Dandy Dungeon: Legend of Brave Yamada is a fantastically strange little RPG featuring a hero questing through a series of 5×5 dungeons. Each floor is 25 tiles and the object is to clear the level by drawing a line from the entry square to the exit.
. A tale of naked bravery, complete at last!.Only the dark lord stands between one middle aged-man and his quest for true love!Become Yamada-kun, a 36 year old programmer at a major games company who hates his job, as he transforms himself into the star of his own delusional dungeon-delving video game!And don’t forget your quest for the love of your charming neighbour, Maria! Will love conquer all?Spring 2020 will see a gigantic update for Dandy Dungeon, originally released in June 2019!The update will see ‘Dandy Dungeon II: The Phantom Bride’ added to the base game, completing our brave hero’s tale at last!What is Dandy Dungeon?.A rogue-like with simple mechanics and hard-core depth!.Oodles of content: more than 90 dungeon types, over 560 weapons & armour and 260+ monsters.Experience a unique harmony of chip-tunes and humming?! Over 130 tracks!.Heaven’s Door: a 99 floor, post-game challenge dungeon!.Collaborations galore! Meet RPG composer Nobuo Uematsu and Touhou Project’s Zun too!GAME SYSTEMTruth be told, Dandy Dungeon’s simplistic exterior belies a game with many hidden depths. Winning or losing is all down to the player. You’ll need to know all about the magic-reflecting Magic Barrier, the inescapable wrath of Thunderall, the all-powerful draw of the Magnet, the penetrating attack of the spear, the all-powerful blow of the axe and the like in order to conquer the game’s dungeons.Dungeon crawling is simply a matter of tracing a single path through each floor, but it’s not as simple as all that!
We crammed every inch of the game’s 5x5 grid-based roguelike dungeons with variety!HUMMING MUSICMiddle-aged man music.? Middle-aged jingles?!Yamada’s world is full of weird and wonderful sounds, from the start of a dungeon, the discovery of a danger zone, levelling up and Yamada’s mysterious shouts of ‘Arabesque!’.Wundabaraba baba scat tunes for the boss monsters, the Indian programming genius’ tune, and let’s not forget that song from the Mysterious Hard Labor Zone Who on earth greenlit all these oddball tunes?The comic-prince of chiptunes, Keichi Sugiyama joins forces with Enka BOSSA’s founder and singer, Caorinho Fujiwara to create an audio experience you won’t find elsewhere! And mystery singer Nagasa Bonus, whose smooth voice flows over the chiptunes of the English version’s theme song: ”Retrograde life”.STORY36 year old Yamada-kun is a programmer at a major games company who hates his job. Deep into every night, alone in his apartment, he works on his own game: a delusional dungeon delving RPG where he is the hero; Brave Yamada!Then,oOne day, he falls in love at first sight with his new neighbor Maria-chan and in an effort to nurture these feelings, adds Princess Maria into his delusional dungeon game!Will Yamada-kun and Maria-chan find love?Is destiny pre-programmed, or randomly generated? Is love a bug or a feature?
Taking on the dungeon crawling RPG sub-genre once again after nailing it with the massively underrated Moon, Dandy Dungeon - Legend of Brave Yamada thrusts players into the often naked life of Yamada San - stuck in his dead-end game development job for most of the working day, and spending as much free time as possible creating the video game of his dreams in his small apartment. Quickly consuming the life of Yamada, the plot rolls along at a rapid pace with firings, new tenants, and a deep rooted conspiracy mimicking the plight of indie developers making their own way against the big names.Addressing you directly as some kind of life approving overlord, Yamada explains his titles' premises as he codes, asking for help debugging and testing every aspect of its design. At the beginning, few options are available. 'Debug' and 'play,' though, all are presented beautifully with a popup menus coloured in that Final Fantasy blue and white that gives that nostalgic feeling from the outset.Gameplay is simple and perfectly suited to the Switch, as controlling Yamada's programmed protagonist, and the path of least resistance must be drawn through the dungeon created. In the beginning minimal enemies take up the screen, and can be easily dealt with by a quick sword swipe. With the exception of drawing the line to travel, and administering spells and health potions that can be picked up through progression, all actions are CPU controlled.These minimal inputs could be seen as a downside considering the genre being presented, instead it fits perfectly for the pick up and play style of games the Switch excels in.
Relaxing as it is to take the hands off the wheel, the challenges presented require some quick lateral thinking. Once the path line is in motion, a timer begins to run down penalising with death if a path is not settled on. All squares in the dungeon must also be passed over when heading for the exit, or each tile becomes its own flaming ball of death attacking in sequence at the door.Crafting the perfect route quickly becomes a personal obsession, and even more so in the later stages. Items, coins and spells are littered throughout, and bonuses are given for the perfect run. These rewards can then be piled into the upgrade system through armour, weapons, and a surprisingly deep crafting system.
None of these features feel tacked on due to the humour taking a deep dive into self-aware territory.Yamada draws inspiration from the residents popping in and out of his room, populating the game world, and adding features based on the conversations and appearances of each. The main influence is Maria, the new neighbour who quickly becomes not only the object of his affection but the objective for completion, coded in as the princess in another castle, and converted into a numerical love ability scale.Cubed3 Rating. The hands-off approach to this RPG adventure can be a bit misleading based on screenshots alone, but accept Dandy Dungeon - Legend of Brave Yamada for what it is, and relax with the simple premise and delightfully funny plot. The unique premise really is unlike anything most have played, and it plays into the satisfaction of being able to use them brain cells to hit a perfect route every time.
With a plot that is equally interesting and hilarious, as well as the rewarding nature of items and new options being thrown in at a rapid pace, invest in this and everything is sure to be fine and dandy.