Rogue-likes and Action-RPG’s are sort of a guilty pleasure of mine. There’s just something about plunging into the depths of a monster infested dungeon and uncovering hidden treasures that just really sends a breeze up my wizard robe.But will Ido Yehieli and company’s Cardinal Quest scratch that itch the same way Epic Dungeon did?
Gameplay
Cardinal Quest is a dungeon crawling rogue-like. From its ruthless death system to its scarcity of resources, it shares much in common with games of yesteryear such as Gauntlet and Nethack. It’s to all these draconian mechanics that Cardinal Quest owes much of its suspenseful charm that won’t put you out of house and home one quarter at a time.
In terms of modernizations, the developer conceded a scant few. The most notable of which is the inclusion of a single mulligan style life. It seemed to me that this was nearly mandatory, as your first few encounters can often be your most dangerous. You find yourself locked in the dungeon with no equipment, one health potion, and a single ability. The ability you will start with is determined by which of thee three classes you select.
The available classes are pretty standard, you’ve got your berserking Fighter, sneaking Thief, and fireballing Wizard. The three classes are pretty well balanced, though their primary differentiation tends to fade the further you get in the game. The abilities that are acquired as you progress in the game are shared across the classes. This leads to a somewhat unwelcome homogenization that may dilute the replayability of the game to some degree. That said, the characters do tend to handle differently due to their statistical differences. For instance the fighter will prefer to be in combat because of the lengthy reuse timers of his abilities, while the wizard will prefer to stay at range because he is squishy as hell. The thief on the other hand will almost always want to attack from the safety of stealth.
The timers of these abilities are based on numbers of turns. The speed statistics of the character may also affect the number of turns required between ability uses. This sort of turn based time mechanism is what the game is entirely structured around. It determines when enemies can move, how many moves they can take, and when they can attack. As you progress in terms of experience in the game you will tend to learn to dance with the clock and the various timers that exist. In the case of the thief, he will not want to go into combat at all without stealth, so he will stealth up at the last second and get out of range before it drops. This aspect of the game’s timing is very enjoyable and gives the player a sort of sense of skillful play which is very rewarding.
And then there are the dice. The equalizer of classes, the ender epic crawls, the ruiner of days. Cardinal Quest is heavily random number generation focused, with everything from its map design being procedural, to its itemization and skill distribution. The downside is that it can ruin a dungeon crawl by giving you shitty abilities early on, or making it so you aren’t equipped well enough for later levels. These are things I am fine with, it’s part of the fun and the excitement to never know what cards you’ve been dealt. However every game needs rules, and this game is no different. One of these rules should be, “NO MINOTAURS BEHIND DOORS.” While the perils of death are awesome and never knowing when something is going to jump out and give you a once over is mega tense, for the love of science guys, I can’t even begin to tell you how many adventures ended on around the eighth level due to being one shot instantly when I opened a door with a minotaur behind it! But such enemy and item placement is par for the course of randomization. And on the other hand, the benefit of this procedural style level creation is a fresh adventure every time you start the game.
While the itemization seems to have been pretty methodical, the items gradually increasing in power as you descend into the dungeons deeper depths at a seemingly perfect pace, the skills seem almost too random. It feels just as likely for you to pick up the coveted healing ability on the first floor as you are something far less valuable. In addition, I would love to see a lot more done to the spell system. I implore you, make me feel a little more bad-ass! Where’s my area effect frontal cone fire breath or my corpse explosion ability!?
These are really all million year old complaints about rogue-likes, I mean who didn’t die the instant they entered Tal Rasha’s Chamber? So it is with little hostility that I accept these issues as features of the game. There is, however, one instance where I do feel as though I should fault the design. The refusal to modernize the game with the ability to quick-save. I’m getting old here guys, sometimes I need to go do stuff. And long gone are the days of tilting my NES on end and pausing the game as an improvised save system.
From a gameplay perspective, Cardinal Quest is a lot of fun. It’s got many of the quirks that make the genre what it is and its unforgiving nature is at the heart of this. I think it could stand a touch more modernization here and there, most notably with a quick-save save file, but it doesn’t detract in an abhorrent way from the overall enjoyment of the game.
Audio/VIsual
The pixel art of the game is well suited but a bit generic and uninspired. I would be happy to say it was closer to “great” if it possessed perhaps a little more animation. The combat animations consist of more or less a serious of minimalistic movements of the sprite that don’t really give you a whole lot of information. For instance some mobs seem like they may have a riposte style ability, but I don’t really know as a result of lack of information. I would have also loved to have seen a little more paper dolling of the sprite to represent a little more accurately what I was wearing. It could have been a lot more fun to look at in that regard.
The levels themselves are not particularly diverse, though to be quite honest I don’t know how much variation you can expect in a single dungeon. It’s not exactly like there are interior decorators on staff. The maps are all procedurally drawn and restricted to a somewhat clustered size. The downside of this is that if they ever to determine a properties value based on the number of doors per household, there is going to be some serious property tax. It is actually pretty frequent that you will have a room of a single open square surrounded by four doors. This isn’t really a point of contention, until you develop an obsessive compulsive urge to open every door on every map.
Musically Cardinal Quest has some good stuff going on. The music is perfectly suited for dungeon crawling and adds to the suspenseful experience. It’s like you can feel the breath of that monster behind the door ready to leap out at you the second you open it. The sound effects are well suited but at times rather intrusive. They could benefited greatly from individual volume controls to level them out to personalized perfection.
Summary
If you don’t mind a game that is classical to the occasional fault and are a fan of dungeon crawlers and random numbers, then you are in for a good time with Cardinal Quest. I found the flaws in the game easily overlooked at its price point of just under $5 and the experience and value offered to be quite commendable. Really, the amount of playtime you will get out of Cardinal Quest is limited primarily by your individual enjoyment of the genre. As for answering the question posed initially? Yes, I think the game does scratch the same itch that Epic Dungeon did so well, but perhaps not to the same extent. Cardinal Quest is available now, and has a demo as well. It’s a great idea to try before you buy.