Deathtrap Dungeon

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Review: Deathtrap Dungeon

The game has its roots in Ian Livingstone's popular Fighting Fantasy novels, and a charming intro sets up the story nicely. You're a warrior-either Red Lotus, dressed in bikini chain-mail, or the chiseled Chain Dog-who has accepted Baron Sukumvit's challenge to take The Walk through the tyrant's private Hell: 10 large, themed dungeon levels (the Circus, the Labyrinth, the Quarry, the Bellfree, the Sewer, etc.) brimming with nasty creatures and tight spots, with a formidable dragon at the bottom.

And so you're off, throwing levers, collecting keys, grabbing spells and potions, and whacking monsters. You can choose from a range of up to seven close-combat weapons (swords and hammers) as well as six ranged weapons (muskets, flame lances), eight spells (including one featuring a little pig as a guided missile), and found supplies-all sharply handsome on a system using a 3D card.

The 50 monsters aren't exactly geniuses, but they give DD a lot of its flavor. They range from hooded, blue-faced dwarves who appear to be on loan from Phantasm and chortle just like Beavis and Butt-head, to clowns who stand on one leg, Karate Kid-style, and taunt you from a distance. Skeletons hold their heads in agony while being disassembled in a fashion that vividly recalls blowing leaves. It's all vaguely humorous but never silly, and as a result, DD artfully maintains its edge.

Developer Asylum Studios has fine-tuned the genre's basics in sensible ways. For instance, the Tomb Raiders occasionally adopt inconvenient camera-angles, and you're stuck with what the game gives you. Here, you can always switch to a semifunctional first-person view. Using chalk, you can mark for future reference a significant dungeon corner that looks much like every other dungeon corner, and you can switch characters in mid-game.

On the other hand, the hacking and slashing-while enjoyable-doesn't quite have the depth of, say, Die by the Sword's. You have five generic combat moves, and while many of your enemies obligingly spout blood and fall apart, I never had the sense that the kind of damage done corresponded to the mode of attack.

The game-saving system doesn't sacrifice gameplay to player convenience; it uses a series of judiciously spread-out save points-some that require payment using coins found within the game. The saves are named automatically (and unrevealingly), and the accompanying identifying graphics were unidentifiable glitches on one of my systems (using a Voodoo Rush-based card).

These weren't the only glitches. On the Circus level, I found myself taking damage through an intact wall from the flamethrowers in the room beyond and peering desperately into an apparent doorway that turned out to be simply a missing texture. And while the end-of-level T. Rex was talked up big-time in the prelevel briefing, I killed it easily at close range with a middling-strength sword while the monster relentlessly attacked the wall behind me.

Deathmatch-only multiplay is limited to eight on a LAN (how 1995). And from a pure enjoyment point of view, I wish DD had a greater sense of exploration and mystery, and less of trudging from one puzzle to the next.

Nevertheless, Deathtrap Dungeon's a solid, if not spectacular, addition to the TR canon and should keep fans of the genre well employed.-- Peter Olafson / GamePro