Developer: One Up Plus Entertainment
Publisher: Qubic Games
Platform: Switch, PC
Tested on: Switch
DungeonTop – Review
DungeonTop’s subtitle, Spellsword Cards, doesn’t put in any effort to hide what kind of game we are dealing with. Brought to us courtesy of Qubic Games and developed by One Up Plus Entertainment, DungeonTop is a fantasy-themed deck-building card game. If you’re already rolling your eyes and are expecting another generic game, hear us out though: DungeonTop might just break the mold enough to be worth your time.
Story
Deck-building games rarely feature elaborate stories, so it was a pleasant surprise to see that One Up Plus actually put in the effort to provide DungeonTop with a narrative. Admittedly, the story isn’t very deep and is riddled with fantasy clichés. The story starts off with a backstory that tells of the legendary Grand Forge. This was a city-like structure where the inhabitants mastered the ability to bend the fabric of reality to their own purposes. Of course, things went horribly wrong, and a cataclysmic event, known as the Steel Curse, wreaks havoc upon the world’s civilization.
Black gates pop up across major cities, spawning hordes of monsters and making life unpleasant for everyone. Fast forward three years and DungeonTop’s protagonist hero rises to the challenge of dealing with the aftermath of the Steel Curse and rid the world of the monsters once and for all. To do so, he must gather his own band of warriors, minions and tricks. These are represented by the cards you collect. Our hero must fight his way towards ending this blight on civilization once and for all through a series of strategic card battles.
Graphics
DungeonTop features striking comic-book-style artwork. The colors are bright and saturated and the outlines are very heavy, resulting in a pleasing visual style that cleverly hides the fact that actual animations are very limited. The drawings are full of character and really bring the various creatures that you’ll encounter to life. Lighting effects are also fantastic, with glowing flames that illuminate the dungeon-themed arenas that you’ll be fighting over. If there’s one thing we can find fault with DungeonTop’s graphics, it would be that there is a lot of information on the screen at any given time and that on-screen text is on the small side. This means that information isn’t always as legible as it should be, but to be fair, after a few games, you’ll have memorized the effects of most cards anyway.
Sound
Overall, DungeonTop’s soundscape isn’t very impressive. While the sound effects used for resolving attacks or other card effects are crisp, they are also the main source of audio in the game. There was music present, but this was all very low-key and failed to really capture our attention.
Gameplay
Strategic deck-building games are a dime a dozen these days, and for a game like this to stand out from the crowd, it really needs a unique selling point. DungeonTop does this by making the placement of your cards relevant. The aim of each game is to knock out the enemy boss card by summoning creatures of your own to attack it. Of course, the enemy boss can also summon creatures, resulting in epic card battles between two opposing forces. However, rather than a typical card game setup, which you’d encounter in something like Hearthstone, the dungeon itself becomes a grid-like arena, and the placement of your cards becomes a crucial element.
You start by placing your hero, and any subsequent creatures you play must usually be placed adjacent to either your hero or a card you’ve previously played. Additionally, minions summoned can’t act in the same turn as when you place them, leaving them open to any enemy attacks. This means that you’ll need to carefully consider which card you play and where, as a wrong placement can set off a chain of events that can wipe you from the board. Naturally, this works both ways and the aim is to force the AI into making unfavorable placements. You have access to a limited pool of Mana, which you’ll need to summon your cards, and any unplayed cards in your hand are discarded at the end of your turn, adding another strategic element. You can’t simply hold on to any cards in your hand to use them in a later turn when they would be more strategically viable. Of course, this makes it harder to strategize long-term, and the unpredictability that comes with this might turn off some players.
Winning a game rewards you with additional cards, and half the fun is coming up with new strategies and synergies between the cards in your deck. With several different decks available at the start as well as a plethora of cards to collect (over 800 in fact!), there is a ton of replayability here. We haven’t even touched upon the fact that the game also features an elaborate shop- and upgrade system, that allows you to improve your cards even further by spending treasure. You’re also able to level up and improve your hero in this way, meaning that each run of DungeonTop truly is unique and that no two playthroughs are the same.
Of course, for a game to be worth revisiting, it needs to be first and foremost fun, and thankfully, DungeonTop really strikes the right balance between being challenging and being fun to play. There are a few minor gripes here that do detract a bit from the game’s fun factor. For example, you’ll need to pay treasure to remove cards from your deck, which seemed like an odd design choice. Also, any damage done to your hero carries over between battles, so you’ll need to play healing cards quite often even if you are about to win that specific round. Still, those are only minor nitpicks and Dungeontop is an excellent game otherwise.
Conclusion
Given that the majority of the work on DungeonTop was done by only two people, you’re looking at a really impressive title here. With tons of customizability and replayability, you can easily put dozens of hours into the game before it starts to feel repetitive. If you’re a fan of the deckbuilding genre, this is a must-have title. It’s not a perfect game by any means but the few issues we had with it are so minor that we really recommend you check out DungeonTop if it piques your interest.
DungeonTop - Review,
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