Monsters' Den - Free Online Game - Biclops Games & Max Games

Dungeon crawling RPGs have always been hit and miss for me, with some being extremely entertaining to me (The Summoner) and others driving me completely up the wall (Time Stalkers). With this track record, it's not uncommon for me to want to play one, only to find either a good one and want to continue playing, or find a bad one and not touch the genre again for a good while.

Thankfully, when I found Monsters' Den, I found a pretty good little dungeon crawler that, although not highly detailed in its graphics, is still a fun little romp that's not too easy, but not incredibly hard either (unless you're playing on Hardcore difficulty).

So how does it work? Well, it works kind of like the old Dungeons & Dragons die and paper game, just with graphics.

Once you start the game, you're taken to a character creation screen. All four of the characters you may have are chosen for you and you can go with them, or fiddle around with them, deciding on their class (Warrior, Cleric, Mage, Ranger and Rogue), their gender, then a portrait for each character (there's seperate portraits for male and female, totaling around 6 or so per gender), before moving on to select your difficulty level (beginner, standard, hardcore and extreme).

As soon as this is done, you see a small scroll-like background that some text writes itself onto, detailing the basic premise of why your party of adventurers is entering into a dungeon infested with monsters, before you move on to your first randomly generated dungeon.

At first, however, the dungeon is almost fully obscured at the in darkness, except for a green arrow on the pavement telling you which way leads to the level you just came from and the rooms adjoining your current location. Moving the mouse to one of these rooms will cause a red movement arrow to appear, showing the direction you're headed in, and will tell you the information of any sets of monsters which may be in the room (marked on the map, fully visible, by a red X), though it won't tell you what's in the treasure chests (marked by a chest with gold coming out of it, fully visible as well).

There are also two other symbols you'll become used to: Another green arrow, similar to the entrance, which shows the way to the next level (often these are curved) and a glowing orb of light, which will fully heal your HP and Attack Points for a small amount of Points (which are really only useful if you're going for score or on a site that counts them for special things).

On the very bottom of the screen, you'll also notice the level of maze you're on, the percentage of the maze you've explored, and how much of that level of the maze you've cleared (basically explored applies to finding all rooms, and cleared is for defeating all creatures and gathering all treasure). You'll also be able to return to the menu, see your rating (or points), mess with the audio, characters armor and weapons, get hints on the map you're on or read up on some help for how to handle the game. You also see your characters and how many HP (red) and AP (blue) points they have remaining.

As you move around the maze, killing monsters and collecting treasure, you don't gain experience like one would in a normal RPG. Instead, one must constantly juggle their equipment and armor to try to keep their characters from dying in a battle. One only gains a level as they proceed further down into the maze, at which time they can add points into various stats (3
points per level) or gain new skills (11 per class) to assist.

Battle itself is handled on a basic board, with six squares on top for the enemies and six on bottom for your four heroes. At the beginning of each battle, you can move your heroes formation around in case it isn't working as well as you like, then begin the battle. Visual icons show you which skills you can use (they go red if you don't have enough AP), and scrolling
over them will show you how much AP each uses, as well as it's affects.

Each player or enemy moves at specific speeds, and has different weaknesses (yours depends on your armor mostly as far as I can tell) that can be exploited if you pay attention. The speed itself affects who attacks when, and it's a wise person who learns the typical movement order and uses it to make sure their party survives.

As is pretty common in most games of this kind, there is of course various potions that can be used, but only out of battle. Some will give you a boost to different stats the next time you fight, while others heal or revive characters. There is even one which will allow you to bypass a fight with monsters in case you're worn down and don't think you can defeat them.

At the end of each level of the maze, when you head to the next floor, you do get all your HP and AP back thankfully. And in harder modes you can return to the floor before to restore your HP and AP without losing points by using the healing spheres. Also at the end of each level, you get another of those scroll-scrawls, telling you a little bit more about the world and story, though it's never all too detailed.

And pretty much, that's all there is to Monsters' Den.

Although it isn't this huge detailed amount of stuff, there's still plenty of little things to learn (putting points in Endurance raises your maximum HP for example), and one has to be thinking of their next move (especially on higher difficulty settings) if they want to win.

There isn't a large expansive story, as I mentioned, but what's there is very much like the old Dungeons & Dragons, in that it's more just an excuse to go in, fight some monsters, collect some treasure, and work your way down to fighting a big evil so you can be the heroes.

Now, if I could just figure out why it is I have six slots but can only get four characters...