Magic Cauldron - Dungeons Steam Charts & Stats

On release this game had some severe bugs. By now this has been resolved as far as I can tell. Only some slight visual glitches remain. It is a very simple dungeon crawler. If you are looking for some relaxed exploration with easy combat that doesn't require a lot of thought, this is exactly right. Being turn based, it avoids the constant dancing around the enemies which most real time first person grid systems have. A crafting system allows making potions which are helpful in combat. You go through the levels in a non-linear way. Graphics are charming in an old-school way, except maybe for the high resolution mouse cursor. On the other hand, if you are looking for deep character systems, difficult combat or a story, this is not the right game. I gave it a thumbs up since it falls in a niche which is not occupied by many old-school dungeon crawlers.

A cool classic dungeon crawler with new technology!

I was drawn to this title by a couple things: The tags on the store page, "RPG", "Strategy RPG", and "Dungeon Crawler", three of my very favorites. It took less than a minute to realize that two of the tags are absolute lies, being the ones with RPG in them. You don't get to create a character. You pick a portrait. You don't even get to name them. You are immediately tossed on an island to find out about some magic cauldron. From there, the game play loop is at least decent. You wander around a fair amount of maps fighting monsters, even though there are only maybe 8-10 different ones throughout the entire game. You don't get to equip any armor or items besides the weapons you find on the ground. The combat is the most simplistic you will see in ANY game. Just left click on the enemy. Most of them take one hit, some of them two. You can't miss, and neither can the enemy. It's very reminiscent of what an old Atari 2600 type game would utilize. I don't really mind this, except it's not very RPG like. My biggest gripe with this game is the length. It shows that I played for 4.8 hours, but close to an hour of that is just idle time when I would get up from the computer for a bit and then return. If you accidentally hit the escape key, you can only load or quit the game. You can't even go back. There is a persistent bug as well, where if you die and load a save, you will immediately be fighting a non-existent enemy that you can't kill. Your only option is to reload the game again, and hope the game acts normal. The dev said this bug was fixed in a patch in late September, but it's still there as of October 5. The game does have a couple strong points, and that is the overall ambiance. The music and effects are mood setting, but I found the volume mixes to be off. A couple areas had much louder sound than others. There are also some hidden secrets in the game that help by giving you an extra weapon and potions, which you will need to make it through to the end. I won't spoil the ending, but it was very abrupt and not very rewarding. If you are interested in an extremely basic dungeon crawler, shop around. This game isn't worth the full asking price of $11.99 USD. Wait for a steep discount unless you are a fan of the dev's other works.

Game so smol I couldn't even find a pirate version. Support small companies and single developers, guys.