Everything a Mobile Game Should Be

For those who are new or unacquainted with the Pixel Dungeon variety of games, go into this game expecting nothing but with patience, enthusiasm, and willingness to learn. Evan, Shattered PD’s developer, has developed his version of this game into a well-balanced, fun, complicated yet easily understandable and satisfying game to play at any time: whether you have five minutes or an hour, Pixel Dungeon is the game to play. The game, being a dungeon crawler, perhaps isn’t what most mobile games are nowadays, but the intensity and replay-ability of this game is one that isn’t found among most. The developer himself is everything a consumer could ask for. He explains every single change he makes in the game, such as why he’s changed the spawn rate of an enemy based on data or tweaked the damage of a certain weapon in the early stages of the game. Every update adds more playability, and makes the game more fun. I’ve put hundreds of hours into this game between shifts, late at night, waking up in the morning, and everything in between. It is a wonderful stress reliever, mind exerciser, and, sometimes, time stealer. I wholeheartedly recommend that even those with no experience of this kind of game try it.

Great but with one critique

I love this game, it has a great premise and has amazing mechanics that make it the best mobile roguelite I’ve ever played. That being said my critique is on the length of each run. I think the runs go on for a bit too long and it’s not satisfying to have to come back to a game so many times to finish one. It also makes it feel really bad when you lose a run to a mistake, as it takes a very long time to get back to where you were. For a game that rewards patience and resource management, you get really punished for rushing to try to finish a game faster. With the consistent updates on the game, I think a long term goal of slowly making the game faster would be amazing and solve my sole complaint about the game. Thank you so much. Update! The dev decreased level lengths by a considerable amount and I would argue it is the perfect length now. Thank you so much, my love for this game has been reignited, and I'm back to runs again! Seriously I’ve never seen a game so focused on and loved by its dev before, constant updates and promise of new content make this game a must have. Please try it out!

Wonderful Game with Tons of Replayability

This game is worth every penny. For only costing $5, you get some serious hours of gameplay. Five different heroes, each with different sub-classes and talents that let you play with a lot of combinations along with a massive library of dungeon layouts means each run is a surprise. Also, the developer is truly dedicated to following up on the game with more than just bug fixes. He regularly introduces new mechanics, items, class changes, etc. so the game seems to never get stale. Some people have mentioned they feel the game is tough and they aren’t wrong. If you’re familiar with rogue-like games, you should know you’re going to die a lot more often than you’ll actually complete the dungeon. It’s kind of integral to rogue-like games. In my opinion, it makes it all the more rewarding when you do actually complete a run! And probably my favorite thing about the game: NO ADS OR IN GAME PURCHASES! It’s five bucks and then you’re not bothered anymore or have to “pay to win” like so many games on the App Store.

It’s just not fun.

Hey- props to the devs for making a game that is certainly challenging and lets you relive the ‘Nethack’ experience, with a bit more than ASCII characters. However this game is just frustrating. In most cases you’re dependent on what you randomly get. Didn’t get enough food? Die of starvation. This alone is ok, but if the randomizer doesn’t supply enough food, you’re done. I would’ve even thought that for everything those stupid seeds do one of them would feed you. Doesn’t that make sense? You grow something that you could eat? There are no potions that feed you either. I don’t think I’ve ever played an RPG that doesn’t give you full health when you level up. Is that so hard? I don’t know how many times I made it to level 15 or more and just got so ganged up on all of a sudden that I had to start over. And over. And over. Would it be so hard to make a version that you can continue with? And then maybe have a hard-core version for everyone else that likes to be tortured? For all the selections of RPG’s that are available now on mobile, the frustration that this one creates just isn’t worth it. I respect the fact that the game is made to be relentless, but starting over again, and again, and again is just not fun. Moving on.

Too hard. Too frustrating. There is no fun in repeating levels 1-2 a thousand times

I loved games like this as a teenager. Rogue, Angband, all the clones. And this is a faithful one. So props for that. But it’s just too hard. You die too easily. And I’m older now. I know it isn’t necessary to lose all progress. And it’s not rewarding to lose all progress either. Yeah it’s fine to have a learning curve. But there’s just no point in not being able to save at least occasionally if you are going to create a game with purposeful balance issues and a reliance on randomness. So five stars for making a good clone. One star for making a game that ticks you off and you put down after a few days and never pick up again. The price point doesn’t even frustrate me. I’m willing to pay. I want something rewarding of hard effort. Not something that just frustrates me. So let’s average it out at 3 stars. If you are a hardcore fan of something that will frustrate most people beyond belief then this game is definitely for you. I know there’s a few out there. Dwindling every minute. “Here lies me, killed by frustration. Or a rat. Again. Holding a bunch of unidentified cursed potions, scrolls and items. Again. RIP”.

From “Ugh, phone games” to “I can’t stop playing Shattered Pixel Dungeon”

Let me set the scene: My husband downloaded this game years ago—like, somewhere between “fidget spinners were still cool” and “TikTok wasn’t yet a thing.” He’d rave about this free little dungeon crawler on his phone, and as a lifelong gamer, I’d roll my eyes and mutter something about “real games having controllers.” Fast forward to now. For years he’s played it off and on, never really obsessed—until recently. Suddenly he’s in deep. I’d catch him mumbling about armor, scrolls, and potions like he was training to be a pixelated wizard. So this weekend, I was bored and decided to give it another shot on his phone. I think I made it to level 3 and died… oh, about 20 times. I had no idea what I was doing—but I couldn’t stop playing. The dungeon had me. So, I caved. I downloaded it myself. It cost me five dollars. FIVE. Was it worth it? Absolutely. 100%. Buy it. Shattered Pixel Dungeon is one of those rare games that feels simple at first but keeps surprising you the more you play. It’s challenging, strategic, funny in its own punishing way, and so satisfying when you finally make progress. It’s the perfect blend of “just one more run” and “how is it 2am already?” Moral of the story: listen to your spouse. Sometimes, they do know what they’re talking about.

Great game!

For those of you who even know what Nethack is, this is a pretty good modernization of that game. While, in my opinion, nothing will ever trump the original Nethack, this does come close to that feeling. Randomized potions, scrolls, wands, dungeon levels. Replayability is the best part of this game. What absolutely baffles me though, is the lack of an option to have a D-pad. In a game where every single move can matter, and one wrong move can lead to you taking a hit that will kill you. Navigating through narrow corridors can be painstaking when you accidentally tap somewhere you didn’t mean to go, and end up circling around somewhere. Or end up moving in a fight when you meant to attack, an take a hit without giving one, putting you behind in the fight. I will most definitely change this to a five star game, which it can be, if this gets changed. Having the option to enable a D-pad for single movement at a time, while holding the direction to keep going, I feel should be essential to a game like this

Love/hate this game

First off, I love the way it plays, its combat is simple yet phenomenal. It’s “hard”, but the reality is that it requires way more luck than it does skill. I’ve tried countless builds, but no matter how lucky I get with drops, I can’t get beyond floor 16. I even had one run that I didn’t even get a single healing potion (including dew drops) for the first 3 floors because I got unlucky with the floor types; I got great weapons and strength upgrades, and I was doing great, and then it felt as if I got punished for something I had no control over (welcome to the real world, right fellas?). I want to be able to read more of the lore and see the deeper levels of the dungeon, but the enemies on the floor after the boss are far more difficult to manage than the previous boss. Unfortunately I don’t see that happening since there’s no difficulty setting. I get that it’s supposed to be a challenging game, but there’s a huge difference between difficulty and luck. A difficulty setting would make this 5 stars.

Way back in 2015 a game called Pixel Dungeon was released on the App Store, a mobile port of the very popular roguelike dungeon crawler from...

TouchArcade Wed Sep 29 2021