A really cool action RPG, while the graphics suck it maeks up for that with some unique features. Namely quests in this game are dynamic: take to long to rescue someone, and they die. Leave a dungeon boss alone? They'll start an uprising. leave that alone? It'll keep getting wrose untill there's an attack on the town. On top of that, the whole time all of this is happening, you're actively competeing for control of the town with several other clans, that you can trade, form alliances with, or declare war on.

I highly reccomended tihs for people who like games like Titans Quest or Torchlight 2, but want something with a few unique tricks up it's sleeve.

So, i have played another game by this same developer called Din's Quest, and the developer's actually care about their games too. I asked a question in the forum, and this game is 5-6 years old in retail and they answered it. After beating it on easy, i decided to write this review, so here is my pro/con breakdown:

PROS:

~Great ARPG very similiar to diablo 1 and 2
~You can choose which class you want
~Lots of quests and dungeons
~Covenants for who is to rule the town
~Treasure like in diablo that is colored for rarity
~Teleports and gates
~You can recruit random heroes on the map walking around and killing monsters


CONS:

~One town in the whole game. This game is basically confined to one town, and you go out to do dungeons and such.
~The difficulty is quite high in my opinon, even on easy
~Recruiting is a pain since the quest to recruit someone is usually above your character's level
~You can only have one person in your party. So it is your main character, and one hero.
~Graphics are older. Some people may care about this, but it did not bother me

Recommended for fun ARPG stategy. There are different difficulties depending on levels.

This precursor to Din's Curse is by no means a simpler game. A bit more rough around the edges perhaps, but the take on party based ARPG gameplay is completely unique. Your party competes with other groups for control over the town. You have all manner of diplomatic tools and victory conditions support alliance wins. All of this takes place in a sweet, if obviously tile based, procedurally generated world, with Soldak's great dynamic questing system. All the other groups are out in this world too, competing to complete the same quests. Groups you are at war with can be fought in the world as well. Indeed the most common path to victory involves crushing the other groups. In order to do this effectively you'll need to recruit your allies carefully, and then see to their development. You also have a hall of your own, where you can post powerful monsters as guards, enshrine relics to give your group bonuses and also build a library of tomes which grants further bonuses.

If you have the patience to learn this game's juggling act, you'll find one of the most unique takes on ARPGs around with its surprisingly deep strategic element.

A thinking man's action-RPG... Straight from the mind of some genius game-designer, who created a mad-scientist engine, and a game that defines its own genre. This game has a quest system which uses their own game mechanics; it has store-vendors with their own agendas that play out through in-game artificial intelligence. But all in all, I am not sure it is much fun to play, and it sure is not much to look at.

The game has a solid tutorial, that has the player completing quests for town merchants, but I still wish it revealed the game mechanics a bit slower. I still felt overwhelmed with the number of new game elements, even before I had a full set of equipment. Well, this is a Soldak game, and that is a really special kind of game designer. You really owe it to yourself to try one of the game demos, just so you can see what they doing.

For the most part, I had little trouble with this game, technically. The game is extremely optimized for my ubuntu linux system, with a measly 100 MBs diskspace requirement. I think it could probably run on very old computers, too. I did have one time that the mouse cursor was not lined up with the screen, for mouse-clicks. I would recommend checking out this game, for people who are fans of the A-RPG genre, who are looking for something new and interesting. If you are looking for a laid-back dungeon crawl, then you will find more accessible games elsewhere. There is a linux demo of the game on the developer's website, so give it a try... maybe you will really connect with the game as so many others have done!

It's an indie Diablo-alike with multiple factions each sending their own heroes out into the wilderness to do the quests. You're not just trying to level your character, you're trying to take over your town from up to seven rivals. It's a little rough around the edges, but it brings some fun, interesting ideas to a very well-known formula.

Depths of Peril is an ARPG filled to the brim with unique ideas. From the premise of the game, where clans fight and adventure simultaneously for control of the region, to the randomly generated and adequately customizable game worlds. However, unique ideas alone cannot make a good game, and it is in the execution where Depths of Peril falls flat on its face. It isn't completely without merit, though, and I encourage anybody interested in making an ARPG of their own to at least take a look at the game, for the same idea in fully funded and capable hands is easily a recipe for success.

Unlike most other ARPGs, Depths of Peril doesn't contain a single game world that you advance through linearly; instead a new world can be generated for any of your characters to play in at any time. Each world has a number of 'covenants' (guilds of adventurers) that you can fight or ally with in an attempt to control the world. When only you and any allies you may have are the only ones remaining, the world is "complete". This world style allows the game to stay relatively fresh, but severely hampers the compelling story and exciting set boss fights common to others in the genre.

Depths of Peril manages to be like other ARPGs in many ways, though not all of them are positive. Quests in the world are randomly generated, often requiring you to kill enemies or find and rescue an NPC who you may then recruit to help you, two things which are also far too common in the genre. Also like other ARPGs, Depths of Peril suffers from some relatively uninteresting skills, few classes to choose from, all the flaws of random loot generation, and more.

The worlds themselves are uninspired and bland. The graphics are, as you can probably see from the screenshots and video available, not good, especially by today's standards. Even worse than that is how areas of each world will be literally squares of land with nothing separating them other than a small wall of some sort and a break in the wall to walk through. I'm not sure what kinds of forests and plains are perfectly square, but Depths of Peril has them in spades.

The most unique part of the game is, however, its strong point. Competing with other convenants for control is interesting and exciting, especially if you crank the difficulty enough for them to be a significant challenge (and cranking the difficulty up can easily be done). Attacking other covenants, however, is about as boring as can be, unfortunately; each covenant has a crystal that acts as a respawn and teleport point for its members, and you must destroy it to defeat the covenant. What that leads to is you and your covenant wailing on the crystal for a long time while killing the infinitely respawning enemies until the crystal eventually dies. For what could have been an amazing, potentially game-making mechanic, it's disappointing.

Probably the most disappointing part is the lack of multiplayer. It could be an amazing game to play with (and against) friends, possibily even enough to make me recommend it, but it's sadly not there.

A perfectly square field of unrealized potential is what Depths of Peril is, and you'll find numerous fields just like it if you choose to play it. While it has unique ideas, ideas alone are not enough for me to recommend buying it over other ARPGs.

I played this game back when Desura was still a thing, and even back then this game could be really hard! Events in the game will happen quickly and you'll need to respond just as quickly, whether you're high level enough or not, whether you have the right gear or not. Unless you're experienced with Soldak's style of games, this is going to throw you at first, so I actually recommend checking out their website's mod section, where there are two mods in particular, "Slower Pace" and "Balancing Mod". These have greatly improved my experience with the game as well, since I'm getting much slower in my older age. I'll link the website below:

http://www.soldak.com/Depths-of-Peril/Mods.html


As for the game itself, there really isn't anything quite like it on the market at this price tag or compact size. It is refreshing to see a game focused on the gameplay experience instead of all the bells and whistles, and at a manageable size so I don't feel like I'm getting bored or the game is just too overwhelming in size for me to tackle. The "New Game Plus"-like system it has with being able to start new games with your previous character, their items and recruits, at different difficulties and settings is what keeps me coming back!


Bought once on Desura, bought again on Steam, and it was worth buying it twice!

arpg in the vein of diablo with many random stats. interesting "political" system with some fellow npc adventurer "factions"; meant to be replayed many times by restarting the game world on higher difficulties, similar to diablo multiplayer.

Buggy, ugly, deeply flawed when it comes to its core gameplay mechanics, Depths of Peril is by no means a great game; yet, it delivers a decent amount of mindless fun.

+ Great concept
+ Runs on ANY computer
+ Takes only 150MB (how ridiculous is that?)
+ Enjoyable enough
+ The "just one more quest" effect works at full capacity
+ Gestion of items in inventory is ergonomic
+ You can increase the size of your inventory by finding better bags
+ You can collect all different books and put them in your personal library; it will grant you a permanent bonus
+ Very fast pacing and action-packed
+ The devs have seemlingly improved the concept in newer games (Din's Curse, Zombasite)

- The graphics
- Many annoying bugs
- Uninteresting random quests (but they keep you going on though!)
- Completely inconsistent world
- The covenant mechanism is broken
- Diplomacy with other factions is nonsensical

Spending 10 bucks or whatever money you are using in this game would be a waste. Wait for a 80% sale at least and then, buy only if you want a cheap hack'n'slash game in the dark corner of your computer to play with a little bit and have guaranteed fun for a little while.

This game is an old school hack'n'slash where you smash your skills buttons to kill hundreds of various monsters. It's mindless, repetitive, devoid of originality, but it's fun. You receive randomized quests from NPC in the "town" (which is called Jorvik, and that's all the lore you will get about it) such as: kill some unique monster, gather some zombie brains in the forest, or deliver a package (intriguing!) to some stupid guy who bizarrely lives in the middle of a desert surrounded by giant scorpios which throw lighting bolts. Some quests have a timer, which adds a bit of challenge. Each quest is associated with a location which is one of the big rectangles full of monsters and a monomochromatic texture that makes up the world (which by the way has weird borders which gives you a glimpse at the deep void on which this universe is floating; creepy!). As each location is associated with a teleporter (that needs to be activated in the first place, fair enough), you can rush and do as many of these random stupid quests as you want. As for the story, there is none: some big baddie is doing evil things so you must first thin out its forces by killing its main lieutenants (at least that's what people say to you but don't expect a dynamical world), and once you finally get to kill him, you just learn that there is an even bigger baddie which waits in line. Think of it as the endless loop it is and you have a good idea of the story you will be given in the game.

In short, there is always something to do in Depths of Peril and that's why it still manges to be fun. Plus, backtracking is minimal thanks to the excellent teleportation system.

So far, there is nothing original in Depths of Peril; the quests, character classes, monsters, setting, are all pretty generic (actually there are generically generic). The big novelty is the "covenant" system. You, random adventurer, belong to a covenant, or faction. The town hosts several of these covenants, and they all compete for influence by doing more quests than the others. They can also compete for hiring new recruits, which will ask to fulfill a quest (always: kill X monsters of that kind) or can be found wandering in the world, slaughtering monsters on their own.

You therefore has to compete with the other factions to fulfill the quests before them.

That seems fun! Unfortunately it's not. The problem is, you can also enter into open warfare with the other covenants. Then, you rush into their house (a hut exactly similar to yours) and strike some magic crystal until it breaks. Killing heroes from other covenants also damage the crystal. When you go into war, there is no way to stop it. You constantly suffer raids into your house so you cannot go adventuring anymore. Since you do not gain XP by killing other heroes, you no longer improve your character.

Worse, in your covenant, you can have recruits. Some of these recruits (the screenshots show several but at level 15 it is still only one) can join your party (i.e. help you in all the questing stuff), while the others will have to stay home, quitely hanging around the magic crystal for days. However, as you can get XP from adventuring only, those who stay cannot gain new levels. On the other hand, the AI can send as many recruits as it wants in quests, so they will all gain XP. Which means: unless you contantly hire better recruits, you will end up with a covenant full of guys utterly useless against the rival factions. But of course, if you are at war, you cannot recruit anyone anymore (anytime you are questing the enemy will raid your crystal and you will have to go back defend it), so you better have to end the matter quickly, or you will get overwhelmed.

Which means, it's not fun. The competition only surfaces in these wars (the AI seems pretty ineffective in fulfilling quests, but they gain XP nonetheless) which are the most boring thing in the world (guys show up by teleporting next yo your crystal and you have to chop off their heads one after the other until you get killed, resurrected, and restart).

As a result, the most original mechanism of the game, which is the competition between covenants of heroes, is broken and does not bring on any fun.

Sad.

I wanted to like this game. It was even fun at first. The first thing I really made it a point to understand is that this is an older game from an independent developer. A lot of other people have pointed out that it is unpolished, but I don't know if that is the correct word for it. It is extremely polished. It's also somewhat primitive.

The concept is kind of neat, and it does play a lot like Diablo II. The difference being that Diablo II is a more fluid experience. I can overlook that, though, if the game has certain other cool aspects. The problem is, it really doesn't.

The whole goal of the game is to defeate the other "factions". That seems kind of silly to me given the fact that the town seems to be constantly under seige in a hostile environment. I mean, you can't leave town without getting attacked by MOBs, so the goal seems a little bit unrealistic. It's a game, though, so I can even get over that.

The problem, as I see it, is that other than the goal of the game being different, it really doesn't offer anything new. In fact, I will go out on a limb and say that it's like Diablo II took a step backwards. The leveling in the game, which is one of the most important aspects of any game, is really lackluster. Inventory management is extremely difficult to the point where I was guessing which items would be better for my character. Finally, the actual dungeons are horrible. This is the one area where the graphics are really a let down. It's too much work to try to see what is going on in the dungeon let alone trying to explore every nook and cranny.

Essentially, this game involves getting quests and "solving" them. Back and forth. Wilderness to town. That's about it. And then when your house gets attacked, you have to drop whatever you are doing to go defend it. There really is no political intrigue involved. You can trade with the other houses, and that's the only way to raise your relationships with them. All of that is for naught, though, because the end goal is to destroy them anyway.

I'd give this game about a 4 on a 10 scale. If you want a loot based dungeon crawler, Diablo II is a better option. The contestation between houses adds nothing to the game whatsoever. In fact, I think it's a distraction.