DIY RPG
Currently an Early Access game but scheduled for full release in October, Australian indie developer 3 Sprockets’ Fight the Dragon is a hack’n’slash adventure game with a seriously addictive level editor and an already thriving user community. While the game’s developer-created single player game is currently a little thin and repetitious, the ability to easy craft new levels and adventures guarantees that players will never run out of new content.
With an art style reminiscent of the Torchlight games–but with blockier models and tiles and less variety–Fight the Dragon has no real story to speak of, instead sending one of four standard-class adventurers off on a series of dungeon crawls to earn experience and loot, with the ultimate goal of leveling up enough to battle the end-boss dragon. Anyone who has played a recent action-adventure game will be instantly familiar with the single player controls and conceits, from the expected red and blue health and mana potions to the use of standard and special attacks. With most RPGs, combat is at the heart of the experience, but Fight the Dragon‘s combat isn’t terribly punchy, with limited special attacks and loose, imprecise movement and targeting.
I do appreciate that for once an indie developer has eschewed the permadeath roguelike model–although players may only respawn twice per level. Checkpoint markers along the path also restore health, but will run out of restoration points, which adds a small bit of strategy to moving through each dungeon. Currently there is a somewhat limited roster of enemy types, and most are archetypes pulled from other games–rats, skeletons, zombies, etc.
After each dungeon, players return to the home screen to manage inventory and then dive back in again, choosing to either play a developer designed level or one of over 2500 user-created levels, each categorized by difficulty and reward.
Fight the Dragon’s level editor is incredibly easy and intuitive to use, even with a controller. It’s not hard to understand why there are so many user-created dungeons. Most level editors, of course, allow the user to access the game’s assets and design new content around them, but Fight the Dragon‘s tools are extremely accessible and very fast. It’s simple to place destructible objects, enemies, chests, doors, NPCs, weather effects, and to paint the environment with a wide variety of textures and then modify their properties–within the limits of the available content. Right now, as easy and fun as it is to create levels, the lack of options does mean that even the best user-crafted content can look indistinct.
The ability to play test a level under construction at any time is extremely handy, and I have no doubt that at release and beyond, new content will become available to give users even more toys to play with. Right now, an underpopulated online coop mode, not-yet-implemented PvP, and lack of single player story means that the current state of Fight the Dragon only suggests what it will eventually become. It’s clear that the product is first and foremost a level and community builder, and even at this early state, those aspects are pretty successful.
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