Critically acclaimed and locally developed roguelike, Desktop Dungeons, has come out of its alpha stage and is now available in beta to anyone who has pre-ordered the game.
“It comes with a fully functional Kingdom manager, an actual quest progression system and a nice heap o’ content to get you started,” reads the official release.
“We hope you have a great time with what’s on offer so far, and we’ll be merrily adding more content over the next few weeks to make sure that you stay well and truly hooked.”
You can pre-order the game now for $10 (R70) for the regular PC/Mac version, or $20.00 (R140) for the special edition which is billed as a “support the devs” version, and includes “commemorative building for your Kingdom, extra challenge quests and a unique character class. Just to say thank you to those willing to support us.”
You can also try out the free prototype version of the game, which won an IGF award. “We’re taking what we’ve learned from that alpha prototype and we’re building a bigger, better game, but you’ll always be able to play that first version the way we initially released it: Free (and probably a little buggy),” reads the official QCF design webpage.
Desktop Dungeons is a quick-play roguelike puzzle game that gives you roughly 10 minutes of dungeon-crawling action per serving. It straddles the casual and hardcore boundary in that, while you might die frequently because the game is tricky and unforgiving, it’s so approachable and quick to get into that you keep wanting just one more round.
The game will eventually be released on PC/Mac, iPhone and Android. It should end up on Steam, “barring any horrible mishaps” according the developers, but it is unlikely to be released on console.