Hunger Dungeon is a pixel art MOBA, out now
A use for pixel art in 2016
It doesn't matter how many guides to League of Legends and Dota 2 I read, or how helpful the commentary supposedly is, I can't fathom what's happening most of the time when spectating fights in those games. All the wizards are darting about casting swoosh effects and rays of light and an offscreen crowd is screaming and I don't know who is living or dying.
Hunger Dungeon [Steam page] appeals, then, because I can watch the trailer below and see exactly what is going on. It's a 1-6 player round-based free-for-all MOBA - which means no teams, no creeps, just brawlin' - that's just left early access.
Finally, a modern use for pixel art? The simplicity of the 2D art and the backgrounds is part of the reason I find this so legible, coupled with the camera angle. It let's me say: hey, that looked cool when that one character dashed towards an enemy, cast a wall of ice shards around them to trap them in place, dropped an explosive then teleported safely away.
Those abilities and characters are what keep it in MOBA territory. The game currently has 12 characters to choose from, and you unlock skills for each character which are persistent across matches. You can then put together a build of skills for your characters between rounds, and the spells themselves can be further upgraded through play. Is this far enough away from the standard features of the MOBA genre that it ceases to be a MOBA at all? Should I be referring to it as a hero brawler? These questions are rhetorical because I don't care. Stop scrolling down towards the comments. Stop. STOP.
The game is on Steam as free-to-play with 4 randomly chosen characters available to play each week, or you buy access to everything for £8.09/$10.79