Reviewed on: Nintendo Switch

Looking for a new indie to burn hours and hours of challenge, frustration and perseverance? A fan of everything rogue-like? Desperate for a chaotic and challenging co-op experience? A lover of those old co-op arcades that devoured your tokens and your friends’? If you answered yes to any of these questions, check out Bit Dungeon +! The game has arrived to quench the thirst of many kinds of audiences!

It’s a bit macabre, but there’s a little pleasure in strolling among the remains of defeated monsters.

Mechanics: 9.5

Bit Dungeon + is an extremely simple game. With just 4 buttons (attack, defense, magic, map+stats), you must explore dungeons full of demons and kill all the monsters before advancing to the next room. Throughout the adventure your character becomes more powerful, equipping new items found in chests and acquiring extremely powerful artifacts as a reward for defeating a level’s boss.

It is a hard and technical game that demands a degree of attention and method that many others try to avoid. You can touch the monsters, and you only take damage when you touch the area of effect of an attack, which gives the feeling of a fair game in which everyone follows the same rules. Still, the odds are not in your favor, because each room presents different combinations of numerous monsters, requiring you to quickly work out a course of action. Some enemies attack from a distance, others chase you for melee combat, and still others are sneakier or unpredictable. You need to learn the best way to face each of the many types of opponents, and then find a way to deal with battalions attacking you at the same time.

The game constantly borders on chaos, but with a bit of persistence you get the hang of it and enter a state of concentration that makes the fight feel like a complex choreography.

BD+ is not a game for everyone, mainly because it is a rogue-like. The permadeath system keeps you always alert and afraid of what awaits behind the next door, because the threat of losing all progress and all accumulated equipment is great and very real. The randomly generated maps ensure that each run is a fresh experience, never feeling repetitive. An interesting curiosity is that the game unlocks longer adventures and a greater variety of dungeons and enemies as you play and replay, immensely increasing the replay factor.

What is this? Did it turn into Bloodborne now?

Audio and visuals: 8.5

Following the by now traditional formula of rogue-like indies, Bit Dungeon + uses retro visuals and sounds.

The team at studio Dolores Entertainment deserves congratulations for the care and attention to detail. The variety of monsters alone is quite impressive, but the icing on the cake is the equipment: each equipped item is reflected in your hero’s clothing, giving immense personality and charm to the pixel art characters.

Although it doesn’t show the same brilliance, the chiptune soundtrack captures well the nostalgia of 90s co-op arcades. The songs do not become repetitive and match the game’s style and theme perfectly.

The game is naturally chaotic already… But at times it becomes impossible even to know which character is yours on the screen!

Fun: 9

Bit Dungeon + is a game that offers countless small pleasures: defeating a boss, acquiring a legendary piece of equipment, surviving a particularly hard room… Each achievement, small progress on the map, improvement to your character or even the feeling of playing better brings pride and satisfaction. When you get the hang of it and dive into the game, you feel part of it. Certainly a good experience for those who enjoy the genre!

I would like to stress that the game supports co-op multiplayer. At first it may seem that this makes the game a bit easier, but the exact opposite happens! Players not only need to share the resources they find, but the feeling of disorientation is so great that at some moments it becomes bothersome: there are common moments when players cannot immediately identify their characters. This problem could be fixed in a future patch, either with indicators over the characters (P1, P2, etc.) or with outlines in specific colors, so there is still hope that this part of the gameplay experience will get even better!

Big enemies mean bigger challenges!

Final thoughts

Bit Dungeon + is one of those games that consume hour after hour without you even realizing. With its high level of challenge and practically infinite variety, it is an authentic rogue-like experience worthy of being tried by both fans of the genre and the curious. Fun guaranteed whether playing alone or with friends!

Babel Tower mode challenges you to go as far as possible in 5 minutes!

Score

Mechanics = 9.5

Audio and visuals = 8.5

Fun = 9

Worth the 9 dollars? If you are curious about the genre, yes! If you like challenging co-op games, also! If you enjoy rogue-likes, definitely! The game manages to please various tastes and has the potential to provide many hours of fun, alone or in a group!