Dweomers & Daggers - Part I

Today's topic is one close to my heart: dungeons. That and dragons. "Dungeons & Dragons" I suppose you could say. While there seems to be a disparaging disparity of official D&D titles (none, in fact) for Android, there are many, many titles that continue the glorious tradition. Whether your tastes lean toward roleplaying, strategy, puzzle and word games, turn-based or real-time, there are a slew of offerings to satisfy.

Dungeon Scroll

First off is the word matching game 'Dungeon Scroll'. Released in 2010 for Android (2003 for PC), Dungeon Scroll plays a little like a cross between Boggle and Scrabble with ravenous monsters thrown in to keep things interesting. Imagine opening a new boardgame and having a rat jump out and you'll see what I mean.

As some kind of word wizard, semantic sorceror or conjurer of conjugation (it's never actually explained) you enter increasingly difficult dungeons populated with an assortment of creatures who will try and kill you. To oppose them you are given eight random letter tiles per dungeon with which to create 'spells' by forming words. Spelling spells, as it were. The longer the word, the greater the damage it causes to your enemy and the more points you earn for it. Take too long and the creatures will slowly nibble, slash or otherwise strip away your hitpoints until you are dead. Properly dead, too, not like those pesky skeletons.

While most words just cause damage to your enemies, some create special effects. Spelling 'rats' summons rats, for example, 'spiders' summons spiders which then disconcertingly roam across the screen while damaging your foe. I assume there are more, but these are the only two I've found so far. It's surprisingly difficult to remember to try and summon a meteor or storm while your hitpoints are ebbing away.

Defeating your opponent will reveal a treasure chest which will randomly contain a one-use bonus letter tile, some of which are special tiles, causing bonus damage or multiplying the damage of the word. The developers helpfully tell us that tapping the screen doesn't increase your chance of getting a bonus tile, but in my experience this isn't the case so tap away. At various intervals (is it each 50,000 points? I'm not sure) you level up and can improve one of two stats, allowing you to increase the damage per spell, decrease enemy hitpoints, increase your own hitpoints, or gain a score bonus.

While Dungeon Scroll is definitely a great word matching game, the roleplaying elements are mostly cosmetic and a little 'lite' for my liking. There is no character sheet to keep track of your improvements, no experience points, no gold or shops to spend it in, and no quests or journal or NPCs. The goal of the game is simply to play through all 25 dungeons and get as high a score as possible, which is a shame as implementing just a handful of additional features would have seen this game transformed from a word game with a twist to a timeless classic.

Rating: 3.5/5

Name: Dungeon Scroll
Developer: Robinson Technologies