Imagine you're walking through a dark, dank, claustrophobic cave, hundreds, if not thousands of feet down. You're starving, and close to death. You're trying to find just a scrap of food to help you keep going. You turn a corner and come face to face with a terrifying monster who makes it clear they want to finish you off. You have two bottles full of different, brightly colored liquids. When drunk, one will heal all your wounds and make you fit enough to take on the beast. The other will set you on fire. You can't tell which is which. What do you do?
This is a simple example of the challenges you'll face in Pixel Dungeon, a true to heart roguelike on mobile devices. It's completely free, beautiful, difficult, and is fun in both brief and prolonged play sessions.
Pixel Dungeon is a perfect fit for handhelds. Like the original Rogue, the world only updates when you take an action. Couple this with exceptionally fast load times, and you have a game you can pull out of your pocket to make a couple interesting decisions while you wait in line at the supermarket. Sure, there are a lot of games like that, but roguelikes carry a greater sense of weight than other genres. When you die, every ounce of progress you made is lost. Starting a new round generates a whole new random world, ensuring that no two games will play out the same way. This gives purpose to every decision - one misstep and everything you've worked for is lost.
And those missteps can happen so easily. Not searching every inch of the ground in front of you before moving? Cool, you stepped on a fire trap and now you're burning to death. Put on a ring that you just found and know nothing about? Sweet, it's making you starve to death and you can never take it off. Hold out on healing for too long? Awesome, your enemy got lucky with a high damage attack and now you're flat out dead! Some people complain about this randomness, believing that there's nothing they can do in the face of these unknowable machinations. It's true to some extent, but through careful balancing of resources and risk-mitigation you can succeed, and that's what makes it so fun. And while Pixel Dungeon doesn't stray far from the original formula, it is a solid execution of the genre.
The thing that really sets it apart from the other offerings is its presentation. It boasts surprisingly detailed, cutesy pixel art. Enemy and environment design is fairly standard but still interesting and readable. Combat is as simple as tapping the enemy you want to attack and then waiting for their response, but the animations make it feel juicy. Each successful hit makes the enemies flash, and sends tiny, arcing blood sprays in the appropriate direction. The art is easier to appreciate with the ability to zoom in and out. Can't get a good read on what's going on? Zoom in. Want to look at the entire level layout at once? Zoom out. It's shocking that this isn't a standard feature in other mobile roguelikes.
The sound design, however, is a bit lacking. There's only a handful of sound effects and I find most of them annoying. Thankfully, the game supports another key feature that most mobile games lack: the ability to turn off sound effects independent of the music. The music, while repetitive, is much more appealing. It's light-hearted, while still feeling appropriately moody. I typically play without any sound, but it's nice that I can turn it on and get something palatable, whereas I find most mobile game soundtracks annoying.
On a technical level, Pixel Dungeon runs perfectly. In the months that I've spent with it, I've never once hit a glitch. Not only that, but this is probably the fastest loading game I've ever played on mobile. This is important because it makes the time from impulse-to-play to actually playing minuscule. When I have 60 seconds to kill, I don't want to spend half of it loading the game and navigating menus, which is my experience with most mobile games.
Pixel Dungeon is my favorite mobile roguelike and it isn't even finished yet. The developer, Watabou, is still balancing and adding features. It's even an open source game, meaning you can download and mess around with the actual code that makes it work. It's completely free, no in-app purchases or anything to restrict your experience. If you want an intense, thoughtful, cohesive experience on your mobile device, why not try Pixel Dungeon. If you enjoy yourself, consider supporting it with donations to the developer.
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