Release of the Day: Super Dangerous Dungeon

A game by Finnish indie developer Jussi Simpanen has appeared in the App Store. Couldn’t get past the release. We tell you why.

First, the background.

In April 2015, Simpanen’s first game, Tiny Dangerous Dungeons, appeared. The project cost $0.99. The game was potentially a hit, in our opinion. Unfortunately, users do not always share the opinion of gaming publications. Therefore, a monochrome platformer in the spirit of the first games on Gameboy did not become the second Flappy Bird and did not raise millions.

Screenshot from Tiny Dangerous Dungeons

In the next project, Simpanen, apparently, took into account mistakes. Super Dangerous Dungeon visually almost completely copies Tiny Dangerous Dungeons. But the game has become, firstly, color, and secondly, frituplein. And this is the rare case when the word “fritupley” is not an allegorical designation for the process of merciless pumping out money. Simpanen turned out, so to speak, a premium frituplay.

But about everything in order.

So, Super Dangerous Dungeon is a pixel platformer. The game is stylized as 16-bit titles of the early 90s. Treasure hunter Timmy explores mazes where he tries not to get hit by a stray spear or fall into a random bottomless pit. If he fails, he dramatically falls face down, after which he finds himself at the beginning of the level.

Do you think that’s where the fed-up life/energy/crystal counter will appear?

No. You just keep playing.

After the first two deaths, I even went to check the account on the card that is attached to the phone. What the hell is not joking, you never know, I paid and didn’t notice. No, that’s right, the game remained free.

After about the fourth death of the character, advertising finally came out. But she did not tell a well-posed baritone about the game Game of Wars, and did not immediately demand to download Boom Beach. It was a very ordinary banner. Besides, it could be immediately skipped. Immediately, without waiting for the required five seconds (here I want to recall the obsolete meme about Karl). By the way, here, finally, I saw the second reminder that the game is a free-play – the “disable ads” button. It cost 119 rubles.

The game wants to give two ratings. One from the player’s position, and from this point of view, the platformer earned an enthusiastic five out of five (not least because I love pixel graphics).

I would like to give another assessment from the position of a resource on game development. And here everything is not so clear. In a nutshell, this is a competently made Dangerous Dave (by the way, a remake of the latter from Romero was released a couple of weeks ago. Looks helpless).

Super Dangerous Dungeon, like Shovel Knight, would look quite organically on Steam with a price tag of five to ten bucks. How much will it be possible to raise this cute old-school platformer with the approach to monetization that exists now is a big question.

You can download the game on iOS by following the link. The Android version has not been released yet.