a few hours of fun. If you decide to do the achievements the game gets even better although most of them unlock fairly easily if you keep playing.

I highly recommend this to any rogue-like fan. I enjoyed it a lot.

Top-notch dungeon crawler! Diehard Dungeon is, well, a dungeon where you die - hard.

It starts out easy, but as you progress and your rank increases, you get put into more difficult dungeons with chaos exponentially growing (hopefully with your skill also growing at the same rate). Along the way, you get power-ups which give you random bonuses (like extra life, firing three pellets from your gun, etc.) and, of course, some are much better than others.

Also, minigames - they're there! Along your trek, you will stumble upon little games that will give you fantastic items (like the Forget-me-Not) and will prolong the little game, which, at it's core, is basically you standing in the corner, firing your gun at the approaching enemies, and collecting LOTS of loot with your Companion Chest (who, in fact, is a GREAT companion)

It's repetitive in nature, but with all the content inside, it's difficult to get bored.

7/10

This is a breath of fresh air for roguelites. The controls work fine, and the combat really fun. Graphics are stylized well, very pretty lighting while keeping a retro look. Definitely worth a try if you like roguelike games or you want to get into them.

I only managed to slay the first boss so far, but as far as I can tell this is a very nice rougelike!

I usually rage quit after few runs but I look forward to rage quitting again in the future, hopefully dying a little further in the dungeon :)

I'm also impressed by devs improving the game long after release.

Diehard Dungeon has all of the fun elements of a Rouge like. Lots of powerups, a smooth difficulty curve, and the enemies can hurt/be hurt by each other as well as the traps! Also theres several fun minigames you can unlock. I like the retro style and large sprites.

A nice little game on the roguelike genre.

While the combat is quite simple, the game makes a good job at keeping it interesting and rewarding, there are a good amount of powerups to collect, and bosses to fight, although the majority of these are pretty easy.

There are multiple environments, but they don't really have a lot of personality, it's just kind of a palette change and a little bit of enemy diversity.

You can finish the game quite fast, as the campaign is not very long, but you can always make it more challenging choosing the hard path.

As a great extra, there are a pair of minigames, one is a dual stick shooter where you have 3 minutes to try to beat you highscores, the other one is a room based survival game. Booth are good, and the developer is working on a third one.

It may not have the deep of other games of the genre, but I still think it's well done and deserves a recommendation.

I have very much enjoyed my time playing diehard so far. At this point I have escaped the dungeon and unlocked the hard mode but have not started that yet. It was not too much trouble getting though the first difficulty after a little bit of practice. Part of me wishes items rolled over to your next death as they can be difficult to aquire right away, but the fact that they don't increases the difficulty a bit. All in all this is in my opion a worthwhile game that has a lot of good dodging and combat to entertain.

This was fun, but it goes into the big bin of games that expect me to be way more awesome than I am.

This is sweet. The pain of dying in a roguelike is as ♥♥♥♥♥♥ as ever, but god if the gameplay doesn't keep you coming back for more. It's like a hyperspeed Zelda 1 combat-wise with Risk of Rain's difficulty and perks.

Its a steal at this pirce,great fun to play i`d give it 10/10:-)))))))))))

It might feel like a ripoff of Binding of Issac to some but this game brings something aesthetically and gameplay wise to the table that sets it apart. Leaning more on the zelda influences, the game is fun, unique, and worth the few bucks it costs.

WELCOME TO DIEHARD DUNGEON, WHERE YOU WILL DIE HARD! YES, PICK THE HARDEST DUNGEON AND PREPARE TO DIE!

(RNG God saunters in)

RNG God: Oh hello, I did not see you there. You look like a fine sort who wants to get out of this dungeon in time for the luncheon. Here's a series of buffs that you can get from dungeon tokens. Oh, you have twenty of them already? Here, take this cardboard box full of buffs I found in my basement. Goodbye!

(DUNGEON EXPLODES IN TIME FOR LUNCHEON)

10/10

The mere concept of this game is magnificent, and all of the elements that make up the game are truly splendiferous.

If you want a good dungeon game, you're gonna wanna get this.

Very abusive. A good one. Get it. You won't regret it.

I really like thgis game, it is a very good dungeon crawler and is really addictive.

Sadly, the most accurate words I can find to describe Diehard Dungeon are 'tedious' and 'clunky', which is a shame because this could have been a very fun game.

The second descriptor, clunky, is the easier to tackle so I'll go with that first. The controls in Diehard Dungeon are not particularly responsive and the combat mechanics make things awkward. Using a controller does help with some of the problems but even so, moving and turning in combat is generally bad.

As to the 'tedious' part; well, many of the game's mechanics seem to be based around wasting as much of the player's time as possible. Here are some examples of what I am trying to convey:

The majority of rooms can only be exited once a key has been placed in a lock. The key will be hidden somewhere in the room; perhaps in one of the many random objects in the room (every one of which takes multiple strikes to break open), perhaps on one of the hit-sponge enemies. There's no indication as to where the key will be and you will often spend fruitless minutes hacking away at boxes to find the key.

Little pixie type creatures will often appear (most of the time from one of the previously mentioned boxes you are hacking open in search of the key) and steal your companion chest. Well, not properly steal the chest, like take it away to be found later on; they just grab it and run to the other side of the room. You can't collect any treasure without the chest so you can't just leave it behind. What you must do instead is chase the pixies around the room, slashing at them with your sword until you've killed them all and can get your chest back. The problem here is that the pixies are fast and will continually move away from the player character, whilst the character cannot move while swinging his sword. And so a merry game of trying to manouvre the pixies into a corner ensues. And this will happen every few rooms. It's not that difficult to get the chest back, it's just tedious and annoying.

There are other exmples that I won't go into an extended explanation of as they all tend to end with the same reaction of 'Why am I doing this? What's the point?' and a feeling that your time has been wasted.

Other, although much less prominent, annoyances exist in the game, such as: parts of broken objects covering the trigger plates for traps so you can't even see them, enemy attacks that cause you to drop your only melee weapon so you have to go running around to find it again, status effects that make you run in random directions (usually straight at the nearest wall) for an intolerably long time and the fact that the bomb launcher (secondary weapon) is about as effective as launching an attack on a Tiger tank with firecrackers.

The final negatives about Diehard Dungeon are the bland graphics, uninspired dungeon design and the completely 'meh' soundtrack. Overall this is not a game I would recommend unless you have a whole load of time to waste on pointless tedium and absolutely nothing else to play.