As a fan of dungeon-crawlers, I'm always on the lookout for something new. This is an underrepresented genre on Steam, which is actually rather surprising. Wizardry, The Bard's Tale, Might & Magic, and numerous other grid-based franchises got their start on computers, so one would assume there'd be more games to "carry the torch". It's understandable, considering how niche the genre has become, but I can't get enough of them. Managames' The Fall of the Dungeon Guardians is an extremely adept dungeon-crawler, and does more than enough to quench anyone's thirst.

Considering the genre, you can't go into this game expecting much in the way of plot. You're several miles deep in a labyrinthian prison, and all of the in-mates have broken free. There are also a plethora of fell-beasts inhabitating the halls because...why not? It's on you to put together a party of four to find the prisoners and escape this nightmare. Like other dungeon-crawlers, this game emphasizes exploration and combat above all else. Your survival is dependent on coming to grips with the battle-system, finding better loot, and never taking anything for granted.

One of the interesting aspects of this game is the class-system. Each class is denoted by their role in battle. Basically you'll want a party consisting of a tank, two damage dealers, and a healer. These roles are self-explanatory, and utilizing them to their fullest extent is mandatory in order to progress. I really like this system, because everyone has to pull their own weight. In RPGs, there tends to be times where party-members aren't really doing anything. They're just another bum with a sword, and you invest in their growth until eventually they learn a spell, or get some important piece of equipment that makes them really useful. Not so with this game, everyone has to play their part, or the entire party will be wiped out.

Combat itself is "real-time with pauses", which suits the class-system just fine. Most abilities operate on cool-down timers, so it's up to you to rotate through them, while paying attention to the current situation. The tank has numerous methods for pulling aggro, but you still have to keep your over-zealous mages in check, because they can get crushed in a few hits. You also have to pay attention to what the enemy is doing. Their next move is always shown on-screen, so you have ample time to prepare. Over time, you might find that certain strategies are effective at dealing with most mobs of monsters, but you always have to take great care in handling Elite foes and bosses. Every boss in this game has a particularly unique aspect that makes for fresh and exciting battles. There are also a handful of instances where moving around can be advantageous, so that's worth keeping in mind as well.

This game's approach to difficulty is very fluid. There will come a time where you'll feel like you're truly stuck. You've exhausted every available tactic, found the best equipment possible, but you just can't seem to beat that next boss. This is the part where you decide on what to do next. The difficulty in this game is thoroughly balanced, so it shouldn't be impossible for a decent party. However, if that hopeless feeling gets the better of you, the difficulty can be customized at any time. So if you think you could beat the boss if he had 10, 5, or even 1% less health, then sure...go for it. You can always re-adjust the difficulty later. Alternatively, if things are getting too easy (or not punishing enough), you can raise the settings.

Playing around with the difficulty sliders is also helpful if you're using different parties. If for example you wanted a party of four damage-dealers, you could adjust the settings until that becomes an actually viable tactic. It's a neat idea, and while I find the relationship between tanks, healers, and damage dealers to be far more exciting, the level of freedom is still welcome. Experimenting with the difficulty and how it affects various party make-ups can be compelling in itself. There is still plenty of challenge for the purists, who would rather focus on improving their tactics than take the easy way out. Best of all, this system completely defeats the purpose of grinding. Not that you would if you could anyway, since there are a limited number of monsters on every level. Still, it has all of the functionality of making the game easier, but without the large time investment. The 20+ hours you invest into a play-through of this game are going to be spent purely adventuring, not running in-between tiles to fight random encounters.

Another particularly nice attribute of this game is that you won't spend a lot of the time saving & reloading. When it comes to dungeon-crawlers, I tend to play very conservatively. If somebody dies, I reload my last save. If I get back-attacked and I know somebody won't survive the encounter, I reload my last save. The stats I gain from my level-up aren't good enough? Yep, that last save is getting reloaded for certain. It gets annoying after awhile. With this game however, it isn't really necessary. For one, everyone receives experience, even if they lose all of their HP during battle. Characters that are knocked out also recovery shortly afterwards, and HP/MP replenishes quickly. This, combined with the lack of load-times when moving between levels, makes the game really appealing to play. While there are brutally powerful attacks, there's nothing that can really be considered an insta-death spell. If your party is wiped out, you can't blame the Gods of RNG.

The dungeons in this game are all very good. While combat is definitely favored, there are some puzzles to figure out, and even a few devious ones that lead to substantial gear-upgrades. Each level has unique qualities that help it stand out, and the designs don't go overboard, so nothing ever feels like a gimmick. This creates a very natural sense of exploration. It's rewarding to poke around, and since every floor takes about an hour or so to complete, you can make substantial progress in a reasonable amount of time. Also, keep in mind that the time spent on each level can extend dramatically, depending on your difficulty settings.

With its great battle-system, unique approach to difficulty, and a sizable amount of content, The Fall of the Dungeon Guardians is an easy recommendation.

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If you enjoy a good dungeon crawler and games like Wizardry and Dungeon Master (or more recent titles inspired by these classics), but tire of the classic square-dance mechanics of most modern entries into this genre, then you could easily fall in love with the Fall of the Dungeon Guardians. This game mixes the feel of real-time combat with turn-based strategy through skill queues and a unique pause/play system. It features an optional slider to customize the battle speed (if you would rather handle party actions in real-time) and in-game pause with a menu full of auto-pause options reminiscent of games like Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, and Pillars of Eternity (for those of you who like to crank up the difficulty and sit back to think). With a variety of races, classes with their own sets of specializations, and the ability to create hybrid specializations, party creation and customization is definitely available here. Mix these features with auto-attacks, cooldown skills, and a solid threat management system, and you get a highly addictive dungeon crawler that plays like nothing I have ever experienced before. And, with a variety of difficulty settings covering the spectrum from casual adventurer to die-hard tactician, there is a comfort zone for anyone.


If you have that creative itch for in-depth level design, custom adventures and complex puzzles, look no further. While the level editor did have some quirks when I began playing around with it, these were addressed almost immediatley by the developer and you can rest assured that any issues you may encounter will be resolved just as quickly. With features including flexible 3D grid-based mapping with a wide variety of built-in assets, triggers and targets, and items, monsters, and gear that scales to the level of your choosing, the possibilities seem endless. I would definitely be interested in building a community of content creators for this title and I hope to see you all in the workshop.


I will tell you a little story. I like difficult games. My first play-through of a game is usually on Hard or above (depending on the genre). So I bought this game last November, installed it and failed at it miserably. Everything was happening so fast and I didn't really understand the mechanics at the time. The only thing I knew was that it got my attention. It got my attention with a sledgehammer to the face. You see, I have been playing Dungeon Crawlers since the 1980s when I was in grade school. I played games like Tunnels of Doom, Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord, The Bard's Tale, and over the years many others that followed in the footsteps of these games.

I had never played any of the Dungeon Master games or any of the real-time grid-crawlers inspired by that series until I found the game Legend of Grimrock a few years back. I played the Legend of Grimrock games tirelessly, dancing around monsters and hacking away at them with my party. Although I enjoyed my time with those games immensely, there was something missing. The thing I was missing was that classic Wizardry feel. There was something special about turn-based strategy and that excitement you get when things get crazy and you have to sit there for a few minutes to plan out that "winning strategy" and hoping it works the way you think it will.

The square-dance action-oriented dungeon crawlers are definitely fun, but they too often feel like a hack, slash, hack, shoot, fire, slash, shoot, ice ... button-masher. After several months, when I finally mustered the courage to take on this game once more, I took my time trying to understand all the factors in the threat-management system and the basic controls for auto-attacking and cooldowns (sorry, but I don't play MMOs so these concepts are relatively new to me). Suddenly, I found myself systematically tearing down mobs, micromanaging threat and aggro, and developing strategies for my customized party for those long battles against elites and bosses.

It was at this point that I felt it again, that nostalgic feeling I used to get from those old turn-based crawlers, but this time it was different. Everything was happening in real-time, but I could pause the action at any time to redo my skill queues and rethink strategies, change my characters' targets and quaff potions, and get solid, moment to moment feedback on the threat my characters are generating with their attacks. Here it was, right in front of my face the whole time, waiting for me to give it a solid chance. What was it? It was the game that meshed those 2 very different styles of games into one easy to swallow package. I had the real-time action that gripped me in LoG mixed with the tactical playstyle from the Wizardry franchise and I wasn't going anywhere for quite a while.

Just to think I almost let this title sit in my library collecting dust, simply because I didn't try to understand the mechanics. I have put quite a few hours into this game now and all those games I picked up during the summer sale are just collecting dust instead, waiting for my time with Fall of the Dungeon Guardians to come to an end. Secretly, I know this will be in the distant future. Between the main story campaign and the in-depth map editor, I will be focusing on this one for a long time.


For Gamers:

- Tank and Spank playstyle that focuses on strategy, not finger dexterity and click-spamming
- Intricate threat management system that requires lots of attention on higher difficulties
- 5 races and 4 character classes with 3 specializations for each class and cross-specialization within each class
- Unique boss fights with their own fight mechanics
- Some puzzles in the main game but not so many that you have to spend hours studying pixels
- Monsters scaled to dungeon level so you should never get that "walking-simulation feel"
- A "No Spiders" workshop mod for the arachnophobes out there
- Targetted loot drops so you will not find bows if you have no archer
- Random loot drops with varying stats so each playthrough doesn't give you the same items
- Options to customize your game experience (difficulty, game flow, auto-mapping, custom key-binding)

For Content Creators:

- A highly in-depth editor with SDK mod support for user-created content and workshop mods
- 3D dungeon modeling with plenty of built-in assets
- Weapons, armors, and jewelry that can be scaled to a specific level for solid control of loot drops
- Monsters that can be scaled so you can create equally challenging skeleton champions at level 2 and level 13
- A wide variety of triggers and targets for a wide variety of puzzle-builders
- Very fast developer response to in-game editor issues and bug-fixes
- The developer has created triggers and custom variants of in-game assets by request


For Gamers:

- While the story is interesting, this was clearly a game made for mechanics and not story-telling
- You need to understand how the mechanics work or you may need to play on easy difficulties to succeed
- A limited in-game tutorial means you may need to ask questions in the forums to fully understand the battle system
- A lack of character portraits (you can subscribe to a workshop mod that adds a lot more to the pool)
- Until you get a variety of skills, the early-game combat can be a bit repetitive (to make learning easier I suppose)
- A current lack of custom content

For Content Creators:

- The editor tools can be a bit confusing at first, so you may need to ask around to understand how things work
- There are some quirks in the editor (which the developer is quick to fix if you let him know they exist)
- The top-down, 3D view in the editor takes some getting used to
- Limited copy/paste options

I've been playing grid-based RPG's since the 70's starting with the Wizardy series and this is one of the better ones. This dungeon crawler more akin to games like the original Dungeon Master, Black Crypt, Eye of the Beholder, and more recently Legend of Grimrock.

It has all the tropes that those games have but adds two differences. One is a pretty extensive class selection within the tank, healer, mage, and theif roles. Each of those roles has 3 different classes to choose within them and each one has a different ability tree you'll go down. Best yet you can change your class on the fly. So if you find your tank isn't working so well as a Paladin you can just switch over to a Protector class and try that one out.

The other difference is the ability to pause combat.

Typically in these games all fighting is done in real-time. So you're kiting around the monsters and at the same time trying to trigger attacks or cast spells. It's sometimes difficult work. In Dungeon Guardians you can pause the battle, queue up your attacks/heals and then keep fighting.

This actually turns battles more in to toe-to-toe fights where the tank maintaining agro and the healer keeping up with damage is prime importance. But you'll still have instances where you need to menuever out of the way of attacks.

There are some other neat innovations with this game too for the genre. Levels will have both mini-bosses and at the very end of them regular bosses. The boss battles, particularly the ones at the end of the level, are all pretty unique and require different tactics to complete. Thankfully your party will offer up some helpful advice for how the battle might go so you can plan ahead - or you can skip those conversations and go in blind. I have to say the boss battles were all a lot of fun.

As you go through the games 20 levels you're introduced to new monsters each level which keeps things fresh. And every 3 or so levels new tile sets. You'll also start the levels with a blank map. But in each level you can find a map that will fill in automatically. If you really hunt around you can find a second map on the level which will show the entire map, including all the secret areas - although getting in to those secret areas can sometimes be difficult to figure out even when you know where they are.

Each level usually has one big puzzle to solve. These are totally skippable but if you figuring them out you'll be rewarded with some Epic or sometimes Legendary gear that will really help your characters. I for one loved solving the puzzles. Most were pretty creative so we pretty happy when I would find the puzzle room.

The story for the game is somewhat throwaway but I loved the bantering the party does at the start of each level and before the boss battles. It did help to add some flavor to what would normally be generic party members.

The game took me 56 hrs to complete and that was being somewhat of a stickler at trying to find all the hidden areas and solving the optional puzzles. I was really happy with the game overall it's one of the better ones in this dungeon crawler genre. I look forward to the next one.

TL;DR section: Wizardry, Eye of the Beholder, Dungeon Master, the new Legend of Grimrock. Rings a bell? Stirs some memories? Pick it up immediately. Otherwise read on.

Note: This review has been reviewed (ugh...) after completing the game on Mercenary difficulty. The time recorded was not all spent on the game, but I'd say it took me about 60 hours in total. Due to the difficulty setting, a fair number of save/loads were needed.

Aside from the usual aspects of grid-based dungeon crawler, the game is... weird. In an interesting way.

Let me say it first, some people compare this to Legend of Grimrock - and they're not exactly right. The look and feel are rather similar, but combat mechanics here are ways deeper. The puzzles here are a lot clearer (exactly as they should be by my impression) as well.

You feel like you're in control of a party of newbs just jumped out of World of Warcraft and into some outworldly multi-tiered dungeon. But you have to control all four of them alone. And that's where the ultimate use of a tactical pause comes very handy.

The balance overall feels very fine, your DD have to manage aggro carefully, and your healer has to conserve mana (unless you run with a druid). The balance of specializations looks a tiny bit off to me at the moment but respec feature comes very handy (albeit way too limited to really employ it as a way to modify tactics on the fly).

There's no front or back row (oh thank God for that), but as such there's no way to save your casters' arses other than careful aggro management.

The mapping feature is totally awesome. When you first enter the level, you have no way to map it. When you find the first map of the level, you get an automap showing where you've been up to the point. And with the second map (usually pretty well hidden, and not on every level) comes the full map with all secrets revealed. But it's totally your choice if you want to pick up one or both of them.

Ah yes, the loot is randomized, but not totally. You will always get items fitting your charaters in their current specs (but the questions of usefulnesss still stands). The best loot (Epic and Legendary) is always hidden from plain sight. The best possible dropped loot is Rare.

Overall, I totally recommend this game to dungeon crawler fans,
I only wish the dev opened up respec for free (at least on harder difficulties where it is a necessity sometimes). And please, disable respec in mid-fight :) It feels a bit strange switching your tank and DD roles in the midst of a heated bossfight.

TLDR: If you like dungeon crawlers (as I do) this one is totally worth picking up. Its not as much of a masterpiece as Dungeon Master or Legend of Grimrock, but its still really good.



The plot - its your first day as a guard at a dungeon where the worlds worst inmates are kept. Theres a brief intro, during which you can create a character as you go down the elevator to your post, talking to a trustee of some kind. You can also skip the intro, and after viewing it once, Id recommend you skip it as you get much more control over the initial character's (the one that's "you") creation that way. Of course, something goes horribly wrong once you settle into your bunk for the night...First day on the job and something has happened. All the prisoners were let out and have fled into the tunnels around the dungeon complex. The fat a**hole warden assigns you to go get them back, along with 3 other guards. The dungeon must be attached to Undermountain or something...because the starting intro looks like you're going down into Black Mesa and this place is HUGE. Who goes "yeah, lets build a dungeon with the worlds worst criminals next to tunnels into god knows where". Apparently, these guys.

You have 4 char slots to fill, a tank, a healer, and two damagers. The races are basic fantasy, human, dwarf, elf, dark elf, and halfling. Theres also 4 classes Warrior, mage, healer and rogue. However, each class has 3 subclasses, which provides a slightly different take on that type of class. For instance, a healer Druid relies on strong HoT spells, a Priest has instant but weaker straigh heals and protection spells and a healer Necromancer's skills rely on pulling health from the enemy to heal. The subclass options are really cool. I like all the different options, theres pretty much a party for every playstyle.

One thing I really like is the Duelist - a Rogue tank that relies on speed and quickness to avoid being hit along with "threat boosting" techniques to tank. Thats way cooler than your stereotypical "brick in platemail" tank.

Combat can be confusing at first but is cool once you get the hang of it. Space pauses, like Baldur's Gate, and you can queue up to 3 abilities per party member. You can pause at any time, which is great and avoids the step dance annoyance of games like LoG (a great dungeon crawler in its own right). Abilities run on cooldowns like WoW or Diablo, and as your characters level, you get to choose talents from a talent tree to improve your arsenal of abilities. I just wish that when targeting enemies, the "red aura" around the enemy to show they are targeted was a different color for each player and appeared every time you paused. Its annoying to have to remember who was attacking where in the heat of battle, as all that it shows is a red glow over the enemy being targetted..

Graphics are good for the genre, and sounds are your typical dungeon noises, bumps, sword clangs, spells firing grunts and so on. The writing isnt great, but Ive seen much worse. Hey, at least your characters talk amongst themselves, and really, people dont play dungeon crawlers for the dialogue. Its servicable, and (IMHO) its much better than crawlers with no dialogue at all.

This is a solid dungeon crawler, and Id recommend it for any fans of the genre. I love grid based realtime dungeon crawlers, and there hasnt been much decent to speak of lately in the genre besides the two LoGs. This one is totally worth it, and I love the addition of the "action pause" combat. I dont know how many times I got frustrated by LoG/LoG II because my disability prevented me from playing in realtime as smoothly as the game wanted me to, THotDG solves all that

Ugh this one is painful to get through. Compared to Legend of Grimrock, Might & Magic, or even Vaporum - this is at most a 4 out of 10. Feels sloppy and repetitive.
This game is a Frankenstein (poorly) made out of World of Warcraft and Legend of Grimrock.
So much trash loot.
So many useless dead ends with nothing there except maybe barrels full of food which you'll never eat because you heal fast enough without it.
Every level looks exactly the same. Got to level 5. The bricks are slightly different style. Great.
Tank taunts enemies nonstop, yet somehow the healer in the back is constantly dying?
Bosses with way too many hitpoints, so you just sit there rotating your skills for 5 minutes, same rotation over and over again. Feels like those really boring boss raids from WoW.

I think I'd rather go replay any of the other games of the genre than continue this one.

The Fall of the Dungeon Guardians!

The title made me curious, the gameplay videos were really interesting, but... Grid based movement? Reminds me of the early days of dungeon crawling. 4 Characters? Yeah, sure! 4 classes? Tank, Cleric, 2 Damage Dealers... Been there, done that! Active pause? I like that... gives you time to think of your next move. 30+ hours of gameplay? Is that all? Gimme a break!

THIS GAME IS SELLING ITSELF SHORT!

I got 261, exquisite hours out of it and it left me crying for more.
They didn't tell me anything about the inovative interface... the mind-boggling puzzles, the interminable boss battles, the unending treasure hunt, the amazing graphics... those monsters, they really fight you and when you, finally, better them, I love the way they curl up and die. Gives you a real sense of accomplishment!

'Nuff said about the game, 'cause here is the best part. It is a hard, hard game and you will be stuck a lot of the time. But, the guy who developed it (he's like a one-man-show), never sleeps! He's online 24/7 (a slight exageration, but only slight)... he walked me through every difficult situation. Whatta Mensch!

So, BUY THIS GAME, now! You'll never regret it!

Dungeon Master / Eye of the Beholder / Legend of Grimrock dungeon crawl, but with pausable tank/healer/damage based combat mechanics replacing the real time "square dance" action combat of those titles. So far I love it.

I'm a classic cRPG fan going all the way back to Wizardry. I love the aforementioned games, but I'm an old fart that doesn't fancy real time combat. Wizardry's "choose your actions up front, then watch the turn unfold" is probably my favorite of all time...it combined turn based mechanics while adding a little bit of unpredictable chaos by not having direct control of each action sequentially. I can handle square-dance RT combat (played Grimrock on Hard & Old-school with my graph paper and colored pencils), but turn-based is what I prefer.

FDG is a great compromise between the two. Has the "feel" of EoB without the silly square-dance routine that quite frankly never made any sense in an RPG anyway. The "wow" style combat is actually more interesting as a pausable single-player experience than it's ever been in multiplayer for me. It gives the same feel of planning your moves and managing the party as a TB game, while the queueing of actions and watching it play out until you need to intervene helps keep things moving along at a rapid clip for those that might not have the patience for a tranditional TB system.

Note to people who are real-time square dance fans: this is NOT an option in this game. The WoW-style combat is NOT optional. Resetting ability timers during movement prevent you from using this tactic. Do NOT buy this game if you want to "stick and move" around your foes, you'll be upset. Other than the strategically placed "dodge" of a special boss ability here and there, you'll be standing toe-to-toe using your tank/healer/damage skills to figure out the "puzzle" of defeating each particular enemy.

Bottom line, it's Eye of the Beholder with pausable WoW combat, and it does exactly that with great success. If that sounds good to you, you'll love it. If either Tank/Healer/Damage combat OR the inability to "square dance" your way through battles sounds annoying or stupid to you, you'll hate it.

I tried all the indie developed dungeon crawlers on Steam. This... by far and away.. is the best of them. The attention to detail is astounding. Level design is excellent, with good use of architecutural features both to add nuance and to hide secret buttons and levers. The artwork is good, the animations are good, the lighting is good.

The game is entirely customizable, with SEVEN different difficulty levels, and if that wasn't enough, you can even customize the difficulty to your liking!

The UI is sreamilined, effective, and again, fully customizable. You can move and resize every element of it. There's even a customizable data tracker to keep track of all your statistics, from who dealt the most damage in the last combat, to who did the most healing, or, don't track it at all and simply hide the display!

Framerates are good throughout, never dropping below 60 on my average macine.

There's banter between party members, usually just for a bit of color on entering a new level, or before a boss fight. Some of the boss fights will challenge you; you really have to understand the mechanics and pacing to survive them on the harder difficulties.

and, the icing on the cake... the game is almost entirely controlled by simple ini files, that you can edit in any text editor and make mods out of. Or, you can make your own levels with the map editor!!

I have seen AAA games that have HALF the features of this game, and it's just... one... person!

If you like first person dungeon crawlers, if you liked Dungeon Master, or Wizardry, or Legend of Grimrock... BUY THIS GAME.

This is flat out one of the best dungeon crawlers I've played.
While yes, it has a lower production value and weaker story that Grimrock 1 or 2, the combat is far more tactical and well thought out. It truly matters about party composition, itemization, and really all layers of strategy, not mindless square dancing (of which there is appoximately zero).

The tactical combat is based on MMO combat (WoW specifically, unless I miss my guess), which may be a turn off for some, but which I personally I REALLY enjoyed. Not all classes/specs are quite equal, unfortunantly, but in general the game mechanics are finely-tuned and bug free. As a bonus, you can easily mod this game yourself by downloading the SDK and editing a few text files if, for instance, you think the Necromancer got shafted as a healer. :p

The enemies are a little repetitive to fight, but for me that's typical of the genre. The bosses, on the other hand, are NOT repetitive; each one is different, some requiring proper use of skills, others well-timed actions or use of the environment. Again, almost like fighting WoW-style bosses instead of the genre's typical fare.

The loot is...not the most fun part of the game for me. In fact, I'd note it as the game's one true failing. I got VERY tired of having nothing but trash drops for a particular character (which made them barely viable), or my best drops all spawning with crap stat combos. In games like Diablo this isn't an issue because there are metric craptons of loot, but this game doles it out slowly, which means you may just get screwed by RNG into having a harder time than you really should, even if you did everything right. Or into having a sucky char through no fault of your own.
I ended up modding the loot drops into around 4x normal (or was it 8x?) and STILL got crappy loot for some characters, or no viable upgrades for one or more whole levels.

Other notes:
The level design is nice. There aren't many puzzles, which is fine for me, but less so for other fans of the genre. Most of the mandatory puzzles are fairly easy, while several of the optional ones seemed fairly obtuse IMHO.
The graphics are decent, but not impressive. Some of the animations are pretty sweet (hello arcane burst, rain of fire), while others...not so much. None of it was bad enough to actually put me off of the game, though.
This game isn't advetised as turn-based, but there are settings in the options to essentially make it one. That's what I did.
And if you're looking for a challenge, this game on its hardest settings likely can hand you one.

In short, this game was a breath of fresh air in the genre for me, even if it wasn't the most highly polished of the lot. And I TRULY hope for a sequel.