Deadly Rooms of Death - DROD

[Watser]

DROD.
One of the longest-running indie franchises, first released in the late 90's and still seeing regular releases today. Despite boasting a fairly active community almost nobody has heard of this game series before. Since it's a series I have consistently returned to throughout the years but rarely see discussed I figured I would make a thread.

DROD is a strategic turn-based puzzlecrawler, for lack of better terms. The goal of the game is simple: Use your wits to clear each room of monsters and other assortment of dungeon crawlies.

You play as Beethro holding the title and profession as a smitemaster. The controls are simple, you essentially have 3 different choices: Move Beethro in one of eight directions, swing your sword clock or counterclockwise, or choose to wait. Depending on your action, the monsters will always follow a 100% deterministic pattern depending on their AI (which varies from monster to monster). This way it is, in principle, possible to lay out a solution to each room before making your first move. Difficulty ranges from trivial to brutally difficult, often having to rely on your mastering of monster AI to exploit it to your advantage and being as efficient in your movement as possible. One very important aspect to keep in mind is the turn order - you go first then everything else.

The original trilogy, King Dugan's Dungeon, Journey to Rooted Hold, and The City Beneath, have been ported to the latest DROD 5.0 engine and can be run through Gunthro and the Epic Blunder through steam as DLC

NOTE: The GOG library contains outdated versions of the games and is unfortunately not recommended.

The old Architect's Edition of King Dugan's Dungeon is available for free from the Caravel Games website for both Windows and Linux http://forum.caravelgames.com/downloads.php

Alongside improvement of graphical fidelity a number of quality of life improvements have since been implemented e.g. clicking on buttons to see what they do, option to rewind one (or multiple) turns, challenges implemented into the game, line of sight for certain monsters etc. The game is still essentially the same since the Architect's Edition so it is a convenient way to try out the gameplay before committing hard-earned dollarinos. On sale, the steam version can be picked up for literal pennies though.

[WhiteShark]

Thanks for the rec, Watser. I've finished Floor 2 now so I'm commenting as promised. Playing Architect's Edition.

Thoughts:

• This probably changes later but right now, unlike other puzzle games, the solutions are quite loose. Depending on the room, sometimes there isn't even a single solution, and even when there is, you can still carry it out with quite a bit of freedom in your movements.
• As of the end of floor two there have only been three enemy types, but already I can see how this could get very interesting. Cockroaches run right at you, cockroach queens run straight away but spawn more cockroaches, and bats (?) follow when you flee and flee when you follow. I can tell that this is going to be the meat of the game.
• That said, the end of Floor 2 introduced destructible walls in addition to buttons that open doors and one-way arrows, so it's not like the game is lacking in environmental elements. I'm eager to see how far this aspect goes as well.
• I vehemently desire the rewind feature mentioned in the OP because there are cases where you understand the solution but inputting it is tedious and prone to error, and an error will force you to restart at the last checkpoint. It's not terrible but there was one room in particular where I had to clear out a whole wall of cockroaches and it mainly consisted of mashing Q/W and moving occasionally. Being the impatient man that I am, I overstepped and had to restart at least five times.

Overall I'm having good fun with it. I refrained from mentioning other UI issues because hopefully they're resolved in the Steam version. I'm frugal to the point of miserliness so I'll probably wait for a sale and then pick it up with some of the Steam$ I've collected selling old TF2 items.

[WhiteShark]

I played a few rooms into Level 3 and reached one where being able to click the buttons to see in advance what they would do would have been really nice. A couple rooms after that, while thinking about the Steam version UI improvements, it suddenly struck me that I have no idea if the saves are compatible. If they're not, I'll probably hold off on playing any more right now because I don't want to have to repeat it all later.

[Watser]

Thanks for the rec, Watser. I've finished Floor 2 now so I'm commenting as promised. Playing Architect's Edition.

Thoughts:

• This probably changes later but right now, unlike other puzzle games, the solutions are quite loose. Depending on the room, sometimes there isn't even a single solution, and even when there is, you can still carry it out with quite a bit of freedom in your movements.
• As of the end of floor two there have only been three enemy types, but already I can see how this could get very interesting. Cockroaches run right at you, cockroach queens run straight away but spawn more cockroaches, and bats (?) follow when you flee and flee when you follow. I can tell that this is going to be the meat of the game.
• That said, the end of Floor 2 introduced destructible walls in addition to buttons that open doors and one-way arrows, so it's not like the game is lacking in environmental elements. I'm eager to see how far this aspect goes as well.
• I vehemently desire the rewind feature mentioned in the OP because there are cases where you understand the solution but inputting it is tedious and prone to error, and an error will force you to restart at the last checkpoint. It's not terrible but there was one room in particular where I had to clear out a whole wall of cockroaches and it mainly consisted of mashing Q/W and moving occasionally. Being the impatient man that I am, I overstepped and had to restart at least five times.

Overall I'm having good fun with it. I refrained from mentioning other UI issues because hopefully they're resolved in the Steam version. I'm frugal to the point of miserliness so I'll probably wait for a sale and then pick it up with some of the Steam$ I've collected selling old TF2 items.

The rooms in general stay quite open-ended. Dependent on the structure of the room there is a more-or-less clear approach to how you are meant to solve it. Another important aspect is how you enter a room i.e. from which direction and which angle your sword is at. This can change the difficulty from near-impossible to easy/manageable.
Being the first game in the series, KDD doesn't have as many environmental elements as in the latter games where this has been heavily expanded upon. That being said, there are still a couple of surprises left to be discovered. Also, be on the lookout for secret rooms.
The possibility of rewinding, even just once, is a massive timesaver. Once you feel you got the hang of a room and your brain goes on autopilot it's incredibly easy to make a dumb mistake which is then severely punished.

I played a few rooms into Level 3 and reached one where being able to click the buttons to see in advance what they would do would have been really nice. A couple rooms after that, while thinking about the Steam version UI improvements, it suddenly struck me that I have no idea if the saves are compatible. If they're not, I'll probably hold off on playing any more right now because I don't want to have to repeat it all later.

This is a good question, and I am honestly not sure. Given there has been several major engine updates the past 20 years my gut feeling would be no but would need to test it.

[bionicman]

DROD is awesome, didn't get too far into it so far, but it's one of the more unique games I've ever played. I like the numpad controls... it's as if nethack were a puzzler!