DungeonUp

A modern reimagining of Tower of the Sorcerer that fails to understand why Tower of the Sorcerer was designed the way that it was. Gameplay: 6/10 A solid implementation of TotS' gameplay, the movement is fluid and responsive, sometimes to its disadvantage as you can accidentally walk into a door and use up a key. The game is procedurally generated, in theory providing infinite replayability, but in practice the random nature of the game works at odds with the puzzle-based nature of managing your health. Moreover, the boss battles in the game are ripped wholesale from the original, with the occasional difference. This does result in an instance where one boss is far more difficult due to the mage replacement moves out of position such that you cannot kill the boss. In addition, the game has a very basic settings menu that does not allow changing the volume of the very loud music and sound effects. Sound Design: 5/10 As mentioned before, there's not much way to alter the volume inside of the game, I had to manually adjust it outside of the game to compensate. The sound effects aren't much to write home about. Level Design: 0/10 This is where the game suffers the most. It's randomized, that means you could get unlucky and effectively get softlocked because you didn't figure out the most optimal path through an area. Worse, dying results you either restarting, or respawning at the previously defeated boss with the rooms regenerated. TotS had static levels with carefully curated encounters, where trial and error could allow a player to make progress even if they restart from scratch. Story: N/A What story there is consists of an excuse plot, much like the original. There's not much here to keep you engaged. Overall: 4/10 Even discounted, it's not a game I particularly care about. It feels like bad attempt at turning a puzzle game into a roguelike without understanding how the original works.