Review: Super Dungeon Bros

So what happens when you take a co-op dungeon arcade game, throw in some rock and heavy metal and watch far too much TMNT? Well you get Super Dungeon Bros, a game that promises to take four players on a journey to conquer dungeons whilst rocking out. It also marks the first time that for the Xbox ‘Games with Gold’ promotion, a brand new Indie game has been released for free with it as well as releasing for Playstation 4 and PC via STEAM. So it had my attention, now it was time to see if it lived up to the hype!

Super Dungeon Bros tells the tale of four brothers in arms, Knights who are joined by a love of smashing things and rock music do what all fans of heavy metal do one day, and play a record backwards….you can already see where this is going. Playing it backwards delivers the knights a message from the Gods of Rock, bestowing upon them a quest to explore the dungeons of Rokheim in search of loot, evil undead monsters oh and the lost fabled Rock Stars of Legend.

There is a very tongue in cheek tone to the humour in Super Dungeon Bros, whilst the premis is warm hearted and almost cliché of most games featuring rock music as its foundation, Brutal Legend comes to mind, it does have a fun arcade feel to it right from the get go and introduction cut scene. The game even released with a DLC pack that adds four female heroes that can be picked as well to balance out the amount of Bro-ness going on in the game.

The game is absolutely designed to be played with four players, even the local couch co-op wants you to have three friends all plugged in to challenge the various dungeons that are thrown at you. If you don’t have that many friends with the game then you can take the game online and it will search to fill up any remaining slots with other online players. Now I first tried this game out solo and for the first 30 mins or so I was doing ok, but then it does become a numbers game. The sheer number of enemies on screen simply build up to the point where attempting to take this game on solo just will not work. Even completing a dungeon solo has the game vocally telling you that you could do with playing with more bros to help you, which is a shame, because although this is great fun when shared with other players or friends, it also begins to show its failings.

The loading times are annoyingly long considering the size of the dungeons you face, too long in fact and it is a very noticeable issue right from the start.  Then you have the camera which tends to remain focused on the centre of the screen which means when playing co-op, unless the group remains in the centre, it is very easy to lose sight of your character to the edges of the screen when fighting or just trying to avoid traps. With so much happening on screen it is very easy to get split up from the team and as the camera does very little to help you out , cheap frustrating deaths can make this game not so fun after all.

Next you have the input lag which is just terrible at times as you use RB and right trigger to land normal and heavy blows but with the input lag it simply becomes a clumsy button mash as your pound the controller trying to get attacks out. It would also have been nice to some feedback when landing blows but sadly not here, and so combat feels rather meh after a while, especially when you start out with such basic weapons that do very little damage. Now successfully completing dungeons will reward you with gems that can be traded in to craft new and stronger weapons. From Great Hammers that even Thor would be jealous of, to huge swords as melee weapons, the designs are really fun to play with once you begin to craft stronger weapons. You can even mix up the gameplay with range weapons such as the cross bow or Wands to use magical attacks. The variety of weapons and their attacking styles mean if you can go into a dungeon with a team of four then having a diverse attacking style with different combinations of weapons can help plough through the horde of enemies you will encounter.

The designs of the dungeons can also be challenging as not only will waves of monsters be thrown at you but the dungeons themselves are not a friendly place to be in. Traps include towers that shoot arrows to spikes that come up through the ground right where you need to be moving through, all of which can inflict damage to our Knights in Bro-ness and with a camera that is as unforgiving as this game has, you can lose lives very cheaply if anyone gets caught in these traps and unable to navigate out because the camera has decided they do not need to see where they are going.

Progress through the dungeons can also be troubling as the game does not use a checkpoint system of any kind so you have to complete the dungeon in one go to carry on through the game. A midway shop is provided though where players can spend the gold coins collected from fallen enemies and smashing the pottery lying around to refill lives, health and special attack tokens. This offers some needed respite as the action can really intensify even with four knights running the dungeon and with no check points, it is very welcome before tackling the dungeon’s boss fight.

Considering this is a free title with November’s Games with Gold promotion for Xbox One players, you can be a little forgiving for the niggles it has. The story is fun and the humour is very tongue in cheek without being too insulting fans of Rock and each night has their own distinct personality as well which brings some fun dialogue during combat. It is easy to find other players online to join in games but unless they are communicating it can be a case of too many trying to lone wolf a dungeon which when the game starts to really get tough will only be a hindrance.

It is a shame that Super Dungeon Bros never really steps above being a basic arcade game and the issues it has simply weigh it down to be anything other than a title you may try for free just because it comes with Games with Gold, but as it is also on Playstation 4 and PC at a price, it could have done with more polish to the controls and co-op camera to really launch it well. It can be fun with friends outside of the irritations of long loading times and input lag which hopefully can be addressed with future updates.

Super Dungeon Bros ultimately fell flat for me despite the humour which I did like, but as a positive for Games with Gold, it is good to see new indie games getting used within the promotion and is something I hope continues going forward. But sadly the humour and characters are not enough to carry this game to anything more than an average dungeon clearing title.