Dungreed

Dungreed is a 2D side-scrolling roguelite action game from TEAM HORAY, a small Korean studio that clearly poured real care into every frame. The core loop is familiar enough: you drop into a procedurally generated dungeon, fight your way through randomised floors, die, and come back a little stronger. What makes it click is the way the two halves of that loop talk to each other. Permanent stat upgrades purchased between runs mean that even a rough outing never feels truly wasted. The dungeon took your village. You are taking it back, one incremental power spike at a time. The combat is the heart of it, and it holds up. Weapons span swords, spears, bows, guns, magic staves, and dual-wield combinations, and each one has distinct reach and rhythm that matters on a tile-based battlefield. Enemies telegraph attacks clearly enough that skilled play gets rewarded, but the stat growth means less experienced players are not permanently locked out of progress. Passive equipment slots, spell accessories, and food buffs layer on top, giving each run a light build-crafting dimension. You are rarely making earth-shattering decisions, but you are always making decisions, which keeps the pace honest. The pixel art deserves its own paragraph. TEAM HORAY went with a style that sits somewhere between late-SNES era and early indie revival, clean and expressive without trying to ape retro aesthetics for irony points. Character animations are genuinely smooth, dungeon tilesets shift personality as you descend into new biomes, and boss designs are inventive enough that encountering a new one mid-run still produces a small jolt of surprise. The soundtrack matches the mood well, atmospheric and slightly tense without hammering you with dread. It is the kind of score you notice when it stops. Where Dungreed is honest about its limits: the early floors can feel repetitive once you know their rhythms, and the narrative framing is thin. There is a story in the sense that there are characters in the village who react as you return with more experience, but if you are coming from something like Hades expecting a fully voiced relationship drama woven into your runs, recalibrate expectations. This is a mechanical game with light story seasoning, not a narrative game with roguelite structure. The run length is also on the longer side for the genre, which is a design choice that splits opinion. I think it respects your time once the mid-game opens up, but the first handful of hours ask for patience before the build variety really blooms. For its target audience, which is players who enjoy tightly tuned 2D action with steady, readable progression and do not need cinematic production values to stay engaged, Dungreed is an exceptionally well-made package from a small team who knew exactly what they were building. The review count and the percentage sitting at 93 percent positive across nearly ten thousand voices is not an accident. This is a game that does its job with quiet confidence.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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