in

New Indie Title Desktop Dungeons Sets Sights on IGFs Grand Prize

If you’re anything like myself, you’ve looked around Yoyogames quite a bit and have found that the majority of games are very shallow, unpolished, or completely undeveloped.  Sure the spotlight occasionally features an interesting arcade title, but after an hour you want nothing to do with it.

I have always been under the impression that the vast database of Gamemaker games on Yoyogames represents the extent of quality and depth that a game made with Gamemaker can achieve. I was recently proven wrong.

A new game by QCF Design hopes to be the first game made in Game Maker to win the Independent Games Festivals’ Seumas McNally Grand Prize. That game is Desktop Dungeons.

Desktop Dungeons sports a fresh new type of gameplay for people looking to do some old school dungeon raiding. The concept is simple, choose a character with certain attributes and kill monsters to reach the boss of the dungeon, beat him and live happily ever after. Depth is introduced with a handful of races and classes, a leveling system, potions, items, spells, mana, gods, the list goes on and on.

The beautiful pixel-art does a good job of depicting the dungeons dangerous enemies
The beautiful pixel-art does a good job of depicting the dungeons dangerous enemies

After fifteen minutes of playing you realize this game is just as much about dungeon raiding as it is critical thinking and puzzle solving. You have to find a way to manage your potions while trying to level up your character (by killing monsters, naturally) until you can fight the boss.

Aside from being just plain fun, this game is humorous and charming. The pixel art goes great with the game and the references and jokes sprinkled throughout always put a slight grin on my face.

If there is any game that has a shot of winning IGF’s Seumas McNally Grand Prize it has to be Desktop Dungeons.
This ingeniously designed game sure packs a big punch, and if nothing else, goes to show that genuinely great games can come in small packages.

You can download the game for free here (file size: 4.2MB)

What do you think?

13 Comments

Leave a Reply
  1. As an FYI, Nidhogg by Mark Essen (another of the finalists) is also made in Game Maker.

    While I’d love one of the two to win, I get the feeling Minecraft is going to be running away with this one.

  2. Hi,

    Is that a screenshot of you playing, or simply a screenshot taken from the blog?

    The current beta is made with GM. It’s my understanding that they are now working on recreating/finishing the game with Unity.

    But yeah, it’s a great game. SunnyKatt, I don’t think you’ve played it for very long…

    • I dunno, maybe I didn’t play long enough. I played for a few hours over the course of a few weeks and unlocked some of the new stuff. But some things, like the fact that they used default GM effects (which are ugly, and don’t fit their graphic style) and that the level generation is rough (lots of sealed off passages you can’t get to), made it feel to me that it wasn’t very well done, like someone with a good idea but not the talent to execute it properly. That’s just my thoughts.

    • You’re correct, the current freeware Gamemaker build is only for the beta. But i believe the version they submitted to IGF was the Gamemaker build.

One Ping

  1. Pingback:

Leave a Reply to Andrew McCluskey Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Sync Simple – Android Game Review (Xeronix Works)

HTML5 Game Maker: YoYo Games Release Video