Indie Gems Bundle JRPG Edition Dungeon Rushers and Robothorium Review (Switch)

Review code used many thanks Gobinz Studio

Released as a double pack, Dungeon Rushers and Robothorium are 2D tactical RPG’s combining dungeon crawling with turn based battles.

Dungeon Rushers

In Dungeon Rushers you start with one character, Elian. He is a young lad who works as a toilet cleaner and has decided he has had enough of the rat race and the daily grind. One morning he makes a big decision to join the community of dungeon looters (like you would do) to make life more interesting.

He meets an accountant dwarf, Thorgrim, who joins up with Elian as they venture into the crypts to battle through skeletons and warlocks in the search of treasure. Let’s be honest here, you won’t be playing Dungeon Rushers for its narrative, however it does have little touches of humour in the game.

Dungeons Galore

As I’ve mentioned you start as Elian but along the way you’ll slowly assemble a group of 10 hearty adventurers and you can have 5 in your party at any given time. Dungeon Rushers is divided into dungeons which you access sequentially. Once you enter each one of the levels exploration takes place in a grid based dungeon. A badge icon represents your team and as you move the badge you reveal adjacent tiles.

At the start you are exploring pretty much blindly in the dungeons, walking into traps and unseen enemies. As your characters level up, new abilities become available that allow you to reveal all the squares within a certain radius, or uncover rooms that you can interact with. Such as an event room or finding a treasure chest. Characters also gain abilities to detect traps or distract monsters with bait.

Each dungeon has three challenges to complete, such as defeating all enemies, using no potions and no traps triggered. Once you complete these challenges on one level, a heroic version of the level will be available to play. The heroic mode will randomly replace stronger enemies which allows you to get more experience and better loot if you beat them.

Turn Based Battle’s

When you do encounter a foe the battles take place on a separate screen and uses a simplified turn based RPG system. During battles each party member has three different abilities which can inflict damage to the foe’s in distinct ways. Or they can apply unique statuses on your enemies or buffs for your team members.
The battles set a quick pace and a fair amount of strategy against enemies such as skeletons, goblins, necromancers and more. There are plenty of enemy types to fight and different attack strategies to learn.

As each character levels up they earn Talent points (skills) and you can apply them to your team members talent tree to increase different talents that are used with weapons and magic attacks. Such as increasing the damage that Elian poisoned sword inflicts or increasing the damage inflicted with Thorgrim’s war hammer’s special move.

Using Your ill-Gotten Gains.

When you want a break from dungeon crawling you can visit the shop and sell the loot you have collected, buy potion’s or items to craft with. The workshop is where crafting takes place, all be it in a simple form. You can craft new equipment for your team of looters or craft some armour and kit them out in the best gear.

Since this is a double pack of games it’s time to take a look at the other game in the pack…..

Robothorium

Robothorium is an RPG game as well, and it has more or less the same mechanics as Dungeon Rushers. Ofcourse it has a different story, characters and environments.

The year is 2052 and robotics have been given state of the art AI, this has contributed to a creation of a peaceful and prosperous society. The Robots decide they want to have rights and start to protest against human’s. Unfortunately for the robots the human’s don’t recognise the robots contributions to society and don’t believe they should have any rights.

A number of different fractions have emerged, including the evil Break Tech corporation and they all have their own agenda. When the Break Tech corporation tries to consolidate power, the robots decide to assemble a task force and work together with the different fractions to create a safe place for all robots.

You control S.A.I.A, a robot, as you lead a team through a series of missions, breaking into secret laboratories and other restricted locations all in the name of robot freedom.

Robots Advance

Starting with three party members, you lead a growing team though a series of dungeon like lab rooms, where you will encounter many things. Humans, broken robots and equipment, as you encounter each object you will have a choice to make. You can either hack, repair or kill it, humans can be set free or killed while a broken robot can be repaired or hacked. If you repair a robot it may become part of your team. You’ll also find events within the story where you have another choice to make, such as encouraging the robots protests or contaminating an air supply the weaken enemies on the map.

More Turn Based Fighting

Turn based fighting takes place when you encounter enemies while moving through the lab rooms. Each of your robots are based around three different area’s of defence, offence and support. Each robot has a special set of abilities that can be used whenever you want, but a robot has a meter that when filled will cause it to overload. If a party member overloads they are incapacitated for a turn.

Your opponents also have an overload meter with the same effect, so it pays to take note of this during battle and use it to your advantage.

Getting Crafty Again

Weapons and robots are varied with a multitude of gear combinations. The armour and weapons grow as the game progresses. Between missions you will have the chance to sort through all the items and gear you have collected in order to kit your party out to the max. You’ll find blueprints to use in crafting of new weapons and armour, which just requires having the ingredients and blueprints at hand to start. I found that I discovered enough new weapons and gear in the levels and didn’t need to craft much else.

Controls And Visuals All Round

Both games in this package can be played using the joy-cons and by using the touchscreen in the menus. I mostly played using the joy-cons as they seemed a lot more responsive than the touchscreen.

Visually both games are 2D graphics, the art on the robots looks particularly good and changes when you swap gear. The environments in both games have an attractive style, however the lack of animated background in Robothorium make the lab rooms feel a little empty.

Conclusion

Combat is a lot of fun and the challenge increases as you move through each game, both are easy to understand with a short tutorial at the start of each game. There is a decent variety of gear, weapons and abilities to play around with and change your team members in and out of your party.

Overall I enjoyed playing both games, however it was hampered by the persistent crashing and closing of both games, not just one of them. This happened often and for no apparent reason. Of course this can get annoying, even if you are not playing the games for long periods.

Fans of tactical games will like what both Dungeon Rushers and Robothorium offer in terms of gameplay, though it might be a good idea to wait until the game gets an update.

Despite this JRPG double pack crashing, I do like the core gameplay, I’d like it a lot if it was given a fix for crashing it deserves.

Final Verdict I like It