Dungeon Trawler

  Untap Upkeep Draw Mori Set Llanowar no Elf Dashite Turn End (アンタップアップキープドロー森セットラノワールのエルフ出してターンエンド), aka  Vipzardry; Kuso Kote Shine  (くそこてしね) 2006, PC No, really, that's its official title. It was submitted to the '06 VIPRPG Summer Festival under that name, and @wiki lists it by the same. The title screen and game window, however, call it Vipzardry , which is somewhat less of a mouthful. Created by Kuso Kote Shine, it's a first-person DRPG in RPG Maker 2000—not necessarily the first, but certainly the earliest I've played, predating Cirnozardry and Rothdam by several years. Its most unusual characteristic is its job system. Initial party creation is similar to Final Fantasy I , the player selecting a job for each of the four characters—though there are only four options, Warrior, Thief, White Mage, and Black Mage. Any character can be reclassed to any job at any time, assuming they meet the stat requirements; in addition to the starting jobs above, there are four adv...

Arisa no Bouken Ki ( アリサの冒険記),  Soleil 2006, PC Originally released for the 2nd Kouhaku RPG Festival, one of Japanese RPG Maker community VIPRPG's yearly game jams, Arisa no Bouken Ki  is a turn-based JRPG, the first (and to my knowledge only) by its developer, Soleil. You may not have heard his name before, but you've likely heard his work: a prolific composer, he distributes free BGM for use in other games. Unsurprisingly, his game boasts a completely original soundtrack (a rarity in freeware), and a solid one at that. Though "completely original" doesn't mean you won't have heard any of it before—these tracks, too, were made available for others' use. I recognized a couple from One Way Heroics. The eponymous Arisa is an aspiring novelist in search of material who feels somewhat smothered by small-town Nisan Village. Coincidentally, the Kingdom of Nisen is holding a Hero Exam to select a successor to the missing current hero; sensing an opportunity to gr...

  Cirnozardry - Review Cirnozardry  is a freeware DRPG made by doujin developer Morisoba. Released in 2014 and translated by an anonymous 4chan poster in 2022 (really!), it seems to be all but completely unknown in the West. I think that’s a real shame: it’s a solid game with some of the best and most consistent dungeon design I’ve ever seen, easily beating out the vast majority of commercial DRPGs. I always find it hard to put dungeon design into words, but if you’re familiar with the genre, you’ll have experienced games that get it and games that don’t.  Cirnozardry  gets it. Each floor is cohesive yet internally varied, never giving way to cacophony or formula; each floor is big enough to explore and get lost in, but not so large that it becomes a slog or runs out of ideas (hello,  Mary Skelter ). Unlike many DRPGs, including most Wizardry clones, floors are also quite dense: events and treasure chests (usually with good items; eat your heart out, Experience ...