Dungeon Souls, The Most Fun You'll Have Dying...Repeatedly

Nintendo started with Mario, Sega had Sonic, Sony burst onto the scene with Crash Bandicoot; each huge developer started with one game, one character that they would found empires with. Every young game developer starts with a single game; too many of them fall through the cracks or fail to get off the ground. Every developer started as an indie developer. Will Mike Studios, the creator of Dungeon Souls, soar to the heights of Nintendo or Sony? They just might. Is Dungeon Souls the game they will ride to such great heights? It’s a hell of a start.

I was pleasantly surprised with Dungeon Souls, brought to us by Mike Studios and Black Shell Media. It’s an 8-bit hack n slash dungeon crawler, with a premise that’s beyond simple; you control one of three fallen heroes searching for a mysterious orb that will revive them (and maybe a few buddies). Still following? Great, that’s it. The game gives you a choice from one of three tried and true character classes; the healthy and powerful Berserker, the accurate Archer who can pepper many targets, or the fast and backstabby Thief. You’re also able to unlock four other classes by defeating enemies, finding a certain item, or beating the bosses thrown your way…and collecting the fabled mysterious orb, of course.

Standing in your way to freedom is the Gate Keeper, who keeps the gates of the afterlife closed…most of the time. He throws up obstacles in each of the twelve floors; making you activate summoning circles that, you guessed it, summon beasties to destroy before moving on. Every three levels, you have to fight a boss hell bent on preventing your revival. Also worth noting is that the Gate Keeper shows up to suck the life (or whatever keeps you going) from your body if you hang around one stage too long.

Sounds easy enough, right? Wrong. Dead wrong (excuse the pun). The challenge in making great games, or anything really, is balancing difficulty with fun. This seemingly innocent little game is hard, brutally hard. It doesn’t look like it should be, but that isn’t stopping it from eviscerating me more often than I’d like to admit. You do level up your stats and skills and can collect any number of absurd items, and drink potions of questionable origin. Much like the Duck of Doom though, you really should know better than to pick things up in a dungeon…especially strangely colored potions. These are a few of the things that ‘should’ help you out in your quest back to the land of the living.

Dungeon Souls won’t revolutionize the face of gaming or end racial problems or stop world hunger, I’d love seeing a single entity that could do even one of those things, but this will give you a damn fun game to play. It’s one of the more fun half hours you’ll spend dying. It won’t take hours to dominate this game, but I bet even Lazarus would have liked some help on his trip back to life. The best part so far? The dev team; everyone over at Mike Studios actually listens to the Steam community and they work constantly to satisfy each of our fickle little desires, in relation to Dungeon Souls, at least.

I can’t wait to play the next game from Mike Studios and Black Shell Media.

Check it out. Yesterday.