DROD: The City Beneath DLC

Best of the best. Cheers to the creators <3

My favourite, and in my humble opinion, the best in the DROD series (i havent played The Second Sky yet, that might top it). An absoulte gem of puzzle games, it may not look pretty but the mechanics and design are so good, and it has so much content, that any puzzle fan would be glad to try it

Was my first introduction to DROD series, and remains my favourite installment. Considerably more story-focused than the earlier King Dugan's Dungeon, which could be a turn-off for people who often set the game down for months or years before picking it up to play more again, but I personally find the story (and especially the tilesets and ever-changing game mechanics) rather interesting and enjoyable, keeping me invested. Save a few tedious rooms (e.g. "hey here's a thousand roaches in a giant room, kill them all" or more annoyingly, "hey cut through gel to progress every time you want to pass through here"), pretty much everything was enjoyable to me.

I bought this game as a twitter recommendation from the designer of Stephen's Sausage Roll. And boy! This is truly an underated gem. The game is pretty old school with the numpad for eight-directional movement and a fully voice acted story. However, the design is top notch. The game has you playing as Beethro, a guy with a sword searching for his nephew. On the way you fight bugs, gramble, bats, and all sorts of bizarre creatures. Beethro and his sword take up a single square each (kind of like SSR) and you can rotate the sword clockwise or counterclockwise around him. Just this litle detail is hugely consequential to the gameplay interacting with the funky movement controls in interseting ways. It allows Beethro distance between himself and his targets and significant reach when killing tricky enemies. Like you can reach a bug two squares away (in some cardinal direction) by pointing your sword diagonally and moving perpendicular to your sword. It's not a move that is possible now-a-days with the consensus among puzzle designers to have only the arrow keys for movement. Aesthetically, the design of the puzzles introduce new mechanical ideas in almost every puzzle. For example, there are snakes in the game. But there are three colors of snake. Blue snakes require you to hit their tail. Red snakes need to be obstructed to be destroyed. And green snakes need to be hit in the head or could be obstructed. Then there are green soldiers and stone soldiers; bugs and queens; bats and worms; and so forth. This diverges quite substantially from modern puzzle games that aim to minimize the amount of extraneous elements. What results is a tapestry of ideas, that while not as focused, is astounding nonetheless. I haven't finished the game as it is quite long but just had to write this review. If you like puzzle games, this is a must play. A classic but surprisingly fresh take on puzzle combat.