The beautiful thing about people who like dungeon crawlers is that they’re all sick. Every single one of them! This is not a genre for the faint of heart. It’s often plodding, methodical, and conniving, so focused on stats and character classes that you might drown in the amount of numbers you have to pay attention to. So how about a dungeon crawler where combat happens automatically and all you have to do is a little programming? It’s called Dungeon Automata, and trust me, the programming isn’t as bad as it seems.
Dungeon Automata is self-described by developer Medium-Rare Games as autological, a “new twist in the dungeon crawler genre”, that is, an “automatic combat game meets logic-based visual scripting, in which you control the behavior of golems via programming”. Each of your party members is programmable in the sense that they have different nodes that you can link together that will allow them to perform certain actions on certain things, whether they be enemies or other party members. There are even yes/no statements that allow your party members to change what they do based on factors like a party member’s HP levels.
The whole name of the game is basically optimization. You’re trying to figure out what’s the best combination of tools you have, which you do through trial and error. This also applies to dungeon navigation, as you can also use visual scripting to dictate the directions your party members take. This is also where the problem lies: you have to do all the programming before your adventurers leave, and once they’re there, there’s nothing you can do to help them.
It’s not a roguelike either! Each level is “handcrafted”, so you don’t have to worry about any sort of randomization in this regard. The game is wrapped in wonderfully crisp, black-and-white pixel art, and even has music legend Yuzo Koshiro, known for his work on Sonic the Hedgehog, Streets of Rage, Ys, Shenmue and more, attached as composer. Lots of good stuff on display here! And there is a demo to try if you also like Steam.
