Paper Dungeons

I have a soft spot for games that know exactly what they are, and Paper Dungeons knows. It is a solo dungeon crawler built around a tabletop fantasy aesthetic, where every combat resolution runs through a 2d6 roll, one die for damage, one for effects, and where monsters carry their own collectible dice sets ranked common through epic right alongside your own. That loop, managing a growing dice collection while resetting to level 1 between floors but keeping your hard-earned inventory, gives the Boardgame mode a satisfying rhythm that the bigger names in the roguelike space rarely bother with. The four modes each offer a genuinely different tempo. Boardgame is the meat, a 125-level adventure across four starting zones with distinct monsters, bosses, and three dungeon sizes. Campaign mode links up to ten dungeons with introductory text and dialogue so there is actual narrative tissue holding the floors together. Puzzle mode strips the fog of war entirely, monsters stand still, and you are forced to pre-plan every move with zero luck involved, which is a tonal 180 that works surprisingly well as a palette cleanser. Rogue mode is the harshest expression of the game, permadeath stakes where your only reward for a completed run is a Hall of Fame entry and a stronger dice set to carry forward. Five classes, warrior, archer, priest, mage, and thief, play meaningfully differently, and there is a Void difficulty layer that recolors the monster roster and removes any illusion that the base game was punishing you. Where things get murky is community reliance. The map editor and campaign editor are genuinely thoughtful tools, and the online levels system for user-created content is the engine the developer clearly built the replay value argument on. In 2025, that ecosystem is thin. A niche game from a small dev team will not have Steam Workshop energy a decade after launch, so the promise of infinite procedural content leans more on the built-in 125 boardgame levels and 31 puzzle levels than it used to. The Steam review sample is small and split, with some players calling it genuinely addictive and others bouncing off the randomness. Both camps are correct. Dice-based combat is inherently capricious, and if variance frustrates you in tabletop games it will frustrate you here too. The awareness system, where monsters move toward you once you enter their line of sight, does add a chess-like tension to positioning that softens the pure luck complaint considerably. The visual presentation is clean and charming without being flashy. Tokens, tiles, and a fog-of-war reveal that actually feels satisfying to uncover one square at a time. Stephane Valverde built something that has the soul of a physical product on a digital canvas, and you can feel the care in it. That said, it is a decade-old title with a 32-bit notice on its Steam page and a community that has largely moved on. If the idea of a compact, board-game-faithful dungeon crawler with dice set progression, wall-digging tactics, and a puzzle mode that demands pure logic still appeals to you, Paper Dungeons holds up as a quiet curiosity worth the modest price of admission.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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