Kind of a short and simplified version of Grimrock. Biggest difference is that you can't use creative movement in battle.
Well, not true. There is a way. If you keep sidestepping a creature, while it is in movement you can land hits without taking the 'fleeing damage' that you receive if you strategically retreat. Few traps that can be easily disarmed. Still have a thief.
Recommend having a Paladin, thief, Berserker and a Mage/Elementalist for the party.

I was really in the mood to get into an oldschool Eye of the Beholder type RPG. I own Grimlock 1 and 2, and they're great. Saw this was recommended, and at $10, it seemed like a good deal. I'll say this: it scratched an itch, but didn't really satisfy long-term. The RPG elements are super shallow (almost non-existent), the puzzles are incredibly basic switches and hidden button finding, and the enemy design and combat gets boring pretty quick. I hate to sound so negative, because I can tell it was a noble attempt at a nostalgic style (clearly one which I was looking for as well). But it simply didn't hold my interest for long. In combat I spent more time staring at the weapon icons for each character, just clicking on any whose cooldown had ended. I barely looked up to see what sort of damage it was doing. You likely won't survive any encounters that involve multiple enemies, If you survive combat, you just rest and heal fully with no risk at all. I suppose for $10 bucks I can say I was able to sort of enjoy a 2.5 hour experience before getting bored, but I just longed for something more.

I'm going to recommend this game, but with caveats.

Heroes of Monkey Tavern is a party-based first person view grid dungeon crawler.
Graphically, it is decent. Music is good, gameplay is average. There is no discernable story. You select a party of four from various classes and venture into a dungeon. You'll level up, gain loot, figure out some simple puzzles here and there, look for secret doors, etc. It's a very simple game, and it's short. I finished in about 6 hours. When your party levels up, you do not choose stats or abilities for them, they are assigned for you. The loot is not random. You can only assign 1-2 spells at a time to your casters. Your spells are static, and you'll gain them at preset levels. Combat consists of simply clicking a weapon or spell icon over and over for each character as soon as its cooldown is over. Not much strategy at all. However, there is no square dancing in this game, which is a plus.

All-in-all, I did have moderate fun with the game, but it's too short and too simple for a hearty recommendation. It feels like a game you might play on a tablet. But it is well done, and it was an enjoyable 6 hours.

Graphics: 6
Music: 6.5
Fun: 6.7
Value: 5.5 (I'd recommend it on a sale, $5-$10 range)

I pretty much own every dungeon crawler ever made. My addiction started with Dungeon Master on my Atari ST. This game is a lot of fun and a pretty much simplified version of Legend of Grimrock. (Basically you can't strafe in combat) I've played around with all the classes they all are fun. The weapons are varied and the monsters look great. If you like dungeon crawlers I think you should give this one a try.

Played through the first four levels. It's alright, but nothing remarkable. It has some fundamental flaws that I don't like.

First of all it basically forces you to fight at one place, you can't dance around enemies as you get fleeing damage if you do so. This might work coupled with an interesting fight mechanism, but this game doesn't have that. It's just your basic reaction test: push the attack button when your attack is ready.

Your charactes are in a line opposed to a grid. This forces you to move your mouse further than in a traditional two by two grid placement and because of that, fast weapons are in disadvantage as you miss those important seconds what you save by using those weapons. Spellcasters can use only two spells at a time and they have to sacrifice their hand slots for them and they even share the cooldowns with each of their spells. This basically means that your utility spells are useless, you just use heals with your healer and your best damage option with other casters. All this combined makes the fights little bit boring. And on top of everything, as your characters don't need any food or water, you can rest after every fight without any disadvantage.

Leveling is predefined. You don't get to make any choices as your characters level up. And you don't get to swap your characters in the line, it automatically assign your characters to the imaginary front and back row based on the class. It doesn't tell you which character are in those rows, only way you know that this happens is by reading a random tooltip during sleeping. So the only meaningful choises are made in the beginning by choosing a class and of course what equipment you use with your characters.

Level design was a little bit boring. It's your standard labyrinth. It had some furniture in it to evoke some meaning to the design, but mostly it was just boring corridors and rooms. But I've seen worse. Puzzles in the first four levels were pretty basic.

Music I liked and couple of the monsters were pretty nice looking.

All in all, I can't really recommend this game to anyone else than the most enthusiastic dungeon crawlers.

This game feels like an asset flip of Legend of Grimrock. it feels and plays like a bootleg version of it. the monster and attack sounds are copied. mechanics are copied and watered down. the style of the maps and everything is just a trash tier copy of legend of grimrock. just play legend of grimrock instead of this.

Genre - Grid based movement RPG

I grew up on Dungeon Master, Ishar, Eye of the Beholder and Bloodwych and have fond memories of these games. I do appreciate the more open worlded RPGs of today but I will still occasionally go back to retro style games. I played through Legend of Grimrock 1,2 and Ruzar recently and enjoyed them all.

Okay so this game plays a bit different to other games in the genre. You have a party of characters but can't position them. They all stand in a row of 4. Monster attacks will AOE attempt to hit all of them but damage is concentrated on your melee fighters. Also you can't dance around the monsters to avoid damage as you will take flee damage. Once you get used to the mechanics the combat is quite satisfying.

You have bows, magic and the usual melee weapons to use. You can also find various armour pieces that will boost your stats sligtly. You may need to sleep after every fight though especially if lacking a priest class.

I managed to solve most of the puzzles with no help. This means that none were too obtuse and the few I couldn't be bothered with were not required to complete the game on normal mode.

I have spoken to the devloper and given him feedback and he has been very receptive and not defensive like some. Mainly I think there is an over reliance on the Priest class, although a common issue in most RPGs It hinders the party diversity. Also you get set skills per level up not allowing any customisation.

The graphics look on a par with Grimrock and the monsters look cool whilst they attempt to kill you. You can get surrrounded in a few areas, and this should be avoided if possible as these fights rarely go in your favour.

For the price I think this games satisfies and look forward to the developers promised updates and hopefully a sequel.

Heroes of the Monkey Tavern is a good surprise, having played Might & Magic, Lands of Lore, Eye of the Beholder in their time it reminded me of this feeling.

I read some people comparing it to Legend of Grimrock, but they should not, it is not the same game at all.

Legend of Grimrock is kind of an "Action dungeon crawler", with some impossible riddles and very difficult moments.

Where Monkey Tavern is nice and simple to play, no food management, no weight management, etc... just exploration and logic mechanics, listening fabulous music.

If it is the work of one man as it looks in the forum, good job dude, I hope you'll offer us a HotMT 2 :-)

Hum, this game feels really unfinished and unpolished. With its simple combat system and level design, it could have been a nice introduction to the square-based FPV dungeon-crawling genre, but unfortunately it lacks some user-friendliness. It has however some simple charm, which makes me regret even more the developer didn't build up more his game.

So it could be a buy during a sale. Anyway, if you're not sure, there's a demo allowing to try out the 1st level, which should give you a decent idea of the whole game (ie: there's no important change in the gameplay and in the level design, and to estimate the size of the dungeon, know there's a total of 8 levels), so I'd recommend you to try it out.

- Simple level design, coupled with an automap, so you'll never get lost => easy introduction to the genre
- No square-dancing, which is replaced by some healing and a tiny bit of tanking (if you rest the game will show an hint explaining you that the front row is made of the fighters and they will protect the back row which is made of the spell casters, although there's no visual hint for that on screen)
- Visually, it's decent, although it seriously lacks some variations in the wall design and a bit of unity overall
- Puzzles are simple enough
- Traps are usually well thoughts without being too painful nor dangerous

- Combat system is mostly a basic whack-a-mole without challenge, which means we spend the combat staring at the character toolbar to click as soon as possible on their weapons or spells when they're out of cooldown
- In Hard mode, most combats will end with your mage and sometimes your Priest without mana anymore, which will force you to rest, which runs a little animation for 20 seconds where you cannot do anything => mood breaker, loss of real-life time
- The mage gets its best spell very early and thus all the spells you get after feel nearly useless
- The monk hand icons look almost same when they are ready and on cooldown ; for a whack-a-mole game, it's really penalizing ; other icons with weapons look too same as well, but a bit less, so it's almost ok
- Enemies don't have an HP bar so it's a guesswork to decide to use potions or not when a combat lasts longer than usually
- Can be beaten in 6 hours without speeding ; for a $10 game, that's just not enough
- The stone opening most secret passages is really hard to notice because it doesn't have a special shape, but instead it's just a bit more protuberant than other stones, and thus when seeing it from the front it just gets a very faint outline (so it's actually easier to see it from the side)
- Leveling brings 0 choice : you get extra abilities or your attributes raise in a predetermined sequence
- You get abilities when leveling up, but there's no description about what they do, so you just have to guess their effect >_<
- You can only affect 2 spells maximum to your priest and in such case you lose your weapon and thus can't attack
- Level design is globally pretty basic and almost nothing is memorable
- Can't manipulate the items in the 3D world, so there's no puzzle involving items
- No teleporter nor pressure plate
- There's no story except the short intro and the mega-mini-end :) (it's not really penalizing in this genre, though)
- Fountains resurrect your dead party members, but the game doesn't explain you that
- Can't redefine the keys in-game ; it can be only done from the launcher

As a long-time fan of the genre who grew up with games like Dungeon Master, Eye of the Beholder, Captive and Lands of Lore, I was really excited for this game and tried my best to love it. But already half an hour in, I just can't go on playing this and asked for a refund. This is no Legend of Grimrock, sadly.

On the bright side, the game's production is surprisingly good with gorgeous graphics, great music, alright lighting and fluid animations. The interface is also rather intuitive and easy on the newcomers, and the menus are clear and well constructed. Hat down to that, it is directly impressive for a budget game. But the good stops right here.

Now on to the bad... First of all, the game hurts you really bad if you try to move while in combat. Yes, you read that right: you cannot really allow yourself to move while fighting, which is probably the core gameplay element in any dungeon crawlers. So you must stand there like an idiot, let the monsters strike you again and again while praying that you will have enough health and protection to survive the encounter. Forget strategic fighting, and you will have to look at the boring sleep/rest screen almost each time between two fights. Secondly, the character placement seems to be on a line. Which means that the two weaker guys also are on the front, taking damage as much as the warriors, but able to strike with melee weapons. It does not make sense either on a strategic plane. Moreover, their portraits are on the bottom, totally obscuring the ground right in front of you. The consequence is that both items and traps are really hard or even impossible to see if you are close to them. Worse even: I dropped a weapon on the floor and was not able to pick it up again. There is something about the game's mechanics which seems to be missing or broken. Last but probably least: there is no story except for the fact that you're broke and go dungeon adventuring to earn money.

Overall, there is a cruel lack of depth in this game. Variables like lighting, weight, hunger/thirst, multiple spell handling and combination, tiredness etc. are just not present. It is a beautiful, shallow game with an unsatisfying gameplay system. There was a huge potential here, but it is wasted on very surprising and ill-advised design choices. Hopefully there will be a sequel addressing all its negative aspects.