StoryMode - A Game About Crafting Demo

Dungeon crawlers are not meant to be complicated or revolutionary most of the time, just challenging enough to make the experience enjoyable and rewarding. Replayability is key, since the stages are usually randomly generated, and there are multiple character classes and specializations to choose from. However, maybe humor should be the main ingredient, at least sometimes.

StoryMode - A Game About Crafting is a roguelike that comes very close to being an incomprehensible mess, but it somehow isn’t. It features retro black and white graphics, randomly generated levels, monsters and quests, as well as an unusual control scheme. Through some kind of small miracle, the game is playable and actually tons of fun, at least for a while.

Everything starts with a goddess of sorts that asks your character to gather a list of crafting materials and return it to her. Naturally, these are incredibly difficult to find, so the adventure might take some time. However, you are free to stay home and sleep instead, although that’s not the fun part of the game. Instead, you can actively try to find epic loot and fight all sorts of dangerous creatures in randomly generated dungeons.

There are a couple of things that are somewhat unique to the game at hand. Firstly, the dungeons are generated using actual files from your computer, and you can manually select which one to use. The size and complexity of the dungeon change with the file, and different file types yield different results and loot as well. Secondly, even the quests and the crafting recipes are randomly generated, so it often feels like you are never going to finish your mission.

On the other hand, you need to watch out for some gameplay issues, because the game has a few problems in this regard. There’s no tutorial to get you started, so unless you happen to guess how everything works, things might be a tad frustrating in the beginning. Crashes are quite common, and you might lose progress this way. On the other hand, you automatically lose all the loot if you die by the hand of a monster anyway, so you’ll get used to it after a while.

StoryMode - A Game About Crafting is certainly funny and unique, but it’s missing a few screws at the moment. Hence, your frustration with bugs and crashes might shadow the actual game difficulty, so maybe it’s indicated to wait for a more refined version.