Desktop Dungeons: Rewind is the revamped version of the bite-sized dungeon crawler originally released in 2013. With significantly improved visuals but retaining all the goofiness that only the finest of gamers can enjoy, this isn’t a casual game; it’s a challenging tactical roguelike, with plenty of goats, goblins, and bankers to defeat as you develop and open your kingdom to every race in the book. It’s silly fun, one square at a time.

The Fellowship of the Square

Your quest to create and rule a kingdom isn’t a simple one; with a strong craving for gold, much mischief thanks to your sly advisor, and a persistent flow of new residents, you will explore dungeons and return with varied loot, mostly coins and a trophy taken from the cold grip of a dead foe. It’s more hardcore than what the colorful and casual looks hint at, so be prepared for some hair-pulling and teeth grinding as you die by the hands of a run-of-the-mill goblin due to a miscalculated mouse click.

The core gameplay in Desktop Dungeons: Rewind is brilliantly simple and easy to grasp – as an adventurer chosen from a combination of several kins and classes, you delve into pitch-black dungeons where fortune, fame, and potentially agonizing death awaits. Your hero moves one square at a time as he uncovers the unknown path ahead, finding and fighting monsters of various levels in turn-based combat, descending deeper into the dungeon for the occasional puzzle or dare.

Starting as a puny level one character, you gain experience points by defeating enemies that are within your reach, meaning of lower or equal levels. However, the biggest experience gains come from eliminating creatures above your level, a dangerous tactic that perfectly embodies the high risk/high reward motto. Succeed and you’ll be more than ready to take on the end of level boss; bite more than you can chew, and doom will come knocking.

There are only two ways of recovering health and mana, consisting of exploring new territory, one square at a time, and using potions. The balance between the compulsion to discover useful trinkets and skills clashes with the need to leave some areas untouched for the latter confrontations, as healing and mana become rare commodities and you need to be well stacked for the final clash. Botch your way and the boss will laugh you off with a couple of hits, turning all your efforts into dust.

The initial hero choice plays a significant role in your exploration. Each race (human, elf, dwarf…) comes with a specific stat boost for conversion points – more on that later – and classes (fighter, berserker, wizard…) also throw other factors into consideration. You also get to pick a few items from your adventuring kit, usually buffs of some kind. While it’s fun to find a fitting combo for our playstyle, most quests require you to play with preselected classes, forcing a flexible and knowledgeable approach of each one.

Be Kind Rewind

While Desktop Dungeons: Rewind stays mostly faithful to the original – apart from the whole graphical revamp – it brings one new feature that is splattered right there on the title. If you manage to find and keep a scroll that makes death a little less permanent, you get a second chance at life when your hero expires. Suddenly, your run rewinds to a previous point and gives you another opportunity in the current dungeon. It doesn’t place you right before your death event, so at least you can weigh some previous choices and consider a different approach.

Your inventory is limited by weight, and while potions stack, other items take individual slots. From destroying a dungeon wall to revealing random tiles or casting a very useful fireball (surely a crowd favorite), there are a few decisions to be made, especially when you know that you can convert items into character-specific bonus, such as extra mana, damage, or health. A converted item is lost forever, so any rushed decision may put an ending to your run – destroy the wall-breaking skill and you may end up stuck between a rock and a hard place, almost literally. In other words, you could carve a passage around stronger enemies or into enclosed spaces to regain health and mana, but not anymore.

That ends up being one of the frustrations in this game, as Desktop Dungeons: Rewind doesn’t leave much margin for errors, especially since occasionally the randomly generated dungeons may lack one of your favorite items. Even the mere action of taking out enemies must be carefully judged, as you may reach the boss with stats below the bare minimum. With some wit and a packed inventory, you can overcome some challenges, but prove too reckless and you’d better find that exit if you still can and try again.

No matter how many classes you get to experiment with – and there are quite a few – Desktop Dungeons: Rewind does become repetitive. The humor and kingdom expansion slightly diminish this feeling of going through the same motions, but this is not a game for longer sessions. Enjoy it briefly for better effect and don’t let tediousness rear its ugly head, even more knowing that it requires quite a bit of focus and tactical awareness.

Another issue that you may stumble upon is unwarranted death. The game predicts the outcome of each attack, which means that you can see how much health you will lose with your next move, up to a point where you – or your enemy – may take the death blow. Eventually, a misclick may get you killed because of failing to notice move priority, so unless you have that rewind scroll at hand, it’s emotional damage time.

Pint-Sized Dungeon Romp

Desktop Dungeons: Rewind is an accomplished update to an old but cherished indie roguelike. It’s a charming visual revamp that brings it to the current times, retaining the silly humor, the easy pick up and play approach, and the almost never-ending dungeon crawling from the main campaign, class, and puzzle challenges.

This is a game that requires a slow-paced and thoughtful approach and is clever at it, but the downside is that the core loop may become boring if you don’t take a breather now and then. Don’t play this on fast-forward, despite the yearn to keep pressing forward, square after square, one low-level enemy after another. There’s a lot of fun to be had from the mischievous dialogue and bite-sized dungeons, but make sure you give your heroes a well-earned rest.

Score: 8/10

Pros:

• Easy to pick up and play
• Charming graphical update
• Some tactical ingenuity and plenty of variables
• Many classes and challenges
• Dungeons that will last you a lifetime

Cons:

• Some randomized dungeons result in unexpected dead ends
• May get repetitive a few hours in

Desktop Dungeons: Rewind review code was provided by the publisher. You can read MP1st’s review and scoring policy right here.