The Dungeon Rules is a genre-mash of sokoban, roguelike, and dungeon crawler, which as a fan of some of those things, is pretty wild! I was surprised that this could work. The combat gameplay is vaguely reminiscent of Slay the Spire, while not holding up to that masterpiece, it is still serviceable and encourages you to put some thought into your card playing. The sokoban aspects are also serviceable, however, and this is a big however, there is a lot of potential for softlocks. Because there is no undo button, every move is final, which is typical for a roguelike, but frustrating for a sokoban. On the very first level, I got a box trapped in a corner after already clearing out most of the dungeon, and was forced to simply restart the entire level, which is discouraging at the least. Besides that, there are cards you can use outside of the combat that are one-time use and at first seem like optional goodies to help you get through some tougher puzzles/dungeons. But instead, they are mandatory for solving certain puzzles which you won't know until it's too late.

This game is currently a bit too rough around the edges for me to recommend. But I hope the developer keeps trying as there are some good ideas here.

(I received a review code for free from the dev)

Reviewed on Feb 06, 2023


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