Conjuror or Barbarian?
May 14, 2008 1:47 AM   Subscribe

Monster's Den: Book of Dread might be the best free dungeon crawl RPG on the web. If it ain't, it's damned close.

Garin's site (just so this isn't a single link post).
posted by chuckdarwin (30 comments total) 29 users marked this as a favorite
 
[obligatory NetHack pimpage]
posted by LogicalDash at 1:56 AM on May 14, 2008


I don't play games unless they give me Xbox Live Achievement points. It just feels like a waste of time otherwise.

/sarcasm
posted by turgid dahlia at 1:58 AM on May 14, 2008 [1 favorite]


This looks like a really polished clone of FastCrawl. Anybody know if there's a connection?
posted by Phssthpok at 2:14 AM on May 14, 2008


Requires too much thought, and "xyzzy" does not work.
posted by orthogonality at 3:28 AM on May 14, 2008


Sweet.
posted by sophist at 4:08 AM on May 14, 2008


This looks like a really polished clone of FastCrawl. Anybody know if there's a connection?

Someone on the FastCrawl forum seems to think so.
posted by jbickers at 4:16 AM on May 14, 2008


jbickers, this new one (Book of Dread) is an update to that earlier version, as well, so it's been improved again.

I haven't had much time to play it, but it's been pretty difficult to beat so far.
posted by chuckdarwin at 4:59 AM on May 14, 2008


I played for about 10 minutes before leaving for work. It was fun, and pretty easy to figure out. The menus and commands seemed a little more intuitive than I'm used to. It's well-designed for the casual player, IMHO.
posted by joelhunt at 6:33 AM on May 14, 2008


Ooh, I played the holy hell out of this in its original incarnation on Kongregate and I didn't realize there'd been an update. I've just started and the interface already looks way better and I love that there's now a shop. The programmer really listened to the suggestions he was getting from users -- I'm impressed. Thanks!
posted by melissa may at 6:45 AM on May 14, 2008


I used to play the original as well; this looks like a huge improvement! Thanks for the find.
posted by never used baby shoes at 7:48 AM on May 14, 2008


this looks like a dangerous time sink
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 8:04 AM on May 14, 2008


The game wouldn't work for me from kongregate.com; clicking on the 'continue' button did nothing, preventing me from continuing. Anyone else experience this? Worked fine from the second link though, and no annoying chat window. Lots of fun! Two thumbs up!
posted by JT at 8:20 AM on May 14, 2008


This is a dangerous timesink, indeed...
posted by sarcasticah at 9:03 AM on May 14, 2008


Monster's Den is an amusing little game, but calling it even close to the best dungeon crawl on the web is, uh, a bit much. If you're looking for more substance I'd recommend any of the following:

Nethack (as pointed out by LogicalDash)
ToME
Dwarf Fortress
Angband
ADOM
Linley’s Dungeon Crawl
Larn
or the grandparent of them all, Rogue
posted by Izner Myletze at 9:20 AM on May 14, 2008 [1 favorite]


Monster's Den is an amusing little game, but calling it even close to the best dungeon crawl on the web is, uh, a bit much. If you're looking for more substance I'd recommend any of the following...


You recognize, I hope, that every single one of the links you just posted are to games requiring download + installation?
posted by voltairemodern at 9:39 AM on May 14, 2008 [1 favorite]


Ah, this is great. I really liked the original monster's den, thanks!
Here's the original: Monster's Den

Kongregate has a couple more decent RPGs:

Sonny
Tactics 100 (think Final Fantasy Tactics)
posted by Grimp0teuthis at 9:40 AM on May 14, 2008


You recognize, I hope, that every single one of the links you just posted are to games requiring download + installation?

Of course. All are freely available on the web. Or does "on the web" refer solely to Flash games playable in a browser?
posted by Izner Myletze at 9:50 AM on May 14, 2008


Haven't had a proper go at it, did they improve the rogue/thief any? Are the conjuror/barbarian any good?
posted by juv3nal at 9:51 AM on May 14, 2008



Of course. All are freely available on the web. Or does "on the web" refer solely to Flash games playable in a browser?


I think it's pretty obvious the original poster meant playable on the web rather than available on the web.

Incidentally, this java one isn't half bad, but as far as I can tell, no saving.
posted by juv3nal at 10:03 AM on May 14, 2008


Haven't had a proper go at it, did they improve the rogue/thief any?

The thief is pretty excellent in terms of damage, so far. The ability to bypass armor lets you one-shot a lot of monsters.
posted by voltairemodern at 10:55 AM on May 14, 2008




I still enjoy Legend of the Green Dragon, though its not a crawl and is turn based and text based.

Oh, yes, and yay Nethack!
posted by Joey Michaels at 12:42 PM on May 14, 2008


Yeah, I kinda meant the sort of thing you could play on your lunch break at work :-)
posted by chuckdarwin at 1:03 PM on May 14, 2008


this looks like a dangerous time sink

You are on teh Internets. It is a loud and stupid place. Obvious directions are Metafilter.

> Metafilter

You are reading Metafilter. There is a dangerous timesink here.

> Avoid timesink

You cannot avoid the dangerous timesink.
posted by regicide is good for you at 8:54 PM on May 14, 2008 [1 favorite]


Is there a way to heal between combats besides potions? I keep getting killed because I enter combat mostly dead from the last one.
posted by garlic at 5:04 AM on May 15, 2008


Altars will heal you fully. Also going down to a new level.
posted by Izner Myletze at 6:33 AM on May 15, 2008


Also, having gone down a level, the stairs back up to the previous level can be used as a one time heal like altars. Or at least they can on easy mode. Yes, I'm a wuss.
posted by juv3nal at 10:43 AM on May 15, 2008


The new update is awesome. Sometimes, all the items in the store disappear and you can't buy anything. Since you can only go to the store once a level or so depending on when you find the scroll, and since the life/death margin is razor thin at high difficulty levels, this renders the game unplayable. Comments on kongregate suggest that this is a common problem.
posted by Kwine at 11:54 AM on May 15, 2008


Timesink... major timesink.
posted by deCadmus at 1:22 PM on May 16, 2008


Man, I was just comin' here to find out if anyone had figured out what caused the store glitch.
posted by klangklangston at 4:15 PM on May 17, 2008


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