Dunjungle is easy to play but fiendishly difficult | Early Access impressions
I recently, rather late to the table I may add, played Hades. But not just casually, I was in a post-operative period of convalescence and I hammered it to within an inch of its life, obtaining every last trophy. Afterwards I felt a bit like Alexander the Great, or Eric Bristow if you follow darts, must have felt when there were no more worlds to conquer. I needed another game to scratch that roguelike itch and addict me the same way that did. I am delighted to say that the excellent Dunjungle has entered my life and provided me with a new obsession, and I would like to tell you why it should become yours, too.
To the naked eye, this is another pixelated action platformer, a genre that has of course seen a lot of action over the past decade. But it’s roguelike gameplay loop has a terrific level of depth that sets it apart from a run of the mill arcade jaunt. Your simian hero starts out with a choice of a couple of basic melee weapons and a skill, which initially is a projectile in the form of a rock. You get four slots for your weapons and skills – one for the main melee attack, and three for the skills, mapped to Y, RB and LB. You also get an initial relic item granted which provides a buff that stays with you on each run. These can range from increasing the amount of gold coins you encounter, to boosting the effectiveness of elemental modifiers on your weapons. There are a staggering amount of relics, so much so that even after playing for several hours I was still discovering new ones.
Your avatar moves extremely fluidly, with a sense of effortless grace that recalls a fully powered Samus in Super Metroid, or one of the Donkey Kong apes from the Country franchise. You can build up momentum and move along at a right old lick. You can jump and double jump, climb and cling onto walls and platforms, and perform a neat evasive roll. All of the core weapons have three modes of operation – their basic function, a charged or rapid attack, and a special move which may be tied to a specific action, such as a when you jump, adding a projectile to your jabs, or unloading a flurry of blows at the end of your roll move.
Added to your abilities is a special power linked to the left trigger. A bar builds when you kill foes, and will chime satisfyingly when full to indicate it is ready for use. Initially this will replenish a bit of your health, but you can meet a mystic on certain runs who can add additional magical power to your repertoire, such as boosting attack for a period of time or creating a shield of dazzling orbs around your monkey for a few seconds.
Dunjungle is bloody tough, and when you first play you are underpowered and need to rely on your wits and skill as a player to survive and obtain the two forms of in-game currency that can be spent to permanently upgrade your stats, or even unlock additional characters to play with, which ostensibly make the game easier. Like Hades, gameplay is based around clearing rooms full of enemies and environmental hazards. The latter can be cunningly hidden but are always in plain sight, it is up to you to keep an eye out for them and take necessary action to avoid the inevitable damage they will deal. They reminded me of the booby traps from classic Amiga platformer Rick Dangerous, a reference that you probably have to be very old (like me) to get.
There are different types of rooms and you get to choose between branching paths, with an icon above the door telling you what to expect within. Some rooms contain tougher enemies that drop permanent stats boosts. You come across blacksmiths who can increase the power of your weapons, but with a risk that he could knacker them in doing so. You encounter a sinister snake who will offer you the chance to sell your soul in exchange for a relic; he will then encumber you by doing something nasty like issuing damage each time you roll, or reversing the polarity of the controls until you meet his Faustian condition of killing twenty bad guys. The aforementioned mystic crops up if you are lucky, and there are also shops where you can spend gold coins.
There is a tremendous variety of enemies with unique attack patterns to learn. Combat is just so much fun that even when the odds are stacked against you, you will still want to maximise the excellent combo multiplier system that racks up when you grease baddies in succession without taking damage. The bosses are absolute bastards as well, right out of the old school. Being a roguelike, your arsenal of weapons, relics and stuff you find varies each time you play, making it feel fresh as a daisy even hours in. The sense of risk and reward is strong in this one. I found myself taking gambles on difficult scenarios just because I wanted those precious blue gems to unlock new weapons for the next run, or the more plentiful purple variety that can be used to purchase buff upgrades and new weapon and skill slots from the likes of the blacksmith or that dastardly snake. Sometimes you end up stuck with a weapon you don’t get on with; in my case this was a close-range conch shell glove that puts you dangerously close to the enemies in order to hurt them, and I just kept getting wiped out. Give me anything with the aforementioned roll/flurry function though and I am in my element.
Even in early access this feels like one of the best games of the year so far, for me. I know a game has me by the plums when I am playing it in bed and then waking up early in the morning just to cram in an extra hour with it over my pre-work coffee. Dunjungle is easy to play but fiendishly difficult to master, and throws new surprises at you in that kind of moreish drip-feed way that keeps you plugged in. It deserves to be a huge success.
Dunjungle hits PC early access via Steam on October 22nd.
