Best Retro Dungeon Crawler Games on PC

Happy Grumps

This is an incredibly cute game. Cute characters and cute writing. I just wanna make the clouds happy.

Game play wise, your objective is to get a direct line of sight on the enemies in each room, or indirectly by using the newly happy units to make others happy. The units move like chess pieces, and there are walls and other barriers that prevent movement and line of sight. The caveat is that you only have a certain amount of turns per level to find a key and defeat the boss. This means that the strategy comes from trying to use as few turns as possible to complete each room. This to me makes it feel kind of similar to match 3 games. You are trying to set up combos so you dont waste time moving things around individually. I think its pretty unique and fun.

– Real player with 10.3 hrs in game

Read More: Best Retro Roguelite Games.

Note about the “free product”: I purchased this but refunded it because a bug made it unplayable for me. As a courtesy I notified the developer, and he offered a free copy in exchange for some help finding and fixing the bug, which he was able to do quickly. This review was not solicited.

TLDR: It’s good. It’s unusual and a little confusing at first, but very much worth your time. Recommended.

Happy Grumps confused me initially (even after we got the bug figured out). It may not be what you expect, especially if you were searching on the “roguelike” tag. I think I’d call it a “chesslike”, since it’s played on a square grid with “happy” units which are under your control, and “grumpy” ones which you need to remove. Each room of the dungeon is one of these chessboards, and the number of turns it takes to remove all the grumpies is deducted from your total, which is kind of like hit points, fuel, and money combined.

– Real player with 2.9 hrs in game

Happy Grumps on Steam

Temple of Apshai Trilogy

I love this game, but not the bugs. The Temple of Apshai is definitely a retro/nostalgia game for 70/80s gamers – or those who want to see what the first “legitimate hit” RPG game looked like. Unfortunately, they simply released the IBM version of the Temple of Apshai Trilogy (1985) without dealing with the bugs. The Trilogy features three different dungeons with four levels each. I’ve put 9+ hours into the game and unfortunately discovered a bunch of bugs. The biggest? It fails to track your experience, so while you gain money and weapons by killing monsters and retrieving treasures, you don’t get better at fighting. This becomes immediately apparent when you run into the tougher Level 3 and Level 4 monsters.

– Real player with 24.6 hrs in game

Read More: Best Retro Hack and Slash Games.

This version of the game is broken an unfortunately that seems to have always been true of the DOS build. Issues:

No experience is ever earned meaning character progression is completely broken
Combat is broken, the enemies do very little damage. Temple of Apshai is a punishing game and it’s fairly common to die without a proper build and paying attention to health.
The item values are broken. For example, there’s a Copper Ingot in a hidden room on the first level that’s normally worth 20 silver - this version gives 450 silver. With the combat system broken as well, it’s trivial to walk in, pick up that copper ingot a few times and have enough money to get maximum equipment. That’s not supposed to happen.

– Real player with 1.3 hrs in game

Temple of Apshai Trilogy on Steam

Scarlett’s Dungeon

I enjoyed the game very much, it is relatively small but it is also the first game he did. Graphically I like it very much, it reminds me of my childhood and that gives bonus points: P

As I said the game itself is small but, he has given himself effort, you can walk into every House in the city and everyone has their own stories and I think that’s great.

If you are in a dungeon, you can always go back to the city to buy new items such as new swords or a new life, weapons there is no big choice, there are 3 different swords and there are currently no more weapons but I think more weapons would not be needed, for the 15 levels that’s enough.

– Real player with 5.0 hrs in game

Read More: Best Retro Roguelite Games.

Just finished the game, playtime: 58 minutes.

Let’s write a review…

PROS!

+Pixel game with cool graphics

+Palette Village which was quite small, but nice

+3 shops, where you could buy weapons, heal yourself, skills

+15 floors of dungeon with 2 bosses!

+Price

+made by 20-years-old guy, it’s his first bigger game!

+Very nice soundtracks

CONS!

-Too short

-Only 3 weapons available

-After you finish the game you must start new game…

-Only one main skill

-No stats

-You only get damage bonus when you reach new level

– Real player with 2.5 hrs in game

Scarlett's Dungeon on Steam

Dungeon Chest

Dungeon Chest is an old-school puzzle game. You play as a young man who has recently learned the exciting legend of the Treasure of Akzbezth. Eager to obtain the many riches undoubtedly stored within, he travels to South America to enter an ancient Inca dungeon where the treasure is said to be hidden. However, he may soon find that it will not be as easy as he thought.

Features:

Charming pixel graphics.
Fun puzzles.
More than 100 rooms.
Simple gameplay

Note: 10% of the net revenue earned from this game goes to the World Monuments Fund.

Dungeon Chest on Steam

Dungeon of Trials

Fun and nice game that still needs more development, but I’ll thumbs up anyway for its price and because we can see how much love and effort creators have put into it. I must mention though, I’ve refunded since it was glitchy (a bunch of blue lines in between tiles) and for some other small stuff that imo should be in the game from the start: options in menu to go fullscreen or even to exit game are non existent, and the guild improvement menu is lame - you have to enter each option just to learn what it is and how much it costs.

– Real player with 1.1 hrs in game

STORY: 10/20

You have been given charge of a guild, a poor guild that needs funds and building up. You delve deep into dungeons and dark caves to explore for treasures and gold, so you are able to make your guild the greatest guild there is.

You get a little story at the beginning of the game, and that’s about it. I did not come across any cutscenes or anything whilst roaming areas to bring you, the player, into the world more, shame really. I think the devs really need to revisit this aspect.

– Real player with 0.9 hrs in game

Dungeon of Trials on Steam

Iron Age

Iron Age is a First-Person hack and slash with random item mods and semi-randomized dungeons. A classic dungeon crawling experience.

Hitbox based melee combat
Procedural generated dungeons with several bosses
Randomized loot attributes
Delve while avoiding deadly monsters and traps
Customize your character’s appearance
Build off a branching skill system

Iron Age on Steam

Hunt the Muglump

This is a really fun game. My eight year old son really enjoys playing it and begs to get on the computer so he can play it. It has been a great distraction for him during lock down. He especially enjoys tweaking the game settings in custom mode.

– Real player with 5456.3 hrs in game

I like this game. It’s an ever-changing puzzle adventure that randomizes every time. I’m still working towards the dungeon creator by earning the right achievements, but I enjoy the gameplay. Well-worth the low cost of 5.99.

Good luck Muglump hunters.

– Real player with 20.9 hrs in game

Hunt the Muglump on Steam

Diorama Dungeoncrawl

Designed to be “NES Hard”, this game does indeed feel like an homage to NES Castlevanias. Occasionally, depth perception was tricky due to the perspective, but overall, I like what the diorama-like presentation adds to the formula. I’m not quite done yet, but I’m a fan of the way the challenges progresses. I’d recommend this if you have the patience for some challenging rooms with potentially “cheap” deaths (depending on your perspective).

– Real player with 8.7 hrs in game

One of the more challenging games by the developer. I can’t really think of another game like this on Steam that combines platforming and the sort of action here, but it was decent to play.

– Real player with 3.9 hrs in game

Diorama Dungeoncrawl on Steam

MAZEMAN