Eye of Rana, developed by little-known indie player Fat Frog Studios, is a mobile dungeon-crawler built on the same premises that made games like Diablo so much fun: running through huge, randomly generated caverns and collecting many different types of items. Although Eye of Rana isn't deep enough to satisfy ardent fans of the dungeon-crawler genre, most mobile gamers will be pleasantly surprised at how well it approximates the hypnotic, kill-and-loot gameplay of its predecessors.
Of course, there's no dungeon-crawl without a hero, so you have to create your own at the beginning of Eye of Rana. You can choose from three preset archetypes--warrior, rogue, or wizard--or roll for your very own hero. There are only four attributes to worry about, and the game will auto-choose your archetype depending on the strength of your stats. From there, you'll be asked to come up with a name. If you're feeling really uncreative, the game also provides you with an auto-generate function, which is a nice touch. Also, the menus throughout this process sport a slick "tome of knowledge" motif, which makes the process that much more involving.
Once your leading man (there are no heroines, unfortunately) is ready to rumble, you'll be dropped off on the first level of the dungeon, so you can start working your way down into the depths, in search of the Eye of Rana. As in any classical crawl, the idea is to explore each level, scooping up as much treasure as you can find and rolling monsters for their goods. All of the necessary gameplay elements, from combat to inventory management, are managed via a few simple key presses. When you encounter an enemy, you simply press the action key, which freezes the game temporarily and lets you choose a cardinal direction to attack in. That's all there is to it. This system is great for less-advanced gamers, because it keeps the action from overwhelming you, but it can be a little frustrating to constantly pause and unpause the game while fighting. Plus, the game's not tile-based, so you have to line your fighter up perfectly to score a hit. On the other hand, it's nice to not have to fumble with multiple types of attacks using the keypad. As in every other RPG since the beginning of time, killing enough enemies will boost your experience over the level threshold, granting you more ability points to distribute over your character's attributes. The game also features a nice scrollable map screen to help you navigate through the levels.
If you need to use an item or switch to a ranged weapon, it's a simple matter to access your inventory screens and get cracking. Just as in Diablo, there are many, many different permutations of items and weapons in Eye of Rana. The vast majority of goods you find will be unidentified; the game will just tell you that it's a silver potion of some kind, or a worn cutlass. Scrolls will be identified solely by a Latinesque inscription. Many of these things have salutary effects, but you'll need to try them or equip them to find out for sure; you just as easily may be stuck with a cursed set of darts or a potion of weakness. Potion and scroll-based effects, whether helpful or deleterious, will wear off after a while; you'll have to use a cursed weapon until you find an uncurse item to wash the nastiness out of your hands. For a mobile game, Eye of Rana really does provide an impressive array of items to use and monsters to tangle with--which is a good thing, because there's no story to advance whatsoever.
As far as its presentation goes, Eye of Rana offers up a competent experience, although it also falls on the spartan side of the spectrum. The top-down graphics are very reminiscent of 8-bit classics like Gauntlet and Dragon Quest--nothing fancy, but functional enough to let you easily tell what's going on. We didn't notice any sound at all in the LG VX6000 version of the game, even though there was a toggle switch in the menu.
Overall, Eye of Rana succeeds in bringing the bare-bones essentials of the dungeon-crawl experience to mobile. If you're up for some mindless but entertaining item collection and fighting--without the pretense of a story, advanced character development, or online play--this game is a good choice.
