Magic Cauldron - Dungeons

I was drawn to this title by a couple things: The tags on the store page, "RPG", "Strategy RPG", and "Dungeon Crawler", three of my very favorites. It took less than a minute to realize that two of the tags are absolute lies, being the ones with RPG in them. You don't get to create a character. You pick a portrait. You don't even get to name them. You are immediately tossed on an island to find out about some magic cauldron. From there, the game play loop is at least decent. You wander around a fair amount of maps fighting monsters, even though there are only maybe 8-10 different ones throughout the entire game. You don't get to equip any armor or items besides the weapons you find on the ground. The combat is the most simplistic you will see in ANY game. Just left click on the enemy. Most of them take one hit, some of them two. You can't miss, and neither can the enemy. It's very reminiscent of what an old Atari 2600 type game would utilize. I don't really mind this, except it's not very RPG like. My biggest gripe with this game is the length. It shows that I played for 4.8 hours, but close to an hour of that is just idle time when I would get up from the computer for a bit and …

Game so smol I couldn't even find a pirate version. Support small companies and single developers, guys.

After losing progress the third time because "escape" doesn't close a message or inventory, but kicks you directly back into the menu without saving, I've had enough. Along with not saving the minimap setting it show, this has a severe lack of quality control.

The game's fine. Simple graphics, simple SFX / BGM, and very simple gameplay. No build customization, just drink potions when low health, and swing your biggest weapons first. No fun effects or statuses to be encountered thus far; just bigger damage and bigger health pools. I recommend this game as a child's first dungeon crawler. Beyond that, I don't think there is much to gain from this game. It is extremely bare bones, and the things this game does different, aren't exciting.

Some reviews compare this game to Eye of the Beholder, Might & Magic, Dungeon Master or Bard's Tale. However, it is nothing of the sort, there is no leveling up, no stats, no armor, clothes or magic items, and not a great variety in weapons, inventory items or enemy types. There are no secrets or puzzles to speak of, no NPCs, taverns or shops. Magic Cauldron is a very simple game, You explore a series of interconnected maps, collect ingredients for potions and fight enemies. There's not much variety in how these maps look, either, because most map use only one or two textures for walls, so all forest maps look the same, all swamp maps look the same, all dungeon and tower maps look the same. You still don't get lost, because the game has an automap. However, there are only a few symbols on the automap, and while there are individual symbols for stairs leading up and stairs leading down, the "!" represents either a fast travel marker, an exit that leads north, east, west, or south, a hole in the floor or any point of interest (where you click on a hovering sphere and see one of the illustrations with a description in a yellow text box). This makes navigation a bit tedious at times. …

On release this game had some severe bugs. By now this has been resolved as far as I can tell. Only some slight visual glitches remain. It is a very simple dungeon crawler. If you are looking for some relaxed exploration with easy combat that doesn't require a lot of thought, this is exactly right. Being turn based, it avoids the constant dancing around the enemies which most real time first person grid systems have. A crafting system allows making potions which are helpful in combat. You go through the levels in a non-linear way. Graphics are charming in an old-school way, except maybe for the high resolution mouse cursor. On the other hand, if you are looking for deep character systems, difficult combat or a story, this is not the right game. I gave it a thumbs up since it falls in a niche which is not occupied by many old-school dungeon crawlers.