Naheulbeuk's Dungeon Master

by Aethyna Nov 19, 2023 | 1 Votes | 98 Played | 0 Reviews

7 rate

Genres:

Simulation

Graphics:

Labels:

Building , Dungeon Builder , Management

Platforms:

Publishers:

Dear Villagers Naheulbeuk's Dungeon Master is a dungeon-building and management game that’s similar in vein to the Dungeons series. In this game, you play Reivax, the newly hired steward of the Dungeon of Naheulbeuk. Help your master, the evil wizard Zangdar, develop his dungeon and turn it into the most profitable and (in-)famous of them all! Play Now Similar Games

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Summary Gameplay Graphics/ Sound Conclusion

Summary

Naheulbeuk's Dungeon Master is a dungeon-building and management game that’s similar in vein to the Dungeons series. In this game, you play Reivax, the newly hired steward of the Dungeon of Naheulbeuk. Help your master, the evil wizard Zangdar, develop his dungeon and turn it into the most profitable and (in-)famous of them all!

Gameplay

The game comes with two game modes - Campaign and Sandbox. In the campaign, you’ll play as Reivax, the newly hired steward of the Dungeon of Naheulbeuk, helping the evil wizard Zangdar develop his dungeon while he’s busy doing “magical research”. The campaign essentially doubles as a lengthy tutorial, where you’ll be introduced to new game features and various challenges, such as invading adventurers, as you progress. On the other hand, the sandbox mode is exactly what it sounds like - you’ll have complete freedom to develop your dungeon, designing it as you wish.

There are many different types of rooms in this game that you’ll have to set up to cater to your hired hands, including the dormitories, the bathrooms, and the break room. While your dungeon expands, you’ll gradually gain access to other levels in the dungeon by building stairs, giving you even more space to expand your dungeon. Each room will have unique furniture to serve its respective purposes, and you can further increase the reputation of each room by adding interior decorations.

The variety of the decor in this game is astounding, though you’ll need to unlock most of them first. To unlock new decor, you simply need to level up the reputation of your dungeon, which in turn means increasing the collective prestige of your rooms by placing more decor. Due to this design, I found myself plastering the walls with the same rotation of posters, just like what I did in Two Point Hospital just to get that sweet prestige.

Different hired employees have different requirements as well, depending on their race, be it orcs, humans, elves, dwarves, or goblins. Orcs, for instance, are carnivores and will only eat dishes made from meat, while elves are vegetarian in nature and will not touch any food with meat in it. Having the right “type” of cooks to prepare different food items for different races is crucial to keeping your employees happy and motivated - and not going on strike! Different races are more proficient at performing certain tasks too. For instance, only goblin artisans can work at technology workbenches to craft tools, while dwarf artisans can only craft weapons.

From time to time, you’ll get demands from your master, Zangdar, and you’ll do well to fulfill them lest you find yourself turned into a toad (and lose the game)! You may also get “quests” from other people in the game during the campaign, including the representative from the Dungeons Fund. and suggestions from other “named” employees in the dungeon, like Mel the barkeeper.

As your dungeon’s reputation grows, you’ll start to attract the attention of adventurers who will want to raid your dungeon’s treasure room. Keeping your treasure room well-protected is obviously vital. Thankfully, aside from hiring guards who will patrol the dungeon, you also get to set a host of devious traps to catch any unprepared adventurers unawares. Eventually, you’ll also be able to carry out raids of your own.

Although Naheulbeuk's Dungeon Master is admittedly fun, there are some obvious flaws with the game. For starters, the AI can be very wonky, breaking at seemingly random times during a playthrough, like refusing to use a loo right in front of them when they need to go. There’s also no option for you to get creatures that love filthy places to go to places that are designed to be filthy, opting to head to the clean rooms instead and then complaining that the rooms aren’t up to their standards.

The combat aspect of the game can be rather frustrating as well, especially for a player who has sunk tens of hours into the Dungeons series. You can’t rally your guards in this game, nor can you control them much like in an RTS manner. Instead, more often than not, the band of adventures will encounter your guards one at a time, easily defeating them due to sheer numbers.

As pointed out before as well, the campaign does feel rather underwhelming. It doesn’t extend beyond the scenario you started out with, unlike in the Dungeons series, which quite drastically lowers the amount of playtime the game can offer, especially if you don’t plan on spending too much time playing its sandbox mode, and prefer more structured (and with a proper ending) scenarios to play.

Graphics/ Sound

Naheulbeuk's Dungeon Master has some great cartoony graphics that are quite similar to the Dungeons series or to some extent, Two Point Hospital. They even have has a zoom function that allows you to admire the game’s various 3D assets upclose. In terms of sound, the game features a selection of tunes that match well with the game’s theme. There’s voice acting as well here, with all the dialogues in the campaign being voiced.

Conclusion

All in all, Naheulbeuk's Dungeon Master is a pretty fun dungeon-building and management game with a rather whimsical theme, but when compared to other games within the dungeon-building genre, specifically the Dungeons series, it does seem to fall short in many aspects, including its AI design for the NPCs. This is something that really needs to be addressed by the developers asap.

That being said, considering its hefty price tag and downsides, this might be a game that you might want to hold off getting even if you enjoy playing such games. Maybe check back in a few weeks and see if there have been any significant patches that will fix some of the issues with the game.