Beyond The Gnomish Mines! Into the very Arcane Archives! – GateDelvers – #02
GateDelvers is an Indie, Top Down, Dungeon Crawling Action RogueLike by Unikone, focusing on Platforming around a Destructible Dungeon environment in Real Time. With Online Co-op!
It’s good.
Random, Destructible Dungeons:
The dungeons are random, created with Procedural Generation, and have Z lvls, so you can fall down a pit, and continue exploring the lower lvl absent a load screen! It’s very smooth, and creates the impression of an interconnected dungeon, rather than a set series of floors; very interesting.
These dungeons are very interactable, and very destructible.
You can pickaxe or blast your way through rock, cut down rubble, and set fire to wood, and blow up the precariously placed red barrels scattered around the mine, punishing the miners for their carelessness!
Throw rocks at switches to activate bridges, or weigh down pressure plates to open gates, or trigger fireball traps, or even cut down the support pillars holding up the roof, unleashing a cave-in upon the local area, better move hero!
The core gameplay seems to focus on getting a lay of the land using your telescope; you lock around the map, then plan your route, platforming over the pits, spike traps, and rolling boulders, as you evade or punch down enemies in your path, scoring new weapons from your many foes to continue your climb ever downward, delving deeper into the deep dungeon.
You can also grab the crystal, which lvls you up, and lets you pick 1 of 3 upgrades, making your character stronger; grab the crystal if you can.
Meta Progression In the Mines, and More:
As a Roguelike at heart, the meta progression in GateDelvers is not going to win the game for you, unlike some of the stacking meta progression seen in the Horde Survival / Vampire Survivors likes, where stacking 20% boosts to damage, movement, and hp % all but require those boosts in order to win, as the game is balanced around the players having those upgrades.
No, in GateDelvers, the meta Progression is mostly horizontal, not vertical, as you unlock other ways of playing, like new classes with different abilities, and lvl up paths, or cards that grant little bonuses, but mostly change the way that character will progress through the dungeons.
Think more Classes to find, as well as some color card decks you can slot in below the kitchen, down the little stair by the kettle, (it is easy to miss).
These card decks modify your run, changing how your battle though the dungeons will go.
Like Magician’s Choice, which makes the first chest on your run contain a spellbook and +1 to mana, guaranteeing you get some magic early, or Bloodsmith, which bestows a minor enchantment on a item absent curse or blessing if you kill 10 enemies with it, letting you create magic items using the blood of your foes; very metal.
You can slot in 3 of these cards, and these cards also hint at what you need to do to unlock them, helping to drive you forward to play more.
Controller Support is present, but I found Mouse and Keyboard just felt better for me here, so that is what I used in the video above.
So, if you’re hungry for a TopDown Roguelike Platformer Packing Real Time Action and Online Co-op up to 4 players, you may have found your game. Give me a glance to be sure?
Note: GateDelvers is in Early Access, thus bugs, incomplete optimization, and other weirdness is possible, but also note, Early Access does not mean not fun.
Spoiler: It's Very Fun!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1638440/Gatedelvers/
#RPG #RogueLike #DungeonCrawler