Dream Quest [iOS], deckbuilding roguelike

[Hipolito]

Some buzz at the Quarter to Three forum inspired me to try this game. It's a turn-based dungeon crawler in which combat is handled with a "deckbuilding" card system. What the heck does that mean? You start the game with a small deck of cards that represent attacks, spells, healing, special moves, etc. When you get into a fight, this deck is shuffled. During each turn of battle, a few of your cards are dealt into your hand. You play your cards and they get placed into your discard pile. If the battle lasts long enough to use up your deck, your discard pile is reshuffled to form a new deck and you are dealt random cards again.

As you get loot and visit shops, you acquire more and powerful cards for your deck. However, it's as important to get rid of weak cards whenever you can. The smaller your deck, the more often your favorite cards will come to your hand in battle. You know you've built a great deck when you're getting hot and synergistic cards every turn to help you waste powerful enemies.

Dream Quest is notable not just for its deckbuilding system, but its really weird style. To give you a taste of its sense of humor, every game begins with the statement "Don't be afraid to eat the squirrels!" I have yet to discover what this means. The art is laughably crude. Check out this review if you want to see screenshots. (The game still has the black bar problem mentioned in the review.) The words are pretty tiny and hard to read on my iPhone 5, but there's not much reading that has to be done. The music is pretty good but sounds MIDI-quality and there are only a couple of sound effects. The game seems to take pride in its low production values.

That's OK, though, because gameplay is what matters most and this game's got it. It's very addictive and difficult. After about two dozen games, I've yet to beat the boss for the second level of the dungeon. One thing that helps, though, it that the monsters generally don't move when you do; they remain still and let you walk right up to them, not fighting until you decide start a battle. This means you can explore the dungeon (to the extent that the monsters aren't blocking you) and decide the best order in which to challenge the monsters. Your character's special ability, which you can use every couple of battles, will weigh into your strategy. The Warrior can destroy a wall, the Priest can see through walls, the Wizard can teleport, and the Thief can create random treasure.

When you die, you get some points and often one or two of the game's many achievements. Whenever you get achievement, you unlock something that will be available in future games such as a new card, better starting stats, or even a new character class. The points accumulate from game to game. You can use the points to buy achievements instead of earning them. You can also use points to resurrect from your last level-up, though this is not cheap. There are no in-app purchases on offer.

I enjoy Dream Quest a lot and would recommend it to any roguelike fan. I feel a little burned out by the difficulty so I'm not sure I'll play it enough to ever beat it, but I'm pretty happy to have this game on my phone for $2.99.

[Harkonis]

This is one of my favorite ios games

[SpaceLord]

Holy crap, I'm addicted to Dream Quest. It's really well designed. I find the graphics funny, and after a while, you don't notice them at all. Everyone that has an iOS device should look into it.

[wonderpug]

Ok, ok. I'll finally give this monstrosity a try.

[wonderpug]

However, it's as important to get rid of weak cards whenever you can.

How do you do this?

[coopasonic]

However, it's as important to get rid of weak cards whenever you can.

How do you do this?

It can be a level up option. It is what you do at monasteries as well.

[Cortilian]

How is it on the iPhone? Functional or clearly designed for the iPad?

[wonderpug]

How is it on the iPhone? Functional or clearly designed for the iPad?

I've been trying it on the iPad but just fired it up on the iPhone to check. The text is pretty damn small. I think it's legible for my eyes but not the most pleasant size to read. Some of the buttons are also pretty tiny. So I'd say it's borderline. You can make it work, but it seems clear all the developer did was shrink the game to fit on the screen without making any UI changes to accommodate the smaller size.

[Cortilian]

Thanks for the info.

[coopasonic]

I have played 10-15 games of it on an iPhone 4s and have had no trouble with hitting the right buttons and reading the text.

[Hipolito]

Has anyone reached the 3rd dungeon level yet? Grrr.

[coopasonic]

I've reached the boss of the second a couple times. I switched my focus to finishing the first with all of the base characters. That unlocked the samurai who isn't bad. I think I prefer the wizard though.

[SpaceLord]

I've reached the boss of the second a couple times. I switched my focus to finishing the first with all of the base characters. That unlocked the samurai who isn't bad. I think I prefer the wizard though.

I unlocked the necromancer yesterday by using all 7 altars. I've yet to play him, though. I know his Soul Siphon ability seems insane:

Spoiler:

kill a monster with 5 or less health, then Gain 1 permanent mana point.

[wonderpug]

I don't know if I'm enjoying the game as much as the vocal fans love it, but I do admit everyone was right that the horrible graphics aren't an issue at all. The gameplay is fun and original, but my big beef is that it doesn't seem to have that roguelike aspect where I feel like I've lost because of something I did wrong. I get to the level 2 boss yet again, and then die yet again, not feeling any sense of "if only I had done X differently."

Maybe I'm just not good enough at the game yet, but moreso it seems like I'm meant to die repeatedly until I unlock more goodies through achievements. That sort of progression model would be fine if it felt like I was progressing a little bit farther each run, but I almost always hit the same dead end every single time.

Even just making the dungeon levels a little bit larger would do a lot for me. I'd just like for there to be more to do and more opportunities to develop my hero before each boss battle arrives.

[SpaceLord]

Have you tried purchasing Achievements using gold?

I suggest:

Elementary: Kill 5 Elementals, costs 200gp – All characters have 1 extra mana
Lizard Losses: Kill 5 Akami, costs 200gp – All characters have 1 extra health
Dragon Tamer: Kill 5 dragons, costs 200 – All your characters find 1 more treasure chest per level

The last two are harder than they seem, and they’re worth the 400 gold spent.

[wonderpug]

Have you tried purchasing Achievements using gold?

I haven't bought achievements yet, no. I'll definitely give that a try. It looks like I've already unlocked Lizard Losses naturally, and I'm halfway to Elementary, but I'll take Dragon Tamer since apparently I haven't come across a single dragon yet.

I'm also liking the game a lot more now that I've gotten my first character to the third level. He didn't last very long on that level, because my god do some of the mobs on that floor have nasty abilities.

I think the game is just geared toward you sucking pretty bad for your first few playthroughs. Now that I'm past that and have some decent upgrades unlocked, I'm much happier with how far I can progress in a run.

[Zork]

Here are some tips straight from the developer's mouth. This game is frustratingly addictive.

-Zork

[SpaceLord]

I've now been playing as the Assassin. She's a ton of fun. I paid 3k of my accumulated gold to unlock her, but it's been worth it. She's essentially a spellcasting rogue:

Spoiler:

Her primary ability is that she gains 2 mana when she plays an action card. Throwing a few spells in her deck can make her really good.

Her first cooldown ability lets her sneak away from a fight, leaving her opponent wounded and still poisoned. It's really good when you're near a oasis.

Her second one is the fun one: Murder. Kill a non-boss enemy without fighting it. You gain its XP, but gain no gold. Take that, you Disembodied Hand. Seriously, fuck you.

[The Meal]

I just noticed today that you can control which pieces of equipment are loaded into your equipment slot(s), by selecting the [E] icon in the corner of the card when you look through your current cards (using the icon next to your current level located on the right side below your avatar). It defaults to the first piece(s) of equipment you had acquired, but you can tailor it between battles.

[The Meal]

Finally won (with the Necromancer) last night. I ended up finding a Tome of Wonder in a chest on the 2nd level and stomped mushrooms to double up on it. Had selected HEAL as my first talent (the only way to go), and +1 Equipment for the second (finding a +1 Equipment along the way, so got to start every combat getting two extra cards per turn from that point forward). Blew through many of the third level combats in one or two turns (fortunately), though the pair of 9th level Treants (120 health, Resiliency reducing all damage to 3 points maximum) took a long time to take down. I also had two Electrocute cards in the stack which combined with the Necromancer's extreme mana pool were very beneficial.

The Dream Lord was a PITA, but fun. I managed to score 47 points of damage on him in the four turns I got. Haven't tried the Paladin class yet, but that was the unlock for getting past the third floor.

[Hipolito]

Congrats, Meal! I've kind of given up, having never made it past the second floor, but it was fun.

[GreenGoo]

No android version that I can find.

[coopasonic]

Congrats, Meal! I've kind of given up, having never made it past the second floor, but it was fun.

I started playing again after Meal's post and finally best the second floor boss with the Wizard. In the same run I unlocked the Necro and the Monk. I have been playing the Necro since, but I kind of think the Monk might be better with his free deletes, but I keep playing Necro anyway. I would like to beat the game just once.

It's a top three iOS game for me, but that's not saying much as I have yet to love an iOS game.

[The Meal]

I won again last night with the Paladin on what may have been my fifth run with that character. I was pretty fortunate again. It's nice that The Lord of the Dream doesn't always have the same buffs (first time he was like a Genie in that each turn you had to make a "wish" which had all kinds of negative effects, the second time he was like a ??? in that he surpressed certain types of cards -- "cards that begin with A", "mana cards", etc. -- in a cascading list that got longer and longer each turn). This time I managed 97 points of damage before he got me (I only managed 3 turns as opposed to 4 turns the first time).

[Zarathud]

Made it to the end once and got my ass handed to me by the End Boss. Making it to Level 3 was an achievement by itself. I also HATE the Genie's bad wishes.

[SpaceLord]

So I paid to unlock The Professor, and he's bad ass.

Spoiler:

His starting ability: Once per fight, you may choose to gain a card in the monster's deck.

My most successful run was with a deck with:

2 Three Wishes(one cloned when I went to level 2 of the dungeon)
Demon's curse: Opponent's max and current life is reduced by 2.
Dragon's Roar: Opponent Discards 3 cards, and loses an action.
Fly: Although the griffin is among the easiest opponents, his action is f'in insane in a player's deck.
Protean: Best card in the deck, since only a couple cards were duplicates

With the Prof, I suggest grabbing any Reposte and Cowers you can, since they almost always trigger, and replace themselves.

[coopasonic]

Finally finished it with the monk. I did 212 damage to the lord of the dream. If it wasn't for the turn timer I would have done more.

[The Meal]

Very nice! My third time making it to him was an improbable run with the Samurai. Still haven't cracked the 100 damage (yet).

[coopasonic]

I am not sure when this made it to steam, but it did:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/557410/

I am tempted to pay full price since I really liked it on iOS... but...