Dungeons of Dredmor is a charming rogue like game that had an absolute lunatic create its world. Filled to the brim with pop-culture references - if your pop culture is that of fantasy, science fiction, geeky things and off-beat humour.
Within moments of starting to play the game, I found a traffic cone that could be used as a helmet - it promised to keep me safe on the International Super-Highway of some Internet, before making a casual, direct reference to William Gibson's "Neuromancer" novels, the birth the cyber/cypher punk literary genre.
There's no "classes" - just talents, or perks that you can pick up when creating your character. They're hilariously named, and even more hilariously described like the "Fleshsmithing" these role lets you do some sort of healing stuff, and also make things from the corpses of your enemies. There's also a reference to blacksmiths being "Squamish" in comparison to a fleshsmith.
Its solid stuff.
Gameplay and visuals are 16bit era inspired, and the music for the game is as colourful, bright, and charming as the writing.
Dungeons of Dredmor is brimming with attention to detail and tiny things that make you want to chuckle. It is easy to pick up and play, but notoriously difficult to master. It's more fun with perma-death, as you get the common screen of "Congratulations, You Have Died", before being whisked off to a high score screen and then being asked to attempt to create a higher score all over again.
You get quick, fun, intuitive (and procedurally generated) game play - with one flaw - slightly sluggish controls. If this game had the smooth controls of something like the original Torchlight, this title would be an unmitigated success in my books and something that would keep me entertained for YEARS.
Instead, this is a worthy romp for a few hours, until you delve deep enough into the mechanics to either become totally hooked, or engrossed by the futile desire to climb a leader board and high score chart of your own making.
This is a competent game, but I would just love for the controls to be more fluid.
The developers of this game should write a book, though - seriously, the writing alone in this title is enough to make me want to sit back down and read every single Douglas Adams novel all over again. It's that level of absurd - "Hello!", say monsters, as they try to hack you to bits.
Say "Hello" to this game, and give it a go yourself if you like intelligent things that make you laugh for all the right reasons. Go get it, it is cheap on Steam at the moment.