TIGSource: Monsters' Den

Monsters' Den

Derek Yu — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 20:55:00 +0000

Sometimes you just want a good, brainless dungeon crawl. Monsters’ Den lets you put together a party of four characters (chosen from the requisite fantasy classes: warrior, cleric, mage, ranger, rogue) and then head into the dank, randomly-generated dungeons of wherever to do battle with all manner of grisly monsters.

The game mechanics are very simple – just click around the map to explore new rooms, collect treasure, and engage the denizens of the dungeon. Combat is tactical in the sense that your party’s formation (set before each fight) determines who can hit or get hit by whom, but overall it’s pretty fluffy (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing). After fighting, you get to collect the requisite loot, which is never in short supply when you throw in all the treasure chests lying around – after level one you’ll have a lion’s share of interesting weapons and armor.

So yeah, Monsters’ Den is just a really stripped down RPG, and it’s really pretty enjoyable as that. And the randomization, character creation, and various difficulty modes (with and without permadeath) give it quite a bit of replayability. I had a good time with it, okay!

EDIT: Apparently, the game is extremely similar to the more polished FastCrawl, which is downloadable shareware ($20). See comments.

"Monsters' Den" by SicJake

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 18:34:13 +0000

FastCrawl is better yes, but this for a simple browser game is pretty damn sweet. I like how I can actually pick my party UNLIKE FC. Yes simple is good, but sometimes I want a little depth.

"Monsters' Den" by Toom

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 16:55:30 +0000

Look, there is no disputing that this thing shares a lot of similarities with FastCrawl, but this isn’t a downloadable shareware game, this is a browser-based Flash game, and fills a niche very snugly. I play Monster’s Den a lot at work; I work nights, and cannot download games to play. I imagine that there are others like me who play this in situations where they can’t download timekillers onto the machine they’re using at the time. When I’m working from home, I’m on a Mac, and couldn’t play FastCrawl anyway. So yeah, sure, it’s a lot like FastCrawl, but it’s a great solution for people who’d like to play FC, but for whatever reason cannot.

"Monsters' Den" by Toom

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 16:48:34 +0000

CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR ABILITY TO READ A THREAD BEFORE POSTING IN IT

WAIT, THAT’S NOT RIGHT

"Monsters' Den" by Ok

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 12:48:38 +0000

FastCrawl ripoff.

"Monsters' Den" by Slang

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 09:36:36 +0000

It’s actually quite good for starters who want to get into dungeoncrawlers without having to mess with stuff like Nethack. There’s a fair amount of strategy involved on the higher difficulty settings also. You do spend a lot of time going through the items but it feels rewarding because usually this kind of routine is shortly followed by a battle so you can try out your new “toys”.

"Monsters' Den" by Toom

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 20:40:22 +0000

Well, that and I can’t play Fast Crawl at work :).

"Monsters' Den" by jeb

Sun, 09 Mar 2008 11:35:04 +0000

It’s somewhat of a disappointment to see that the games are so alike. The flash variant even use exactly the same lineup for combat, as you can see in this FC screenshot:

http://www.pawleyscape.com/fastcrawl/screenshots/small4.jpg

The music in the flash game is nice and reminds me of the music in Masters of Defense. Maybe same composer, I dunno. FC is more polished overall, but like bateleur said, it costs money and requires an install.

I think this dilemma is cruical to understanding the PC market’s future. If you want to be successful at downloadable games, you not only need marketing and good DRMs, you also need to be able to give the users something that really motivates the download.

Or the problem is really, making shareware games is not only about trying to sell your game, it’s also about making people to come to your website, to download the game, to like the game and then maybe buy the game. The drop-off along this path is huge. With flash games you reduce this path to simply one step: make them visit your website.

I’m not sure where I’m going with this… I guess I’m trying to say that if you make a downloadable game, make sure you add something that can’t easily be copied.

"Monsters' Den" by bateleur

Sun, 09 Mar 2008 10:46:32 +0000

Besides, FastCrawl is a commercial, downloadable game. This is free and requires no download.

Derivative perhaps, but still of interest to people who don’t already have FastCrawl.

"Monsters' Den" by Derek

Sat, 08 Mar 2008 14:06:32 +0000

It did look familiar, but I’ve never played Fast Crawl!

"Monsters' Den" by JTR

Sat, 08 Mar 2008 12:52:54 +0000

Is this better/more advanced than FC?

"Monsters' Den" by GP Lackey

Sat, 08 Mar 2008 09:13:22 +0000

Hah, you really can not mention this game without mentioning Fast Crawl!

"Monsters' Den" by MisterX

Sat, 08 Mar 2008 05:18:15 +0000

Just yesterday I signed up to Kongregate and this is one of the games I played, because it looked very interesting. But for my taste it is just too simple. Exploring the dungeons is as basic as it can get and I suppose the combat as well is as trivial as it can be made for still calling it tactical.

One of these day I’ll just finally have to play Dungeon Crawl (Stone Soup Edition or what it’s called). But at least “Lost Labyrinth” is quite a nice DC as well.

"Monsters' Den" by Vallen

Sat, 08 Mar 2008 03:26:11 +0000

The inventory management becomes a pain after the first level. You get so much loot, you’re spending more time throwing crap away than actually playing.

"Monsters' Den" by middayc

Sat, 08 Mar 2008 02:38:38 +0000

the game seemed just to similar to fastcrawl when I played it on kongregate months back to really like it. (I like the FC a lot)

"Monsters' Den" by PatientRetard

Sat, 08 Mar 2008 02:19:26 +0000

DrRetard… I have severe retardation… can you cure me?

"Monsters' Den" by DrRetard

Sat, 08 Mar 2008 01:51:45 +0000

Was playing this alot on kongregate a few months ago, a true dungeon crawl. Not a bad time waster.

My mage got the default name Charles… kept getting his ass kicked… “Charles noooooooo!”