Dungeons of Dredmor
Long ago, the Dark Lord Dredmor was bound in the darkest dungeons beneath the earth by great and mighty heroes. Centuries later, the magical bonds that hold him in place are loosening and his power grows ever stronger. The land cries out for a new hero, a powerful warrior or a mystic wizard like those spoken of in the prophecies of yore.
What they have, unfortunately, is you…
Step into the Dungeons of Dredmor! Embrace your destiny! Face evil of the likes the world has never known – the terrifying Swarmies, the undulating Thrusties, and the adoreable nest-building Diggles. Worship Inconsequentia, the Goddess of Pointless Sidequests, or try your luck as a devotee of the nameless Lutefisk God. Cast powerful magic learned from the dark business warlocks of the school of Necronomiconomics, or summon the Viking Runes of your ancestors to blast your foes with thunder and lightning! Discover the power that can be had by wielding a bizarre armament of devastating weaponry such as the Interdimensional Axe, the Plastic Ring, and the Invisible Shield (if you can remember where you left it). Wield shoes decorated by the Dwarven Glittersmiths, all of whom have now committed suicide because of their shame, and embrace the joys of destroying giant moustache-wielding brick demons with a mace decorated with tawdry, delicious bacon.
While you’re at it, be prepared to die. A lot. In hideous, screaming pain that makes you throw your keyboard out the window.
The Dungeons of Dredmor await. Are you ready for them?
Key features:
- Classic Roguelike gameplay with the sweet, refreshing taste of point-and-click interfaces. No longer must you press CTRL-ALT-SHIFT-x to drink a potion.
- Randomly generated dungeons entice you with the sweet, sweet promises of treasure and … things.
- Old-school pixel goodness. Face lovingly hand-animated monsters and enjoy the great taste of beautiful, individually rendered items on top of a sea of gorgeous, potent tile-work.
- Wield the awesome power of the Anvil of Krong, lest it wield you!
- Incredibly complicated crafting system! Wield relics of the Great Elven/Dwarven conflict; grind down ingots to make powdered aluminum and shove it directly up your nostrils!
- Hordes of monsters never-before-seen in a video game!
- Deploy cunning traps to defeat your foes!
- Infinite replay value: choose from a selection of mind-boggling skills to create your character. A new gameplay experience awaits every time!
- Did we mention there’s lutefisk?
Game Discussion
Steam User 19
Short Answer: Look at my playtime, that's real, loved every moment.
Long Answer: Over a decade after its release I've found nothing quite like it. It's what I'd call an "Open Book" roguelike. Instead of relying on keeping key information from you, it makes everything you need to know available to you and then just pits you against brutally unfair odds and you figure out how to be even more unfair in response. Even on the hardest difficulty mode vanilla you can stack the nonsense higher and win, which I've done multiple times through different methods. The game's more or less a solved problem to me now and it's now a matter of finding increasingly silly ways to beat it on its hardest difficulty setting. And that's the appeal, it is a complex but solvable problem. If you want a big, complex problem to solve at your leisure and at your own pace then Dredmor is an excellent game for you. Just make sure to get all the DLC because they contain essential Quality of Life features.
Steam User 13
A real dinosaur; the game is so old there are people playing it today who weren't born when it came out. In the same way that Dragonball or Evangelion could be called genre progenitors, Dredmor was a trailblazer in transitioning from 'everything is nethack' to the modern market state with many different takes on the genre. Also like most genre progenitors, it has been in most/all ways eclipsed by its spawn. Playing Dredmor is fun and nostalgic (even for me, who never played it in its heyday) but limited by the technical nature of its engine. The controls are fiddly, the information on what is actually happening is usually completely invisible, and a host of QoL features we take for granted now just aren't there. I'd recommend playing it on easy or medium and turning off permadeath (there are save corruption bugs) and just enjoying the ride.
Steam User 9
this was the last game my dad ever got for me, so many years ago, and i have had much enjoyment over the years, so it only feels right that i thank the game makers for the enjoyment i have had over the years
Steam User 8
It's actually a pretty good and unique roguelike in addition to the lulz (which are also pretty good and unique).
Steam User 8
Dungeons of Dredmor offers authentic roguelike punishment wrapped in quirky humor to mask its fundamental emptiness. Its technological abandonment on modern systems serves as a perfect metaphor for gaming's disposable culture. You'll die repeatedly, chuckle at lutefisk references, and never question why you keep returning to this cycle of futility. It's comfort food for the digitally masochistic—familiar, obsolete, and ultimately forgettable.
Steam User 4
This has been one of my favorite games since I first played it, around the time it came out. It hasn't been updated in years (though it looks like that might be changing soon, fingers crossed!), but even if it never got any new content or mods again (and that won't be the case if I have anything to say about it!), I'd still probably spend hundreds or thousands more hours in it.
The dialogue and worldbuilding are funny, and the base gameplay is engaging, but the thing that makes this game shine above anything else in the genre is the class system: You pick 7(? I think) classes from the list, and you gain the first-level abilities of each; then every level, you gain a new ability from one of those classes, of your choice. Really simple system, but it makes rolling new characters immensely fun, and I've inexplicably never seen the system used anywhere else since.
I would and do absolutely recommend this game to any fan of the genre, and anyone who just thinks they *might* like the genre. It's very fun, very accessible, and dear god is it only $10? Yeah, pick this one up.
Steam User 5
A really good traditional roguelike(if you wish to play on permadeath) got me into roguelikes back in the day. It is still an amazing game, runs can last 7-8 hours assuming you get to the Dredmor level which is level 10. If for some reason you think thats too much, you can always tick an option to shorten the levels and gain more exp.
Unfortunately the dev team disbanded and went bankrupt after the failure that was Clockwork Empires , but it is still a timeless classic with workshop mod support and great expansion packs. The game is full of references to other games from its music to it's memes to your own character's portrait being it a doom reference.
The game also had 3 expansion packs (1 free) that heavily increased the replayability of the game tremendously.
My only real criticism of this game is that it's not really made with controllers in mind, so it's a hard game to recommend if you own a steam deck or wanna play laid back.
Overall i give this a 9/10 , if you want to play a traditional roguelike that doesn't look like unreadable ASCII gibberish, this is one of the best games to introduce yourself to the roots of the Traditional Roguelike Genre.