Have you heard about Dungeon Encounters? It's possible you saw it when it popped up briefly in a Nintendo stream, but there wasn't a lot of info. Or, it appeared that there wasn't a lot of info. They actually told us - more or less - everything we needed to know.
I thought that Etrian Odyssey was a stripped down experience, and not even in a bad way. I loved that shit. The mapmaking conceit was a delight, and everything else simply felt like home. Dungeon Encounters reminds me of EO, but it's even more low to the ground than that. Dungeon Encounters is just… a roll cage, with a visible engine, a seat, and five wheels - one of which you steer with. It is the bare metal of the classic RPG experience, which is to say, it is a sequence of increasingly brutal numerical puzzles.
I loved this review over at Siliconera, and I think it identifies something canny - one of the make or break things here is whether or not you are down to embroider little stories about the characters yourself. That reminds me of Etrian Odyssey, too. There's a lot of room to do that, which is the diplomatic way of saying you might have to. It's kind of a Hello Fresh situation.
I think there are people who want this. I am one of them. But I don't know what it says about me.
(CW)TB out.
