A Superb Way To Spend Five Dollars
As the design team openly admits, it is basically a board game in digital form. You control five drunken, violent dwarves (is there any other kind?) who are on a mission to collect as much cash as they can for the king, who watches over the proceedings himself while providing off-color commentary. There are one to three rival squads vying for the same honor, and the team that gets the most in the allotted number of turns is the winner. There are also plenty of monsters in the dungeon to make life more difficult - and/or more fun and profitable, as bashing higher-end monsters can be a good source of money in of itself.
What makes the game so fun is the constant undermining of your opponents. You get to expand the playfield each turn with a single tunnel expansion, but you can put it anywhere. The angel on your shoulder is telling you to simply expand your own area to get more riches to mine, but the devil is telling you to open a path between two rival teams so they start pummeling each other. The A.I. will attempt to carefully avoid dragons and super-jellies by digging around their exposed lairs, but one well-placed 'tile' can bring them all together for a hilarious bloodbath. Eventually, you too will be in the scrum (if you don't rush into it to begin with) and the last 10 rounds tend to be nothing but hilarious all-out beatings as a few spare dwarves try to sneak away with some spilled loot to bank it away.
While quite simple, the game gives you enough choices to keep you going. There are about 20 maps (although many are quite similar) and the composition of your team - a mix of fighters, speedy scouts, and deep-pocketed miners - is yours to decide. The combat is automatic, but follows its own logic. (Instigators get better 'die rolls,' unit attack order is based on speed, fighters smash both other unit types to bits, etc.) And as always, multiplayer doubles your fun. Sadly, only hotseat play is available, and on-line is very unlikely unless sales warrant a sequel.
Unsurprisingly, production values and polish are on the light side, thanks to the game's low price point and indie heritage. The game definitely feels a bit rough in places, with a smattering of tiny bugs and interface annoyances. The developers plan to remedy some of these with a patch or two, but with what is presumably a small budget, it's hard to know when or if these fixes will take place. The game is perfectly playable, mind you, but frayed at the edges.
It looks pretty good for a five-dollar game, all told. The large character sprites are good fun, particularly the large jelly cube 'kings' with the little crowns on them. The music is less impressive, with a small handful of dull but harmless tracks repeating in the background. Sound effects are delightfully fun and fit the game's comedic tone. (Although the game's reliance on Monty Python and the Holy Grail quotes is a bit grating. That movie has been strip-mined to absolute death in nerd culture and needs to be retired.)
Pet peeves aside, though, this game is a total steal for five dollars. It plays very quickly for a board game-style product (thanks to the sage decision to make combat automatic) so you're never bored, and a complete game can be played easily in one sitting. There are 50 achievements for the game on Steam - some of which encourage very challenging or abnormal strategies - and it even keeps an archive of the wacky relics you collect. You really can't miss for five bucks, so take a small chance on this little sleeper gem.