Dungeons of Dreadrock

Dungeons of Dreadrock is a game I learned about from one of Nintendo’s Indie Directs. It immediately caught my attention. It recently came on sale for the Switch so I snagged it for a couple of bucks. 

This little puzzle game is a nice quick playthrough and has some challenging levels to overcome. I think my favorite thing about it was the built in hint system. If you’re truly stuck on a level, each one has at least one hint that can help you solve it to move on. Except the final boss, you’ve got to figure that one out on your own, newbie. Some levels actually involve back-tracking to completely solve them and move on, but that doesn’t happen often and it’s only a one level backtrack. There are no missables, no progression system, no bulky inventory, no hit points. Just one girl, one sword and some brain teasers.

It took my about 6 hours to finish, which is nice. I needed a break from lengthy JRPGs for some reason and this was the perfect start to that break.

Dreadrock is a 99 level deep dungeon, with a final boss battle making it 100 levels in total. None of them feel unfair, and I only needed to use the hints on about 10 of them. Once you use a hint and discover that gimmick you won’t forget it if it comes up again.

There is actually a battle system, similar to something like Crypt of the Necrodancer, where you hop around and just move into enemies to attack. There is some timing involved so you don’t get hit back and die (as you cannot take any damage).

The music is simple, but doesn’t come off as poorly executed. I didn’t ever notice anything that got annoying, but there wasn’t anything memorable.

Overall, snag this game if you’re looking for something fair yet challenging, and you have an afternoon or two to kill. A good example of an indie game that doesn’t try to extend itself beyond what it wants to do.