Dungeon Village

Genre: Management Simulation

Players: 1

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Review:

Without a doubt the most prolific developer and publisher of Management Simulation games on Nintendo Switch is Kairosoft, who specializes in games with a retro-style isometric pixel art style, often with the word “Story” in the title. As of this writing, Kairosoft has released 55 games on Nintendo Switch, most of them Management Simulations.

After their earlier games, Kairosoft had established a few templates for their Simulation games that later games would largely follow. Game Dev Story established a Simulation-style game more focused on managing employee time and focus, while Hot Springs Story established a Simulation style in line with Theme Park Simulators where you try to cater to guests’ tastes to maximize attendance and income.

When Dungeon Village was released on mobile devices in the US in 2012, with ports to Nintendo Switch in 2018, PlayStation 4 in 2021, PC in 2022, and Xbox One in 2023, it more or less followed the formula of Hot Springs Story due to the way you get to choose the layout of what you’re placing and you’re trying to build things up to appeal to visitors, though in a manner that’s slightly like Epic Astro Story, this is combined with RPG elements as those visitors are helping you explore the surrounding area and fend off nearby monsters, with this game’s premise being that you’re managing a medieval fantasy-style town beleaguered by monsters on the verge of an area with lucrative dungeons to explore.

As I mentioned above, this game makes use of Kairosoft’s signature presentation style using simple retro-styled pixel art visuals presented in an isometric view, paired with repetitive chiptune music and sound effects. Apart from the forgettable music, everything about this presentation is endearing, though it seems a bit generic compared to some of Kairosoft’s other titles.

Dungeon Village is apparently built on a loop of improving your village to attract adventuring heroes who will buy from your shops and then head to the nearby area to fight monsters, leveling up until you deem them ready to be sent to one of the nearby dungeons that pops up, where the adventurers will bring back discoveries you can use to improve your town. You don’t control these adventurers directly, but if you wish you can spend your money to buy weapons and armor to outfit them with to improve their chances in battle.

In many ways, the premise seems very similar to Epic Astro Story, but unfortunately I just don’t think this game was as well thought-out as that title, which not only gave you numerous avenues to improve your colony, but kept things going at a brisk pace.

By contrast, in Dungeon Village it often feels like you have only a very limited number of ways you can proceed, and everything drags on at a crawl. I simply didn’t feel like I was getting any of the elements that made Epic Astro Story so great – the sense of freedom, the exploration, the town-building, the resource management… all of it is either gone here or extremely simplified.

In the end, Dungeon Village was a big disappointment for me. I suppose, as a simple Management Simulation, it has all the right pieces in place, but with such minimal choice and slow pacing, it’s hard to get excited for this game over numerous better ones in Kairosoft’s catalog (not to mention games from other game companies). I recommend you go for one of those instead.

tl;dr – Dungeon Village is a Management Simulation where players manage a village in a medieval fantasy setting that has been plagued by monsters, trying to attract heroes and send them out on quests to fight back the menace while gathering resources to improve the village. Unfortunately, this game gives players far too little freedom to improve their town, and the pacing is dreadfully slow. You have countless better alternatives to this on Nintendo Switch.

Grade: C-

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