Indie Gaming Highlight: ODALLUS and GUILD OF DUNGEONEERING

Odallus: The Dark Call

Odallus is what can be best described as a "throwback game." It obviously draws most of its inspiration from the classic Castlevania games and provides a very similar experience. You run around battling monsters and exploring a large world filled with secrets — and I mean FILLED with secrets. Each area has at least 4-5 secrets that will have you scouring every dark corner of the zone. 

Those familiar with the NES Castlevania games will feel right at home and have a much easier time with the game than those accustomed to modern games, since Odallus is brutally difficult. Some of the stages themselves can be difficult to overcome by themselves, but then you add bosses and minibosses into the mix. The boss fights themselves follow the retro formula of having simple patterns that you must learn to defeat them. Also, like some retro game bosses, it is easier to just wail on the enemy instead of trying to dodge all of their attacks. I can say without shame that I used that technique on at least one boss fight.

Although Odallus is heavily inspired by retro games, it hasn’t completely forgone some of the technical advantages of modern games. There are plentiful checkpoints spread across the maps and getting a "game over" isn’t as brutal as most old school games. Also, most enemies won't respawn every time they move off screen, so exploration is slightly easier than in the "good old days."

Many modern games that try to be retro risk going over the top, and Odallus is no different. There is a graphical setting which makes your nice high definition monitor look like a curved CRT TV. At first I was put off because the purposeful graphical downgrade seemed silly at best. But after playing with the option on and off I found myself having a better experience with the setting enabled. The tone and feel of the game feel so much like a retro game that the nostalgic graphical setting fits right in.

If you are a fan of Metroid-vania style games or are looking for a difficult “old school” game in general, I would definitely recommend giving Odallus a shot.

Guild of Dungeoneering

I know what Guild of Dungeoneering is trying to do. It’s trying to play off of the popularity of Darkest Dungeon and provide a rogue-like experience where you send adventurers into dungeons and the reap the reward of their (probable) sacrifice. I understand the inspiration for Guild of Dungeoneering and the devs made certain design decisions, but that still doesn’t make it a great game.

Guild of Dungeoneering revolves around building up a guild of adventurers and sending them into dungeons to complete quests for you. Then you spend the gold they bring back to upgrade the guild hall and send more adventurers to their doom. In the dungeons, you don’t directly control the adventurers. Instead, you are given random dungeon cards that you use to build the dungeon around the adventurer. You place rooms, monsters, and loot in rooms in an attempt to lure the adventurer towards the quest objective and hopefully the adventure is strong enough to survive. It’s an interesting idea, but the game just isn’t that fun. There is just way too much luck involved. You have to be lucky to get good dungeon cards instead of just high level monsters. Then, in combat, you have to have good luck since the combat is entirely card based, so you can get crappy draws or your opponents can get amazing draws, both of which can kill your adventurer very quickly. Then, you need to have good luck to get decent gear to make your character strong enough to beat the boss, which goes back to having good combat luck.

All of the random elements combined makes it feel like the player only has minimal involvement in the game. Most of the time, you are driven entirely by luck, so the game could very well play itself. Also, since the game difficulty increases so quickly, often times you’ll need to grind lower level dungeons to get enough gold to unlock higher level adventurers to continue progressing through the game.

Guild of Dungeoneering is okay. It’s not a bad game by any means, but I just couldn’t find the fun. Too much of the game revolves around pure luck instead of skill or decision making and it prevents me from feeling involved in the game. If you enjoy management games like Game Dev Tycoon and want something with a fantasy twist then you might end up enjoying it, but overall I’d say to pass on it.

Want your game featured in a future highlight? Send me an email at Christianmills@geektyrant.com!