Pixel Dungeon


Pixel Dungeon is a 2012 roguelike indie game created by Oleg Dolya. Through turn-based gameplay, the player must descend and battle through dungeon floors to obtain the Amulet of Yendor. Initially developed for Android, it expanded to iOS and PC platforms. Dolya stopped updating the game in 2015. Since it is open source, the game's small community have created mods and games based on Pixel Dungeon's code, the most notable of which is Shattered Pixel Dungeon. While it received little attention from game critics, the few who reviewed it found the gameplay addictive, striking a balance between approachability and roguelikes's defining difficulty.

Gameplay

Pixel Dungeon is a simple roguelike video game with pixel art graphics. Players are tasked with obtaining the immortality-giving Amulet of Yendor by descending down the floors of a dangerous dungeon filled with monsters and magical creatures. Like other roguelikes, death is permanent and requires the player to start from the very beginning with a new game.
Before every game, the player must choose a character class to play as. The starting characters are the Warrior, Mage and Rogue, each of which has unique abilities. A further class, the Huntress, can be unlocked later after defeating the third boss. Gameplay is turn-based and tile-based. Every time the player character moves or uses an item counts as at least one turn; in-game time progresses and enemies move every turn.
The player descends through maze-like floors such as sewers, abandoned prisons and buried Dwarven cities. New floor layouts are procedurally generated every game. There are 25 levels, with shops and a boss fight every five levels. NPCs can appear and give players quests in exchange for items.
The player can attack enemies with an equipped melee weapon, or use wands/ranged weapons from their inventory. Armor can be equipped which provides absorption against melee attacks. Rings can be equipped which provide bonuses to the player. Equipment can be upgraded, which enhances their stats. Weapons and armor can also be enchanted, giving them an extra effect. It is important to note that a player must become familiar with a piece of equipment to know its upgrade level. Some pieces of equipment may even be cursed, making them harm the player instead of helping them. The player has a range of items at their disposal. The player can find and use potions and scrolls, but they start off unknown to the player. For example, a player may not know the effect of an "orange potion" until they identify it. The potions and scrolls change at the start of every new game. For example, the "golden potion" may be a "potion of healing" one game and then a "potion of frost" in the next game.
The player levels up by gaining experience points from killing enemies. This increases their maximum health points and effectiveness in combat. Enemies sometimes drop equipment or money. The money can be used in shops that are on the floor below every boss level to purchase items. Another mechanic is hunger. The player must find and eat food, or they will starve and take damage every turn.

Background

Pixel Dungeon was created by Oleg "Watabou" Dolya, an independent developer, who was inspired by another roguelike titled Brogue. By July 2014, it had over one million downloads on Google Play. Dolya released the game for iOS in July 2015, but shortly after stopped working on the game, considering it complete.

Reception

Pixel Dungeon was highly praised by players upon release. In a 4.5-star review, TouchArcade's Andrew Koziara thought that it struck a good balance between approachability and the unforgiving difficulty of roguelikes by streamlining their mechanics, but found that the purpose of many items remained unclear. Koziara and John Walker of Rock Paper Shotgun enjoyed exploring the dungeon and learning the details over time. The few critics who reviewed the game found it addictive despite the difficulty. Android Central and GamesRadar+ included it on their list of the best Android games in 2022.

Fan creations

Pixel Dungeon attracted a small community of fans who started a subreddit and Wikia for the game, which Koziara recommended for confused players. In 2014, Dolya made Pixel Dungeon open-source. The community has since developed mods for Pixel Dungeon and their own games based on its code.
Evan Debenham, a novice Canadian developer known as Shattered Pixel, started working on Shattered Pixel Dungeon shortly after Pixel Dungeon went open-source and he released it for Android. Debenham intended to work on balance out item benefits in Pixel Dungeon for several months, but it took seven years of continuous updates for Version 1.0 to come out in August 2021, coinciding with the iOS release. It is currently Debenham's primary project and main source of income.
TouchArcade's John Nelson praised the full release of Shattered Pixel Dungeon as "a finely honed version of with even more content and a much more approachable feel". In a four-star review, 148Apps's Campbell Bird praised the game's varietythere are 50 enemies and hundreds of itemsbut found that, depending on the procedurally generated elements, it can feel like either one of the most satisfying or most demoralizing dungeon crawlers. Sometimes, Bird could intuit whether he could successfully continue the run based on the items he had at that point. Den of Geek's Margaret David conceded "it's not the swankiest Roguelike", but is a great game to pass the time and can run on almost every platform, while the Indonesian website, Tech in Asia, found it enjoyable but notes that it did not meaningfully expand on Pixel Dungeon's core. Shattered Pixel Dungeon has since become considered one of the best open-source video games of all time. In Linux Magazine, Graham Morris included the PC version on his FOSSPicks, praising the "beautiful" 8-bit graphics and music and "addictive" gameplay.
Other popular variants include Skillful Pixel Dungeon, Yet Another Pixel Dungeon, and Remixed Dungeon: Pixel Rogue. These games all have the same base mechanics, something Bo Thompson tried to avoid when developing Pixel Odyssey.