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1/22/2022

Review of Dungeon Bounce
Developed by: droqen
2021, HTML5

I like when playing a game feels a specific way. Dungeon Bounce is the only game I've played that focuses on guessing distances. When you click a number on the screen, your character jumps that many spaces, however you don't have time to count out each space, as two evil doppelgangers are inching their way toward you. Instead you have to guess which number will bring you closer to the exit without landing you in a pit, another number, or an enemy. It feels like guessing how tall something is from a distance, but there isn't one right answer, just wrong ones.

The game seems to side with my lazy mind and makes counting out the actual spaces less effective than just guessing. If you sit and count the spaces, the enemies will get closer and take away your numbers of options as they go. It changes the numbers from mathematical units into jump sizes. A 3 is a little jump, an 8 is a big jump. If you're far enough away from something, you know you can make a big jump. However counting out spaces becomes part of the strategy when you're too close to danger and the correct number is necessary. Then mathematics come back into the picture as you see you're two spaces away from the exit but you don't have a 2, so you jump 7 spaces, reverse, and jump back 5. It's funny that the mathematical aspect of the numbers will matter more as you get closer to danger, because that's when you will have less time to count and are more likely to be flustered, leading to you picking the exact wrong number.