Descend

Overview

Descend is a captivating and demanding dungeon-crawling game with 2D graphics, which incentivizes players based on their expertise and perseverance. Descend has you start off entering a dungeon of sorts, and as the name suggests, you’ll be descending into the depths of this said dungeon. How, what, or why remain unanswered as of now but as we delve deeper into this place we are learning more and encountering more challenges. Through them, you get to slowly unravel the mysteries of this intriguing world and form its lore.

Gameplay

The art is capable of setting the tone for the game very well, pixel art with a grim ominous feel to it which you’d expect from a dungeon crawler. Starting your game off, you’ll be able to select from a variety of characters, which don’t impact your playstyle other then aesthetics of your main character. After which you’ll get a short introduction on the controls. Descend's controls are very straight forward and self explanatory.

While moving about in the dungeon, you’ll be setting forth to complete tasks to push you forward in the levels of the game. Throughout your adventures, you’ll encounter monsters, puzzles, poisons, traps and, bosses alike. Nonetheless, the biggest threat of all, falling into the abyss. Yes, you heard me right, falling is very much a thing in Descend, and very punishing at that! Believe me when I tell you that you’ll experience it first hand as a simple mistake of a miss click can be and will cost you your life.

As you complete all of these challenges, you’ll surely be rewarded with experience in the various disciplines such as, strength, attack, defensive and health. These level up based on the attacks you use in the fights with monsters. Furthermore, gathering items to boost your survivability is an action that you shouldn't forget to do regularly. Items can be weapons, gear, and far more important than anything else, FOOD! Let me repeat that, FOOD! Yes I had to say it twice as I cannot stress enough how desirable and crucial to your playthrough food is in Descend.

While playing, you’ll need to have some RNG gods on your side as food restores health and serves a strategic purpose as well in turn based combat. From mushrooms to delicious sandwiches, we want them all. Every level requires their own task to complete it, or quest I should say. If not yet complete in full, you’ll be teleported back to the beginning of the level to repeat and grind it some more. This offers a great way to level up and potentially grind for some more gear and food.

While running around dungeons in Descend is very entertaining, it can sometimes be absolutely crushing. It provides a compelling gameplay and atmosphere to suck you in for an hour or more, not to worry by the way, if you die (and you will) it will not reset everything to 0, merely your inventory gets emptied but your hard earned skills will remain the same and thus increasing your chances of survival. So even if you don’t succeed in the first couple attempts, you’ll be able to achieve greatness if you keep at it. Remember quitters never win and winners never quit.

Review

While Descend offer a very nice dungeon crawler it is not without flaws. The lack of information on some challenges may get some players dead in their tracks, and combine that with the punishing mechanics in the latter levels, some might not bother to replay the game again. The visuals are pleasant and are able to capture and convey the vibe of the game very well.

The game succeeds in offering enough replayability value but once completed, the need to return diminishes quickly. The game has a game loop that keeps you entertained for a few hours at best, and we are looking forward to see how this expands in the future. The lack of variety in items leaves little to no player choice. A variety in skills and gear would be a welcoming change that could bring more depth to the game.

Overall, Descend is a pleasant web3 game to spend a few hours on but to little gameplay and depth is available to keep you hooked in for much longer then that. We are looking forward to seeing more of the game and the possibility of it becoming an even more enjoyable title in the gam3 space.