I’ve been running silent and deep the past few weeks while submerged beneath an ocean of work and strained submarine metaphors. Starting to surface a bit more now, but don’t get too used to regular updates, as GenCon is coming up, and every spare moment has to go towards preparing for that.
Well, not every spare moment.
I’ve found a new time-killer that’s eaten up more than its share of spare moments: Dungeon Runners from NCsoft. It’s a free* MMORPG in the tradition of Diablo, featuring the standard fantasy tropes, killing monsters, taking their stuff, leveling up, etc. But what makes the game fun isn’t what it does, but how it does it.
How is very tongue-in-cheek. It’s extremely self-aware (NPCs complain about waiting in line to access the dungeon, others give you quests in dialog ludicrously thick with thees and thous) and enjoys poking fun at the genre it so lovingly embraces. My personal favorites are the over-the-top item names. Here are just a few items I’ve picked up:
- Steaming cardboard Scrap Crossbow of the Sugar Glider
- Contagious Designer Beads of the Parasitic Rhino
- Feverish Exquisite Chain of the Sasquatch
- Baby Sealskin Glove
- Class Ring of the Goat
But the game is more than a joke. It’s extremely accessible, with personal instanced dungeons, so you don’t have to wait in line to find monsters to kill. And it’s easy enough that you really could play it with just the mouse if you wanted.
*Yes,the game is free. But if you subscribe for $5 a month, you can access things like storage for your items, and you can equip the really sweet “members only” items.
