Rating:

I've never played a low res game that has gotten me this disturbed before. Dungeoneer is both a clever puzzle game and a psychological thriller paying homage to torture porn like Saw and Hostel that should be on everyone's must-play list for this summer.

Additional Info

Full Review

To be honest, I never really liked torture porn flicks. Despite the brilliant writing of the Saw series, I cannot bear to witness the explicit gore that was happening on screen, which is regrettable because I really enjoy the psychological aspects of the story. With Dungeoneer, this visual barrier was removed and replaced by something a lot more symbolic and acceptable to me, hence allowing me to better appreciate the remarkable narrative.

Beautiful Escape: Dungeoneer was developed by Calunio for RPGMaker.net's 2010 Game Gale competition. It tells the story of a disturbed youth named Verge, who joins a community of torturers called the Dungeoneers. These folks have private dungeons in their homes where they lure strangers into and torture them to near death for the viewing pleasure of an online audience. Their measure of perfection is what they call the "Beautiful Escape", a physical and mental state between life and death that they aim to put their prisoners in, rendering them insane, but just barely alive to escape the dungeon.

The best part about this game is the narrative. Even before I made my first dungeon, I was drawn into the morbid atmosphere and premise of the game via the initial dialogue between Verge and his love interest, Daily. The script is remarkably well-written and more often than not, sends shivers down my spine with choice of words alone. This is further augmented by the short "dating-sim" sessions that happen before each dungeon in which you seduce your next victim to come home with you. This interaction process allows each victim to become real people with distinct personalities before you extract their screams from them.

The actual gameplay portions take the form of a simple puzzle game in which you lay traps along a linear path that the prisoner will take towards the exit. The physical and mental well-being of the victim are represented by Health and Willpower gauges. If a victim escapes with any of these intact, your game will end. Killing them or totally destroying their will to live results in a mediocre victory - the true aim is to achieve the aforementioned "Beautiful Escape". Each session will be reviewed by fellow dungeoneers on their fictional website. They will rate your session according to whether there was a beautiful escape, whether you have given false hope, and the variety of traps used.

Possibly my only complain about this game was the ambiguous conditions for a Beautiful Escape. After reading the instructions, I naturally aimed for a Beautiful Escape - I left my victims with a wee bit of health and willpower to leave the dungeon with, but was met with a game over. I was puzzled, and only discovered the required levels for both gauges later through trial and error. Maybe a better solution might be to leave explicit marks on the gauges that exhibited threshold amounts required for a Beautiful Escape.

But seriously, this game blew my little mind away. I pushed for that first Beautiful Escape for nearly an hour, but what kept me going was really the narrative, and the nagging desire to know what is going to happen next. I urge you to quickly go over to RMN and take a look at this title now.