The Best VR Roguelike Dungeon Crawler Out There is Ancient Dungeon VR
Brush off your sword swinging arm and your signed photo of Gary Gygax, because the Dungeon Crawler has made it's way to VR. No, I'm not talking about Demeo. I'm talking about a first person 3D VR Roguelike experience that has you travel through underground labyrinths, evade traps, and fight monsters. There's all sorts of zombies, and slimes, and... flowers? Also whatever this is. What... what is that?
I first found Ancient Dungeon VR while looking at whatever was free on SideQuest, hungry as I often am for new and novel Virtual Reality experiences. I don’t remember much of my first impressions, mostly a faint memory of frantically looking for any kind of healing item, and a lot of breaking crates and pots to see if anything was inside. I had barely dug through the surface of the game, and decided to come back to it later after the developer had more time to work on it.
Well it was worth the wait. What is now different to the previous version I don’t recall, but things have definitely gotten a lot more interesting. Sure it looks like you’re fighting Legos, but this is the best VR Roguelike and the best VR Dungeon Crawler I’ve seen so far. Let’s dig into why, so let’s address the elephant in the room first. Let’s talk about the Visuals.
The Visuals
While blocky textures don't usually look good in VR, that's mostly a problem of mine when talking about flat 2D sprites overlayed on a world with depth. The blocks themselves aren't the problem, it's the conflict of overlaying something so clearly 2D and unnatural onto a 3D environment.
Ancient Dungeon VR doesn't have that problem, because its characters are also 3D and made out of voxel blocks. If you aren't a big fan of this presentation, then I don't blame you. Virtual Reality usually means you want more immersion. While games running standalone on the Quest 2 don't look like Half Life: Alyx, though some of them try and do really well, it's easier to get immersed when the other characters and objects look like something you could find in real life.
Still, even as someone who would usually prefer more realistic graphics, Ancient Dungeon VR takes this blocky voxel aesthetic and runs with it. I can't even be mad, because everything is animated so well and seems to lifelike. From the bats to the slimes to the zombies. The blocky look works here, and it does because each area of the dungeon has a unified look. Each has a unique color pallet that is matched by the monsters you find within, and wow does it end up looking good.
I'm surprised such blocky models can work so well in a VR world, but here you are. Even the old pots that line the walls, and the vines hanging down from the ceiling all add to the sense of each room being a real place around you. The detail in the walls and objects really trick you into feeling like you are inside of this dungeon, and that's one hell of a feat when everything is made out of blocks.
It’s also usually pretty dark, and if there’s one type of game that should be dark, it’s a fantasy Dungeon Crawler. There's a lot of visual atmosphere, and the sounds that each area make also go a long way in helping you feel like you're in a catacomb deep beneath the earth, surrounded by things that are trying to get rid of you.
Sound
As for sound, what Ancient Dungeon VR does better than anything else is ambiance. It sounds like you’re in a dungeon. The background sounds are slow, quiet, creepy. It makes you wary of what lays beyond each corner and in each room. It’s minimalist, a low hum in the background that lets you know that you are in a huge place that can be quiet but isn’t ever completely dead, and is definitely hostile. The ambiance sounds like what you’d think a Dungeon would sound like.
Your footsteps make echoey pitter patters across the ground as you walk through the dungeon, and that is where the quiet ambiance ends. In stark contrast to the quiet moments, when the action is going on there is a big collection of sounds that let you know that it’s time to fight, and give you information about what is happening.
When an enemy notices you, they make an alerted noise, and each attack makes a sound of its own. So even if you don’t see what is coming at you, with enough experience you know exactly what you’re dealing with from the sound alone.
Crates and pots breaking, your throwing knife swishing through the air, your sword swinging through a vine. They all make very distinct noises. Overall they form a soundscape that, just like the visuals, is immersive but not realistic. They wouldn’t sound too out of place coming from an arcade cabinet, and also serve to not only convey information, but also the differences between enemies and what is near you in the environment.
More than anything else the sound of combat and of the monsters you fight in the Ancient Dungeon serve to make each encounter a high note between bouts of tension built up during exploration. This is a finely paced Roguelike.
Pacing
Most thankfully out of all the things it does well, Ancient Dungeon speeds things up compared to more traditional Roguelikes. The experience of getting into the dungeon, fighting enemies, going downwards, collecting upgrades, and eventually dying or winning is much faster. This might not seem like an important distinction, it might even be a detriment depending on how you look at it. There is no extensive inventory management, the upgrade tree is short, and each run is shorter.
However, this is exactly the right move for a VR game adapting a genre that is about as old as gaming itself. The best Virtual Reality games all speed things up, they take the waiting out of the process. The immersive nature of VR, and the fact that you are most likely playing a Virtual Reality game standing, means that waiting around feels like waiting in line at the grocery store. Inevitably at one point you will ask yourself whether the waiting is worth it. Since in a game there are no real groceries you need to eat to be gained, you will be more likely to say no and take the headset off.
Like I mentioned, Ancient Dungeon doesn't have this problem. There is occasionally a little musing to be done over which item to put in your two item slots, or whether or not to pick up certain upgrades, but there is almost always an obvious way forward, or at least a place to look for the way forward. If you get lost, there’s also a map. Outside of getting turned around a few times, Ancient Dungeon keeps the action coming.
It encourages constant delving, constantly going forwards into the next encounter. You can look for secrets, or backtrack to make sure you've gotten every piece of loot, and this may increase your chances of prevailing in the end. That's a personal choice, but the point here is that it is still a choice. If you just want to keep going there's no need to wait in line, the cashier is always free. Go through the next door, or jump down the next hole and face what comes next at your will.
Of course you won't constantly be seeking danger, the option for exploration will inevitably draw you in to some degree, and Ancient Dungeon does that well too. There are secrets to find, extra paths to climb, and hidden rooms to uncover. The action is also not so constant that it is overwhelming. Whether you constantly push forward or wait a little is your choice, and the best games are full of choices on how to play them. Ancient Dungeon VR gives you the option to pace yourself, to decide how quickly you want to go forward. You decide whether you want to play cautiously or run in, and that is certainly a strength.
The shortness of each run, and the ability to save and quit at the beginning of each area, makes Ancient Dungeon a very easy game to pick up when you've only got a little time. The experience of Ancient Dungeon VR can go from casual in the earlier, easier, levels, to a constant tension in the later ones.
When you crack into a new area for the first time there is a rush of excitement and wonder. Each floor is so different and unique in its art style and enemies that finding it gives you not only the excitement of having completed an area you never have before, but also the thrill of discovering a whole new one. Though this can be said about a lot of the more modern roguelikes, who have a similar biome system to show how much progress you have made, and Ancient Dungeon VR does this very well. New enemies often build off of old ones, but with a twist to make them more unique or just plain more difficult.
Gameplay
Of course great pacing doesn’t matter at all if the gameplay itself is boring. Luckily Ancient Dungeon VR doesn’t lack in that department either. Your goal is to get to the end of each floor, defeat a boss monster, and do the same in the next floor until you defeat the big boss at the end. If you die you have to start again from the beginning.
Every time you die you get some soft progression through Insight points that you get for finding artifacts and discovering new things in the dungeon. You can spend these points on upgrades that are almost all designed to make you more survivable. Like the upgrade that gives you a Potato worth half a heart of health after every boss fight. Pretty standard Roguelike fare.
The obstacles that keep you from achieving these goals are where things get interesting. First you’ve got monsters, lots of monsters. From aggressive plants, to slimes, to the undead, and to the angry book club, you’ll find a lot of both classic, but also very interesting choices in enemy design. Fighting them means you need to master your sword and throwing dagger. While the dagger takes some skill to land at a distance and it does a lot less damage than your sword, you always have a ranged option. Not all enemies will let you abuse them from far away though.
There are enemies that rely more on ranged, and some on melee. The Boss monsters also vary. While I won’t spoil any too much, the boss fights are definitely a highlight of this game and they have some interesting mechanics. Some are like the other monsters you’ve been fighting, just bigger and better, while some are wholly new. There’s a good mixture of varying attack distances and styles from all of the enemies to keep you on your toes. Speaking of keep you on your toes, there’s also traps.
Some are more obvious, like the old floor spikes special, but more devious traps like the arrows that shoot out of the walls can easily catch you off guard. It would be nice if there was a little better variety in what traps you run into, and hopefully the developer is working on adding more.
As you kill monsters and go deeper, you get Gold and Keys. You can use gold to buy things or gamble at the shop run by the creepy Phantom of the Opera fan, as long a you don’t make him angry. You won’t like him when he’s angry.
Keys open chests and loot areas that you wouldn’t be able to get into without. As far as VR Roguelike resources go, very standard, nothing too interesting here. Oh, and you can get your hands on some potions that do various things like increase attack damage or summon Wisps to help you. There’s also food that you use to regain health, and you’ll probably always want more food. Health is your most precious resource, and getting hit as little as possible is core to winning in Ancient Dungeon VR. Both of these can be stored in the two wrist slots you have.
Potions are helpful, but the things that make you really powerful are artifacts. You can hold as many as you want, except for a single artifact slot for special abilities, and artifacts do all sorts of things. They can increase your stats, give your attacks special effects, some just give you keys or gold. Artifacts can do things like give you gold each time you get hit, or each time you hit something. There’s a huge variety, and as you might have guessed, some are far better than others.
There really is an element of randomness to each foray into the Ancient Dungeon, and it's not a randomness often driven by choice. You mostly take what artifacts you get, or you don't. With some artifacts being much better than others it is easy to become very overpowered or very underpowered during each run. Still, a single mistake can undo all of this progress, and cause you to lose a lot of hearts and even die.
Make a mistake against a single group of the enemies that you will find many times in many rooms, and the whole run can be over no matter how lucky you've gotten with your artifacts. So yes there's an element of luck, but it's an element you'll know about playing this game.
Each run of bad artifacts leaves you hungry to get a shot at some more, hopeful that your next spin on the invisible table will start your ascent up to herculean might. Each good run of luck is as precious as you know it is, and when you get powerful artifacts early it makes each fight more tense, as you don't want to make a mistake and lose the opportunity to win. That being said, you'll generally get enough powerful artifacts to have a good shot at making it through if you play wisely. Better artifacts can’t make up for playing poorly, so stay on your toes no matter how beefy you get.
Conclusion
Ancient Dungeon VR is a fun VR Roguelike Dungeon Crawler that right now is in a really small club of VR Roguelikes. There’s nothing else quite like it out right now, and more importantly it does what it’s setting out to do well. There’s even more goodies to be had when you fight whatever is at the bottom of the dungeon, and it’s clear that the developer is not done making additions yet. So it’s probably going to get even better.
Ancient Dungeon VR is 19.99$ on the Oculus Store and Steam. If you’re looking for a solid VR Roguelike and want an immersive Dungeon Crawling experience then I can’t recommend this game enough.
