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> Results: Dungeon Maker: Hunting Ground
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The ESRB Says
Fantasy Violence: GamerDad battled loads of fantasy monsters in our nicely crafted dungeons. Mild Suggestive Themes: A couple of shopkeepers were flirtatious, and we were even offered a date. There are games where you build things and games where you clear dungeons, but it is very rare to find a game that combines both. It is a pretty wide scope for a small PSP game, so I wondered whether the fun mix of building and battling could last through the entire dungeon, or if this was bound to become a boring and repetitive grind. The simple answer is 'a bit of both', but fortunately the good outweighs the bad to the depths of the dungeon and the discoverable secrets add a nice bit of spice to keep things interesting all the way through. You play as an apprentice Dungeon Maker who has come to town looking to hone your skills and build a dungeon in the hopes of eventually trapping the horrible 'Wandering Demon' that has been menacing the region. But you are not the first - through history many novices have tried to create the ultimate dungeon, but all have failed. The backstory to WHY you need to build a dungeon to accomplish this goal is presented simply and in a way that makes sense as an impetus to get you into the game: monsters threaten humanity in the region, so the desire for all dungeon makers is to lure those monsters away from people and into dungeons where they can kill them off. Of course, this is where it all gets interesting - certain monsters like certain environments, and some appear only in certain sized rooms or when your level reaches a certain 'score' or at certain levels of the dungeon. Building is simple and fun - you approach an undeveloped area and select an element (such as a hallway, corner, room, etc) and place it. Don't like the result? Simply remove it! And after you have built everything you want, or exhausted all of your building inventory (materials cost money which is in tight supply throughout the game), you return to town, eat a meal to 'power up', talk to everyone in town to trade and get quests and then return the next day to destroy all of the monsters that have taken up residence in your dungeon. The fundamental problem with the game is that while the impetus to build and explore and rebuild and visit town and slay demons will keep you enthralled for perhaps a dozen hours or so, the 'Lite' nature of both the dungeon building and combat wears off over time. This is a real problem in a dungeon crawler, where you depend on the addictive nature of combat and minor twists and turns to keep you going. With Dungeon Maker, once you've played for 10-15 hours, you will find it pretty easy to put it aside for a couple of days to play something else. But you will return - the dungeon building is fun and will bring you back, which is a credit to the quality of the game. It is a good and solid effort, but not a great one. Perhaps if they decide to make another game in the series they can focus on the combat - now THAT would make for an incredibly addictive experience! Until then, Dungeon Maker: Hunting Ground is a solid game with a number of innovative features that is fresh and fun, even if it ultimately falls a bit short of the mark. This is the sort of game that PSP owners should buy to support the efforts of developers trying new things and making something other than just another generic hack-n-slash or Final Fantasy' clone.  
The majority of the content in the game is simple and straight-forward: build an area, leave and let monsters populate the area, return to the area and kill all of the monsters, repeat. There is no blood or gore or anything else shocking about the battles - enemies have health bars over their heads and when that is gone they disappear. The monsters are not particularly scary, and there is nothing throughout the game that will be troubling to a child over six years old. Even the minor flirtations we had were innocent and fun, not having any bearing on the game or allowing the player any choice or freedom - even the date offered we refused to focus on the task of building the dungeon and ridding the area of evil. The overall game is designed for slightly older kids, and includes conversations that require greater reading and inference skills, and that is why I have given it an GamerDad Age Seal of 10+.
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