Knights of the Rogue Dungeon

Genre: Arcade

Players: 1

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Review:

Knights of the Rogue Dungeon is an Arcade-style game that originated as a game called Knight Fright on iOS in 2019, with this updated and remade version releasing in 2024 on PC and Nintendo Switch. And as is made clear from the screenshot above, this is a game that is very clearly inspired by the arcade classic, Q*Bert.

That’s not to say that this is a copycat game. Knights of the Rogue Dungeon positions itself as a “Roguelike” take on the classic game, though this is only partly true – the game’s levels are somewhat randomized, and at least to start with players only have one life and get booted back to the start when they take a hit. However, this game lacks a lot of the variety and upgrades we tend to associate with Roguelikes, and while there are permanent upgrades players can purchase between rounds, your ability to save up for these takes so long that it’s hardly worth noting.

However, the Roguelike stuff isn’t the only original element here. This game also makes use of a mechanic to encourage players to plan their routes through each stage carefully. As with Q-Bert, stages are constructed from cube blocks, and walking atop such a block changes its color, lighting it up, with stage completion depending on the player having stepped on each block in the stage. Knights of the Rogue Dungeon pushes players to try to ensure that they do their best to avoid stepping on blocks they’ve already trod on, because stepping repeatedly on new blocks transforms their character into a knight that can charge through enemies unharmed… but only until they step on a lit tile, which transforms them back to normal and resets the count.

It’s a clever mechanic, but due to the layout of the game’s levels, sometimes stepping on a lit tile is unavoidable, leaving you scrambling to get back up to your combo to jump back in the knight armor. When this is happening, the random spawns of enemies can end your run in an instant when one drops on top of you without giving you any time to dodge out of the way. In fact, the way it’s unclear where in that vertical column it’s falling means you can’t even tell whether the falling enemy is a threat to you until it smacks you in the face.

The visuals are partly at fault for this – even though the game uses 3D visuals, in a boxy voxel-like style, the camera remains stationary, only scrolling as you move but not giving you the best idea where things are in three dimensions. The visuals are otherwise decent though, making use of some nice details and even adding in a bit of FOV blur for a bit of flair. This is backed by a repetitive soundtrack that works well enough for the game but isn’t at all memorable.

Overall, I think Knights of the Rogue Dungeon has some things going for and against it when compared to Q*Bert, but in the end we are still comparing this to a game from over 40 years ago, and while Knights of the Rogue Dungeon does seem to want to expand on that game with some ideas that have potential, it either fails to commit to those ideas or undermines them with additional problems. As a result, it’s hard to recommend this game.

tl;dr – Knights of the Rogue Dungeon is an Arcade-style game that is very clearly modeled after Q*Bert. While it has some interesting additions to that classic gameplay, none of those ideas work out very well, resulting in a game that’s just as frustrating as it is fun.

Grade: C

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