Have you ever just wanted to be set loose in a theme park with a couple of friends and have free rein? Well, that is what DungeonLand lets you do. However, this theme park is a little different. You won’t be getting any help from the employees, because they are all there to try and kill you.
In this four player hack and slash game players have three classes to pick from: Mage, Rogue, and Warrior. The fourth player gets to play as Dungeon Maestro. There are several differently themed parks in DungeonLand, each full of enemies which follow the theme of that park.
Each theme park is broken down into three stages. In the first two stages players run around the park and face off against the never ending waves of enemies. At certain points in these stages the players will be closed off in a area and must fend off three waves of various enemies. However, these closed off areas aren’t the only places where you need to watch out. At any random point something akin to a mini boss can spawn. What will spawn and where it will spawn changes every time. You might get a mini boss that walks around with a healing bubble around it or you might get one that spawns more enemies as it receives damage; you just never know. Then in the last stage you face off against that park’s boss.
If you end up being the Dungeon Maestro, you will have control over the enemies your friends will be facing off against. As the Maestro, you draw cards which will allow you to place enemies, traps, or a spell. Each card requires a certain amount of mana to use said card, and every minute or so you will be able to draw a new card. As you do more damage to your friends your evil meter will fill up and you gain a mini boss card—if you so feel inclined you can then start your maniacal laughing with the laugh button.
As you run around and destroy everything in sight you will find gold which you can use in the item shop. One of the things you can unlock with all the gold you’ve been collecting are the subclasses. Each class has three subclasses. Mages can be fire, electric, or ice. Warriors can be vanguards, lancers, or defenders. Lastly, Rogues can be assassins, gunners or archers. With each different subclass your core skills and weapons will change. You can also buy crazy outfits for characters, like a space suit, fairy suit, or diving suit. Or you can buy potions and perks, which are very important to this game.
In fact, this game is kind of impossible if you don’t buy new potions and perks. Each class comes with a default potion and no perks, and each character gets three potions at the start of a level. Potions can do a variety of things, such as creating a link between characters that steals health, or allowing them to teleport while backstabbing enemies. As far as perks go you get two: one for your weapon, and one for your armor. Perks will give you things like faster movement, extra damage, extra armor, and more damage with certain attacks.
Sadly, as fun as DungeonLand sounds it still has some issues. The first being that the bots are completely brain dead. They have no sense of teamwork, or even self worth. When I played using bots they never used any of their potions and would sometimes go off in their own direction for a little bit only to get killed by enemies. This wouldn’t be so bad if you were able to control the bots to some extent, but unfortunately you can’t.
There were also a couple of glitches I ran into, like menus getting stuck open and staying open even when you went to a new window. Or getting cut off from your fellow heroes and then ending up being in the air above them and not being able to attack anything. There was even one time where a hero became invincible for a whole stage. Another problem was that the sound and music would randomly cut in and out for a couple seconds at a time.
My biggest complaint would have to be that is game is just so hard. I don’t understand why the game’s difficulty setting starts out at hard and goes up from there. If you play with bots you won’t even be able to get past the first stage. If you’re playing with friends you better stay on top of reviving one another, because if you lose all your lives (which you share) you’re done. You can still continue from the start of that stage but you won’t have any lives left.
Overall, I was disappointed by this game. I thought it would be both fun and humorous to play this game, but really it was just frustrating. Between the brain dead A.I. and the impossible never ending waves of enemies it isn’t fun. There is potential here for a fun game, so I hope we will see some patches soon to fix the random glitches and give an option for an easier difficulty setting.
