Dungeon Souls

I have a soft spot for small studios that set out to build their dream genre mashup and mostly pull it off. Dungeon Souls is exactly that: a top-down action roguelite from Lamina Studios that pulls threads from Nuclear Throne's level structure, Risk of Rain's item philosophy, and old-school dungeon crawlers, then stitches them together into something that is genuinely fun to pick up for an hour, even if it rarely surprises you after the first few sessions. The backbone of the game is its ten hero classes, and that roster is the strongest argument for sticking around. You start with three unlocked, and new ones open as you put in runs. Each class carries a basic attack and two switchable secondary abilities, which is a leaner toolkit than most contemporaries, but the asymmetry is well-considered. The Barbarian leans on a thunder axe for area-of-effect clearing and a speed burst for closing gaps. The Cleric fires projectiles that bounce off walls and can erect a barrier that splits each shot into three, which turns corridors into pinball machines of bouncy death. The Necromancer summons a retinue of skeletons that scale up over time, shifting the feeling of each run substantially. The Rogue adds a luck mechanic that makes item drops more volatile in interesting ways. That variety is the main reason to keep coming back. The core loop pushes you through procedurally generated floors themed across locations including underground dungeons, sewers, a Frost Cavern, and a cathedral, with each zone capped by a boss fight. Activating floor seals triggers enemy spawns and eventually opens the portal to the next level, but if you linger too long, a pursuer entity called The Redeemer will chase you out. It is a clean pressure mechanic, though by the fourth or fifth run you will notice the loop calcifying. The repetition is the game's honest weakness: class-switching helps, but the floor-to-floor rhythm of clearing marks, watching chaos erupt around you, and sprinting to the portal becomes very familiar, and the item RNG can make runs feel uneven in ways that punish melee classes more than ranged ones. There is also a carry-over progression system where gold from failed runs funds permanent passive upgrades, giving you a reason to grind even bad sessions. Audiovisually the game sits in retro pixel territory without doing anything daring with it. The lighting in darker zones does give things a faintly creepy edge, which I appreciated. The soundtrack is atmospheric in places, though loops quickly, and the final dungeon deliberately strips the music away, an aesthetic choice that landed awkwardly for most reviewers including myself. One older technical note worth flagging: a memory bug tied to extreme gold hoarding has been documented by players, and the game's macOS compatibility ends before Catalina. Keep those in mind if you're on an older machine or planning to min-max. Dungeon Souls does not reinvent anything, and if your backlog already includes Hades, Dead Cells, or Nuclear Throne, those will pull you harder. But for the roguelite fan who has cleared the big names and still wants a compact session-based crawler with a class roster worth unlocking, there is genuine craft here. Local co-op also exists, and honestly the frantic pace reads better with a friend next to you on the couch.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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