During the 16 bit era, one of the most popular genres was the 2D brawler. These games had you select a character and beat up goon after goon on your quest to either stop evil corporations, save the world, or rescue a loved one. This genre was especially popular in the arcades. Games like The Simpsons and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are a perfect example of a 2D brawler. They were challenging and were made to burn through your quarters as fast as possible. They remained popular on home consoles with the likes of Golden Axe, Streets of Rage, and Final Fight. Dungeon Punks by developer Hyper Awesome Entertainment, is a throwback to the classic 90s brawler but with an RPG twist.
Brawlers weren’t known for their story and Dungeon Punks is no exception. You play as a band of mutant misfits that keep getting deeper into trouble with a company that sells resurrection insurance. The story touches on modern-day corporate greed, every time you die, you lose currency to the villainous corporation that is both resurrecting you and trying to kill you. Despite the interesting premise, I never felt the story all that intriguing. It was more of a backdrop to give motive to your characters and the villains as to why you are fighting and who you are fighting with. I also found the characters to be rather bland. None of them really stood out and the brawlers you play as are very generic mutant creatures with generic names. The game does not have voice acting so the plot moves along via text. Some of the text was quite funny and tongue in cheek. Other times I cringed at what was being said. Despite not having memorable characters or an intriguing plot, Dungeon Punks still succeeds with its gameplay.
The gameplay is class brawler arcade gameplay. You move from left to right, up or down. The controls are very simple to pick up and play, attack, magic, block, dodge, item, and tag. Occasionally you can hop on a mount just like the old Golden Axe days and use the animal you are riding to attack your enemies. The unique mechanic in Dungeon Punks is the ability to tag in another character whenever you want, even during mid-combo. There are always three characters on-screen at once, one controlled by you and the other two controller by the CPU or by your friends. This makes for some interesting battles as you perform magic attacks and tag in your partner to perform another magic attack while the enemy hasn’t recovered yet. It seems like it could easily be exploitable but the developer has balanced this mechanic by giving you a limit on how often you can cast spells. The magic meter fills up on its own while your partner is resting or while you are attacking enemies. You can store up to three magic attacks at a time. This provides some strategy as to when you want to use your attacks. Sometimes the enemies are weak and it’s best to save magic. Other times unloading with all you have then tagging in your partner to finish them off is the best strategy. Each spell can also be upgraded two times to make them stronger and add additional effects. This is the RPG element I mentioned above as you will need to use scrolls to purchase upgrades on your magic and gold to purchase armor and weapons. The weapon, armor, and magic upgrades give a sense of progression that prevent the game from growing stale. Brawlers are known to be repetitive but Hyper Awesome Entertainment has done a good job mixing things up and giving you a progression system that keeps you interested. Weapons and armor can also drop during battles and are often better than the items you can buy in the shop.
Items are another aspect to the gameplay. You can hold one of a certain type of item at a given time. Some are for attacking but the most important item, in my opinion, was the health potion. Dungeon Punks can be challenging at times, especially if your characters aren’t leveled high enough for a stage. The problem with the health potions is that there aren’t many of them, you might get two per level if your lucky. Also if you are playing with the CPU it’s a race to grab a potion because they will pick it up leaving you with nothing. If you do die, you can switch to one of the CPU characters but you are already at a disadvantage since you’re a man down. I found in this case the best option was to run away and leave the level through an emergency exit. I used the emergency exits often when playing a new level since completing it in one shot wasn’t always guaranteed. The good thing about the emergency exits is that you still get experience points to upgrade your characters. The bad thing is, when you return to the level you start from the first room again. I found this created a bit of a grind. You will have to use the exits and restart the level a couple of times in order to get your heroes level high enough to fight the boss at the end. This became frustrating in later levels as the enemies got stronger. I found myself doing a bit more grinding then I would have liked. Fortunately, there are multiple optional quests within each level that give you incentive to explore and revisit after using an emergency exit. These quests usually boil down to killing a certain number of a specific enemy or a unique mini boss. Completing these quests provide experience and gold.
The visuals for Dungeon Punks are very bright and colorful. They have a cartoon feel to them and it works very well for this style of game. The animation is very fluid and clean. I did not notice a single frame rate drop the entire time I play through Dungeon Punks. The music is good however, I found it didn’t fit the gameplay. The music is a bit mellow for fighting hordes of bad guys. I would have preferred something a little more upbeat to get the adrenaline flowing but overall the music isn’t terrible to listen to. There was one sound effect that I really didn’t like. Whenever you advance dialog, you hear a high-pitched ringing noise. I found this to be really grating and irritating to listen to. You might not have the same response as I did to this noise or even notice it at all but for me it was unpleasant.
I found Dungeon Punks to be an enjoyable brawler in an age where this genre is pretty much absent. It brought back memories of playing Golden Axe and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The game excels as a couch co-op game. It supports up to three people and I highly recommend playing this game with some friends. Despite some of its flaws such as an uninteresting story and a bit of grinding, Dungeon Punks does enough right to warrant a recommendation if you enjoy classic brawlers. It’s fun by itself and even better with friends and only costs $14.99. There are 12 levels which are all uniquely different and a new game plus option after you beat the campaign. It took me about 8 hours to complete the campaign on single player the first time through.
