Dark And Dank Too: Deep Dungeons Of Doom

It's important to be precise in game names. You wouldn't want to confuse Deep Dungeons of Doom with the Shallow Dungeons of Doom, which I believe is a local Glaswegian duck-feeding pond. Nor with the Deep Dungeons of Joy which is a family-friendly burger joint in London with a great view of the Jubilee line, or the common phrase "deep pockets of doom" mostly attributed to the sort of people who go on The Apprentice. No, these are Deep, as in arranged as a series of rooms in a vertical fashion; Dungeons, adventuring places; of Doom, where you're likely to meet your end. They're also rather fun.

Originally released last year as a F2P phone app, it's now up on Steam as a one-time purchase. This history shows with the game being incredibly basic to control, mostly just using two buttons. Your character, picked from a selection of three unlocked early in the game, goes through a series of floors each of which contain an encounter. This can be battle with a monster, finding a shrine which unlocks new powers or speaking to an NPC. There's various kinds of loot to be picked up that improve your various stats and some consumables for restoring health or mana. Once you're done you return to an overworld map and select a new destination.

It's very simple. It's also less than four pounds and exactly what I'd expect at that sort of price. There's a nicely written story that's just self-concious enough to take the piss but never totally undermines itself. There's plenty of ways to customise your characters and just enough variation between dungeons and encounters to keep me entertained. I've played for a couple of hours and I don't know how long I'll keep going back, but I'm hoping there'll be a dragon.

It could use a demo to check it's your sort of thing and might be better in portable form once the upcoming premium-format phone version is released, but I enjoyed it. Grab it on Steam.