hammers sign into ground “STRICtLY NO ADvENTrrS” sign falls over
OK, let’s begin. Start by introducing yourself and what kind of monster you are. Plucky, Lvl 1 slime here.
Don’t dungeons sound nice and cozy? Dark, quiet … a little bit damp. There’s your favorite mossy rock and a treasure chest you’ve never opened because you don’t have the key but you wonder what’s inside. Deep below something evil and cursed is lurking, but you’re content to chill up here with the bats and smaller mimics.
Anyways, I’ve been on a real wavelength with dungeon crawlers lately. Played (most of the way through) Shadow Tower Abyss (PS2), Baroque (Saturn), and now Brandish: The Dark Revenant (PSP). I’ve been contemplating cracking into Ultima Underworld for awhile now since I absolutely adore System Shock. And an ongoing list a mile long.
Additionally I’ve been indulging in a bunch of dark and weird fiction. It all kinda fits together into a cozy vibe as the dark winter months approach. So share all your dungeon and dark/weird fantasy related stuff. Books, games, music, movies. Doesn’t need to strictly involve a dungeon.
Tower Dungeon
by Tsutomu Nihei
Part of what kicked this off, I saw someone mention this on Bluesky the other day and decided to check it out and now it is my favorite thing. I went into it expecting something much darker and Berserk-y but instead it’s turning out to be incredibly sweet and sincere. The characters are so charming and add a lot of brightness to an otherwise dreary dungeon crawl that gives it so much energy you want to keep reading. I want to hug them ALL.
I’m also a fan of things that have a real videogamey setup without actually breaking that fourth wall and outright being about a videogame. More like Made in Abyss and less like Sword Art Online. So I’m a Spider, So What? kinda passes? I like that one, too …
Dungeon Synth
Have to have the proper ambiance as well. Light a candle, brew some tea, and put on some good dungeon synth. I like a lot of these albums from Cryo Crypt. It’s a shame that some of their album art seems to use generative AI, but from what I can tell, the music is all legit. These softer genres suffer from AI the worst as I think it’s easier for the algorithms to produce and harder for humans to pick up on the nuances. If you’ve got any other dungeon synth that I need to check out, definitely post it here!
Jamsel Quest
Mel Albino ( @nalemart.bsky.social on Bluesky ) does a really cute webcomic about slime girls living their best lives. Check out Jamsel Quest!
PSP Games
I really, really tried to get into Wizardry Variants Daphne. There’s a lot to appreciate there and you can certainly play it without spending any money if you’d like, but the daily quests, timed events, and dozens of currencies of your typical gacha game all exert pressure and still stress me out. I feel like even outside of gacha mechanics a lot of modern games confuse complex mechanics for engaging gameplay.
PSP era games strike a nice balance for me. The portability keeps them simple and streamlined. More complex than a Gameboy game but before the world went totally crazy with microtransactions. Currently I’m playing Brandish: The Dark Revenant and the difficulty and mechanics hit that sweet spot of being engaging without being overwhelming. It plays like a weird combination of a mystery dungeon roguelike and a first person dungeon crawler (though the camera is indeed overhead). There’s something satisfying about filling out every grid square in a nice dense map, you even get rewarded for 100% map completion with some additional items!
After that I might try Class of Heroes by Atlus which seems very Wizardry adjacent. These are fantastic for putting on your phone with PPSSPP (I also like Hot Shots Golf: Open Tee 2, but that’s not dungeon related).
That’s it from me for now! What’ve you got? Pile it on the floor and we’ll keep those nasty adventurers from getting their paws all over it.
