Dungeon Gals

This game's on steam you can check it out! There's even a demo!!

Better yet, it's on itch!

We lightly followed the development of this one over a few years of being in kinda similar general spaces as Doric Dream, the developer, and so we had to get it on release, because in addition to supporting all the years of work that went into Dungeon Gals and already recognizing the characters and such, it's just neat to see the work of someone you know. All art is communication, and the context of that communication always matters. This is to say, there are some little things in Dungeon Gals where we could stop and think "Ah, I know EXACTLY what inspired this." This is a brand new game, so we're not going to get super specific about any of them here. Again, the game is right there to check out, and we'll certainly vouch for its high quality! The soundtrack is fantastic, the puzzles are neat, and the script is the clear result of all the years of effort allowing a highly-interwoven set of characters and interactions. It's good!

Anyway having said all of that we didn't quite know what genre the game even was going in. Thought it might be more of a metroid vania you know the type. In fact, it's much more of a level-based puzzle platformer. New mechanics pop up throughout the game but there are no new abilities; nothing you can return to a previous level with and access new stuff. None of this was secret or bad, we just didn't pay enough attention. You can only switch between the three playable characters when standing on specific pads, so the puzzles often revolve around getting the right Gal to the right part of the Dungeon, but there are plenty of other kinds of puzzles too. We resorted to note-taking only once, with the general difficulty level being on a level that was non-trivial enough to be fun but breezy enough to keep things moving. The actual moving and platforming gets similarly meaty, as does the combat, but there are sources of healing so plentiful that actually dying was never even a possibility. One could challenge themself to try and beat the game without it, though, and have a good time. We found all the secrets on our own (barring one mysterious achievement that remains locked) but there's ingame help for that too. Seeking those things out gives you more health (convenient), faster ability cooldowns (useful AND fun) and additional dialogue (the good stuff). In addition to everything being just very solid here, it stands out to us how nice moving around with every character was. As is typical, we like being able to move around fast, so the winged moth Rosa and its double-jump were an early fave but we ended up really liking Izzy's ability to just charge once we had a lot of cooldown reduction. Wendy's abilities are the most situational, but are really fun to use when you get them. Plus she's cute!

Truthfully, we might not have checked this one out on our own, owing to our general disillusionment with the general expectations of """queer media""" in these times. Firstly, we're pretty grossed out by public displays of affection and just baffled and upset by romance as a general concept, and since 'queer' is usually not considered to include ace people, it's almost required to identify it by how much kissing and romance it has to the exclusion of all else. Not to lie and say we weren't a little bit squicked by the kiss animation every time you switch characters, but that's far too good of a bit not to include and anyway we got through it.

The other thing, which is personal in a different way, is that we're really leery of anything that looks a little too """wholesome.""" DG is not that to be clear, but we have a pretty adversarial relationship with content warnings after seeing them constantly weaponized for harassment campaigns. Besides that, seeing things we've experienced be kind of sectioned off as in some way verboted or inappropriate to discuss in this way is somewhat alienating. Dungeon Gals does feel very much like it doesn't want you to see anything sad unprepared, and has a pretty forboding warning for what is ultimately very vague recollections of the character's childhood hardships. This is without the content warnings on, which we can't speak to. They're an accessibility option though so it is what it is, that all seems correct and reasonable.

One of the things that kinda works for helping smooth these over, though, is that this isn't a romance. Rather, these are characters with a pre-established and long-standing relationship, and that's a lot nicer. The main characters don't have big developments for themselves but they are hashing out older tensions, coming to terms with previous incidents, and the like. This is the much more interesting part of character relationship development for us. And like, one thing that's really hard for us to relate to is that the characters tend to have extremely precise language to describe their emotional states. This is, on some level, a plural thing. We cannot, almost ever, be really sure how we feel. It's taken a few years before we could even get close. So is this just jealousy? Maybe, hard to say. The idea of trusting people with your problems is a little bit alien to us. Other people outside of US I mean. If anything, DG sorta solidifies our idea that we are, on some level, kind of like a polycule if not out-and-out one. That's the axis upon which we relate to a bunch of gays prone to crashing out for their own individual reasons. If it comes up, we'll be very curious how a sequel to this would go, when the basic facts are already in front of the audience. That can be a very difficult thing to figure out, but it's exciting too! This, of course, would be up to Doric and not us.

But yeah, in conclusion: we're very jealous of the extremely tight script and characterization in Dungeon Gals. It's a big recommendo from us if you have any ability to love a puzzle platformer full of cuties.