Diorama Dungeoncrawl - Master of the Living Castle Review

I have a bit of a soft spot for modern games with a retro aesthetic, so I was very much looking forward to giving Diorama Dungeoncrawl - Master of the Living Castle a try! Developer Renegade Sector Games has a history of low-poly titles that have been well received, but can its latest title stand amongst them?

“What brings an adventurer such as yourself to our quiet town?” asks the opening dialogue sequence. Well, a mysterious castle has been appearing throughout the land, with death and destruction always following for the local residents. Almost as suddenly as it appears, it’s gone again, thus leading our nameless hero on his quest to rid the land of evil. It’s a simple throwaway premise that gives the bare minimum to explain why you’re traversing around this mysterious castle, but it’s hard to fault a game such as this for having a very basic story.

Inspired by 16-bit videogames, Diorama Dungeoncrawl attempts to combine this era of visuals with a fully 3D environment. I say attempts, but it pulls it off really well! It nails the retro charm of the Mega Drive/Super Nintendo games whilst having a modern flair thanks to added details in the scenery and almost papercraft-esque character models. The clue is in the name, as each area does look like a handcrafted diorama come to life.

Whilst not initially impressed by the music, it did start to grow on me after a while, and on more than one occasion, I found myself humming along whilst playing. Yes, it gets repetitive rather quickly, but for a small indie title, it deserves some praise.

In fitting with the rest of the game, Diorama Dungeoncrawl’s premise is very simple. Begin a level and move from zone to zone, battling enemies and platforming your way to that stage's boss. Aside from traversing, you’ll only ever be jumping and swinging your hammer (that also has a charged attack when the button is held down) on your way to victory. That’s it! Simple to learn, unfortunately, practically impossible to master, as I’ll touch on later.

Although technically, Diorama Dungeoncrawl has you wandering through the corridors of the same castle, the layout is different for each level. When you factor in the various outdoor locations, there’s a decent bit of environmental variety, and with it being such a faithful 16-bit throwback, you may clear an area of enemies and just stick around for a minute or two to take in the sights, or to hunt out any power-ups you may have missed, despite the game not telling you what they do!

This is where the charming fun comes to an end, replaced by infuriating collision detection and unavoidable attacks. At first, it felt like a skill issue; I couldn’t hit enemies because I was new to the game. But no, the hit detection can be way off, and what seems like a sure-fire connection will sometimes actually be a missed hit, leading to them just ignoring it and taking a chunk of your health. Not only that, whilst enemies do have animated attacks (such as a knife-wielding skeleton drawing its arm back to strike), they can also damage you just by walking into the player character. Sure, many games have you take damage should you touch an enemy, but having swung a charged hammer attack at them, for these mutant miscreants to walk right through it and kill you seems very unfair. Projectile enemies and bosses, on the other hand, are brutally inefficient. Each encounter follows the simple steps of striking them and (assuming the game registers the hit) moving slightly to one side as they launch their attack before going in for another swing.

At least the checkpoint system is fairly generous, spawning you back in the last room you cleared of enemies, so the often unfair (and sometimes deserved when mistiming a jump) deaths don’t result in minutes of repeating the same areas.

Although the combat felt rather unjust, I mostly enjoyed my time with Diorama Dungeoncrawl - Master of the Living Castle. The short run time (around three hours) was enough that I didn’t grow too tired of it but was glad that it was over. A simple game with a simple premise, those looking for a love letter to a bygone era of videogames — warts and all — could do a lot worse than this. Just don’t throw your controller in a rage when an enemy unfairly takes you down!