Have You Played... DROD: Gunthro and the Epic Blunder?

Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.

If you've paid any attention to my scribblings over the last few years, one of the recurrent themes you may have noticed is my hatred of puzzles games. Or rather, as I like to say, their hatred of me. But, as I've acknowledged in the past, wrap a strong theme or story around the puzzles and I might be fooled into paying attention, and from there I can be won over completely. The Deadly Rooms of Death [official site] series, a fantasy RPG that is actually a puzzle game, almost got me.

I played one of these games years ago, though I can't remember which it was. They've appeared on Steam recently, which led me to giving them another go, starting with The Epic Blunder. I want to love it because it's a silly, comedy fantasy game that just happens to be about tile-based puzzling, but it's either not quite silly enough or too clever by half. I can't tell which one it is.

They do have a cult following though, these DROD games, and I reckon there will be at least some RPS readers who haven't played them before but will absolutely love them when they do. Me? I'm reminded of days long ago when my friend Barry completed every level of Chip's Challenge while I was sitting in the background pretending to understand.

You can try DROD out on the official site before buying.