Due to being sick for the last week, I've mainly been playing puzzle games and grind mode in RPGs. Deep Dungeons Of Doom was selected for today by scrolling down the list of titles I have in Steam and finding something small in size.

DDoD is a port of a mobile game. You can find it on Google Play, OUYA, and (urgh) the Mac App store. This is the PC port which, for once, feels like a proper PC ported game.

The game being a mobile port is somewhat obvious when you take a look at the layout of the screen. Buttons are arranged in places where you could sit your thumbs and have short travel from the attack/block actions to items and status/menu.
To be honest I didn't really notice this until I accidentally dragged a status menu to another screen, where it behaved with a swipe motion, complete with being able to hold part way.

I want to point these out as the game ends up being a port from mobile to PC done right. It goes out of its way to teach you keyboard controls. Buttons are clickable with the mouse and you don't feel like you are fighting an interface designed for small screens that is scaled up to 58cm (23in for those of you that hate metric).

While you gaze is on the lower half for most of the game, something where a hand held device would have the advantage, the action is contained down there. The top half of the dungeon runs or the full screen in map and story mode don't have any twitch actions required to them and are dependent on user input.

A darkness of evil has taken over the lands, and King O (lots of vowels, small retro font, I'll just call him King O) has challenged you to stop it by going beneath the castle and killing an evil that has killed many heroes before you.

The first dungeon is a bit deceptive. You attack a training dummy first, despite being a crusader. Okay, fair enough, you need to know how to play the game. After this a priest can heal you. I never found a way for the dummy to damage me, but okay, we now know there is NPC interaction. After this you have the first enemy and are off to fame or death.

You can attack enemies by clicking with the mouse on the attack button, or via a key on the keyboard. Blocking works the same way. What makes this game different is that it takes an action oriented game where you need to hit enemies under certain conditions and slows it down a lot to a 2D view.

Most monsters can be hit at any point in the round. Striking will mean that you can't attack for 1-3 seconds or so. Attempting to do so will stall your attack cooldown as a penalty. However some are only vulnerable to attack at certain points of their animation cycle. You have to pay attention and strike when they are open. There's not a lot of monsters in the game that I've encountered so far, and aside from pallet swaps, they do have different attack sequences.

Beyond this, you can unleash a special attack by holding down attack. This does leave you even more open to attack, and the risk reward has to be decided. Thankfully some enemies have an evasion cycle, which makes it a perfect time to charge up.

While few monsters can block your attacks, you can block whenever you want. But there is a catch. Hitting block as the Crusader will cause you to raise your shield for a brief moment. Each enemy telegraphs their attack before it is unleashed. The small size or design of some of them mean it can be hard to spot in some instances. So, in most cases you will see that they are going to attack, and hit block at the right moment...

Except sometimes they hesitate. Or at least their attack cycle makes it appear to be. There's a large troll creature encounter around zone 3 that will raise a club above its head before it strikes. Sometimes it will wobble before it strikes, and if you hit block too early, you will be vulnerable to a rather heavy attack. And sometimes it raises the club and swipes outwards quicker.

I know there's a subtle difference in the animation here. However it does make it easy to panic when you are low on health and get killed.

After most battles you can gain access to a loot chest. This either contains coins, for spending on altars or the marketplaces around town. There's a few NPCs in the dungeon too, like a vending machine, or a devil merchant. Or they contain a piece of equipment or consumable.

Coins are more rare from the risks you take than actual rarity, Losing a run means you can return to town with only 10% of the gold you found. And items and altars are expensive.

Equipment usually has a pro and con to it. Such as healing your character, but reducing you agility (cooldown). You can only carry one piece of equipment at a time and one consumable type. Items with only pros are rarer, and I found my self swapping them out in most cases as the ones with cons have higher pros.

While back in town you can place what you found into storage. Leaving it safe from being lost on death while you suss out the next dungeon, or replay the older ones for more loot and coins.
Choosing what piece to keep is going to depend on what stats you have. And levelling up plays out a little differently here. Either through actual EXP or a death counter, after killing some monsters you can select a stat boost. This stat boost only lasts for the zone you are in and is lost when you return to town.

The only true way to raise you base stats is to spend your coins on the three altars you unlock in story mode. Coins spent here can give your character a passive boost to their base stats, be it making you stronger and faster or giving you a small health regen between dungeon floors. This gets expensive fast.

And even more so as the game progresses. Aside from each altar tier getting pricier, you have companions that join you on the adventure. Only one can do a dungeon run at a time, but each has their own altar list.

There's a huge grind to this game. And while mechanically simple, learning all the sequences can take some trial and effort. The only issue is have was the quality of the story. And not so much its a generic story to fill in the game, but the use of anachronistic slang in a medieval ye olde setting.

The "Oh Bugger" bit did make me laugh, but I'm an Aussie that's easily amused.

It's quite enjoyable if you are looking for something to fill in time. Presentation is clean and its a great little pick up and go game.

Game Acquisition: Bundle Stars (RPG Heroes 2 Bundle).
Platform Used: Steam
Tweet Threads: 1 - 15 July 2017
PC Used: Scorptec Venom 2009 MK2

OS: Windows XP
Processor: 1.8 GHz
Memory: 2 GB RAM
Graphics: Intel HD 4000
DirectX: Version 9.0
Storage: 150 MB available space
Sound Card: DirectX9.0 compatible sound card