Game Review: Dungeon Village (Xbox Series X)

Way back in 2014, we reviewed a mobile game called Dungeon Village, a ‘pay up front’ game that was simple on the surface but held a lot of depth. It was a lot of fun to play, and now developer/publisher Kairosoft has brought it to home consoles.

Combining elements of town-building, time management, and RPGs, Dungeon Village’s premise is simple. Recruit adventurers to fight monsters & explore the surrounding areas for treasure. The overall goal being to keep the monster numbers down, all while building up your town & strengthening your adventurers.

It sounds super-straightforward and something likely to lose its lustre over time, except Dungeon Village has a much deeper gameplay system. You, the player, don’t actually control any of the adventurers in your town. What you do control is what they can do. From assigning jobs that they can earn experience in, to sending them out on quests equipped with the best weapons and armour, to generally mopping up the monster population. Even when not assigned a job, your adventurers will be kept very busy, as they automatically head out and about to deal with the monsters.

Your role is to attract more and more adventurers to your town by building it up and making it the most happening place in the land. From a single road and handful of shops, to streets filled with homes, inns, blacksmiths, training facilities, and so much more.

The more appealing your town is, the more adventurers will visit, and eventually, want to stay. The more adventurers you have on hand, the more that be assigned to quests, and the more money can be earned.

Balancing funds & what quests can be done is a key part of the game. Money is gained by your adventurer’s spending money in your town. Build an inn & they will pay to stay, build a weapon/armour shop & they will shop for items, build a cake shop…well, you get the idea. Make an adventurer happy enough & they will ask to stay in the town. Build them a house & they will pay you monthly taxes.

At the end of every month your bills are automatically debited from your funds so making sure you don’t go into the red is important. You see, sending adventurers on quests costs money but is necessary as large monster groups will affect your town’s popularity & exploring areas yields many great rewards. If 4 adventurers volunteer for a quest & it doesn’t look like they can complete it, you will need to ask more to attend at a cost depending on their abilities.

Balancing costs is where the game really gets tough, but it is a lot of fun. It’s also just one part of what makes Dungeon Village a surprisingly in-depth experience overall.

Reaching certain set targets such as monthly incomings & adventurers staying will see your town ‘levelling up’. This results in your town being awarded a new star level & increasing in size. With that, comes even more buildings and decorations that can be built.

As well as earning money, you’ll also earn ‘town points’ and these are used in a multiple of different ways. Ways such as hosting events that increase your town’s popularity, adventurer’s happiness & improving their individual stats. Town points are also used to change jobs & buy new buildings from the merchant. Like money, you’ll need to spend town points carefully, although you’ll rarely struggle to get more, especially once your town is really thriving.

One of the more interesting things is that that adventurers earn XP and can level up. Going as far as level 10, before maxing out. At this point, you have a choice. Keep them in the job they have perfected, with progression halted, or have them change job & start from level 1 in that role. The benefit of doing this is that they begin their new job with higher stats that they learned from the previous job. It’s far better to have a ton of adventurers proficient in several jobs then a ton proficient in just one. It’s all about getting a balanced and happy team, especially in the later years of the game.

Although you can certainly help matters by buying your adventurers better weapons, armour & equip-able items as well as gifting them after they have been earned through quests. The better equipment they have, the better time they will have in quests.

There’s so much going on in Dungeon Village, and hours can be sunk into it. However, it is not an endless cycle and that comes as a bit of a surprise. The game ends, so to speak, after year 16. Your score is tallied up, ranked, and that is it. The game continues but your score is no longer recorded…however you can keep playing or start a new game with bonuses carried over. It does feel a bit abrupt.

To be fair though, most will have done everything possible by this point and be more than happy to move on. Especially if, like us, you played this when it first came out. Which brings us to the biggest complaint of all – there’s nothing new here. It might be optimised for home consoles, but it is the exact same game that was released on mobile many years before, with all the faults that existed then, still present. The single and small map, the lack of quest variations, and the inability to tailor adventurers for certain quests. These were all complaints we had in 2014, and we still have them.

Regardless, Dungeon Village deserves a lot of credit for making a simple game such an impressive time sink. It’s a highly enjoyable game, with more depth than anyone would first expect.