100 Rogues Review for the Mac App Store

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While dungeon crawlers don’t always hold my attention, 100 Rogues’ personality kept my hands on the keyboard and before I knew it several hours had slipped through my nimble fingers. Generally, retro style games tend to lack a certain amount of character personality, thankfully that statement could’t be further away from the truth with 100 Rogues. The personality shows in every enemy from their moves to their attacks. Being over the top helps as well, I must add I love it when some little dude is slayed, slit open with its body filler pouring out. Very comical–I will never tire of this animation. If you’ve wanted to play a dungeon crawler but are leery of this genre–chin up– you can’t get any more user-friendly then this.

Adding to this wonderful experience is the overall playfulness and down right silliness. Sure the gist of the story out of context sounds serious: the feudal government tells you to “Kill Satan”. But in reality you come across vibrant characters, memorable boss battles, and a ginger bread man– if you find him, hunt him down and kill him–to be rewarded with all his cookie goodness. I swear whenever you want a Dunkin’ Donuts they’re never there. Great now I have cookie-brain breath with nothing to wash it down.

Before the journey begins the Rogues class needs to be chosen, while it doesn’t offer the largest variety it’s still a healthy list: Fairy, Crusader, Scoundrel… a Handful of Monsters. Each class has a different playing style, while still remaining well balanced. Each class also has its own skill tree which depending on the class can greatly alter one style of gameplay from another. But in the end, death will find its way to the Rogue. So as my parents would tell me after getting the umpteenth pet gerbil, don’t get too attached–”it will die and its not coming back…but don’t worry we will get you another one” (why my gerbils constantly died, yet more interesting is why my patents continued buying me something so fragile will continue haunting my dreams). Following the ways of the gerbil, the warrior has only one life and once dead is dead. What does this mean? Game Over. Don’t fret though, oddly enough that’s part of the enjoyment here. Perhaps try another class to venture through the dungeons.

The dungeons include: Bandit Holes, Dungeon, and Hell, each with 5 levels. Crawling your way to the last layer of each rewards you with an amusing Boss battle. The Boss battles need more strategy than the preceding levels and if you’re like me, will need help learning the strategies to defeat the Bosses along with the later stages. This is where challenge mode comes in. The Challenge mode has a decent chunk of challenges that generally have only one or two answers to the combat, teaching you more in-depth strategy that you may have learned by yourself.

Our only guff with 100 Rogues is the in-game menu. While the retro look is great, organized items in the menus are nonexistent. Then there’s the giant iPhone thump buttons on the bottom of the screen. Why are these so huge and why are they on the Mac OSX version? It subtracts from the overall visual goodness and character from the rest of the game. In the end, these are petty gripes.