Shattered Pixel Dungeon

For the majority of my life, I’ve been a fairly die-hard gamer. From Street Fighter to Quake to Counter-Strike to StarCraft to World of Warcraft to League of Legends, I’ve played a lot of games, mostly in the arena of competitive games that I could basically play forever. Games I could play endlessly have been a theme of mine, and even when I’ve made forays into single-player gaming, it’s with with titles like NetHack, The Binding of Isaac, or Crusader Kings where the games offer near-infinite replayability.

Several years ago, I mostly stopped playing games simply because I didn’t have enough time to continue doing so and doing other things that I wanted in my life. Gaming had a bad habit of consuming all of my free time, and I wanted to be able to focus on other areas, like keeping up with my reading or coding more personal projects. However, gaming was an itch I’d still periodically want to scratch. Rather than spending countless hours sitting in front of a computer, I mostly tried to focus on mobile games. Those typically had their own problems, though.

Mobile games I gravitated toward would typically fall into one of two categories. One genre of games were essentially mobile versions of their PC counterparts. Think games like League of Legends: Wild Rift or Mobile Legends: Bang Bang. These ended up being games that I could spend just as much time in as if I just sat at a PC and played League of Legends, and thus defeated the purpose when trying to spend less time playing games.

The other games I liked were typically idle gatcha games like AFK Arena or Magnum Quest. These games would be fun up to a point, with a limited amount of content to play each day. After an hour in AFK Arena, for example, I would quite literally have nothing to do until the next day. That seemed to fill the gap nicely until I reached the point where playing the game became next to impossible without spending actual money on it, something I wasn’t willing to do. The other downside is that the daily cadence of things to do meant that I felt like I was punished if I didn’t play for an hour on a given day. Any skipped days were just missed opportunities.

It’s on this backdrop that a few months ago I wanted to have something I could play to kill some time on my phone and iPad. I wanted something that I could play for a few hours if I really wanted but that I could just as easily not touch for a few days or even weeks without it actually making a difference. Figuring that things like MOBAs or gatchas would never fill that role, I instead decided to look up roguelike titles that would give me vibes of my days trying to do right by the NetHack leaderboards but in my pocket instead of on a laptop. After a decent bit of searching, I finally stumbled across Shattered Pixel Dungeon.

As a roguelike, you can play this game a million times without ever having the same run twice. It offers gameplay very similar to games like Rogue and NetHack with the modern convenience of being able to play on your phone or iPad. Of course, if you aren’t a mobile warrior, then you can also get it for PC at GOG, Steam, or Itch. It was well worth the price of admission on Apple’s App Store, and it has a great interface for both iOS and iPadOS.

The game follows a similar flow to most other roguelikes. You descend a dungeon of increasing difficulty while identifying potions and scrolls that help you upgrade to newer, better gear. Combat is completely turn-based, and you have all sorts of options for things like surprise attacks, attacking multiple times while enemies are slowed, etc. Magic points aren’t a concept at all, and instead spells are cast through wands which have a limited number of charges that recover over time. The maximum number of charges on a wand is dictated by how much it has been upgraded via upgrade scrolls.

All of the classes have a specific hook, from the Mage who starts with a staff that acts as both a wand and melee weapon that can be upgraded indefinitely to the Rogue that has a stealth cloak that upgrades itself the more you use it and offers all sorts of fun tricks when active to the Huntress that has a bow with unlimited arrows and levels up as you do.

Each area of the game has 5 levels, the 5th of which will end in a boss fight. Bosses are fun and strategic, as most of them beyond the first one will end up kicking your butt easily if you don’t have a game plan in mind for how to tackle them. There are plenty of sites online that will tell you how to approach each one, although I found it to be a lot more fun to simply keep playing and try to figure it out for myself.

Along with your weapon and armor, you can also equip 2 rings and 1 artifact. Rings can generally be upgraded with Upgrade scrolls just like weapons, armor, and wands, and they’re generally just raw stats. Artifacts, on the other hand, offer unique gameplay components such as being able to automatically move you to other tiles or allowing you to sacrifice your health to gain additional power.

As you level up, you gain access to different class-specific skills that you can choose from in order to tailor your character to your play style. These skills develop at different tiers.

The first two tiers of skills you just gain access to as your character levels up. The later tiers depend upon beating bosses. You can continue to level up prior to those bosses, but your ability to select a skill will have to wait until the boss has been beaten. This is because later bosses will offer you the ability to sub-class your character so that you can focus on a given specialization, such as a Battle Mage that specializes in combining spells with melee weapons, or an Assassin with focus on attacking from stealth.

As one would expect from a roguelike, while each series of levels follows a given pattern, the levels are all procedurally generated. You can figure that most of them will form some kind of overall loop, but the specifics of each level are random. Likewise, death is permanent. If you die, then you need to start a new run from scratch, hoping that the lessons you learned along the way help you in future attempts.

Each series of levels also typically has a sub-quest to follow. While these are optional, they give you the ability to gain bonus items. For example, in the second series of levels you’ll run into an old mage who asks you to complete a side quest for a special crafting material. You’ll receive one of three random quests, but for all of them you need to obtain a material, bring it back to the mage, and he’ll reward you with a choice of magic wand. While they can sometimes be painful to accomplish, they’re virtually always worth the payoff.

As is the way for roguelikes, the game is difficult. Going in expecting to win the majority of runs will lead to disappointment; instead making each attempt and learning from them is supposed to be a large part of the fun. In later levels, just dealing with random enemies on the level can be quite a challenge if not handled strategically and with the aid of all the resources at your disposal, so every move needs to be carefully considered. While it could easily be frustrating for anyone who isn’t used to the roguelike formula, anyone who likes this particular style of gameplay will instantly feel at home. Even losses can feel extremely rewarding when you come away from them hitting some new personal record or learning some new hook to the game.

The screenshot above is actually pretty old (I’ve had this particular post on the docket for quite some time), and I’ve had over 100 runs at this point. I’ve not actually beaten a single one of them, though I’ve hit the mid-20s on level and made progress on quite a few runs where I managed to pass the 4th boss. Even when feeling frustrated, the variety of classes available means it’s easy to pick a different class and have a completely different experience on the next run. At least when playing on iOS, it’s also something I can quickly fire up, play a level or two, and then put away for a day or two.

Even better is that, despite the fact that the game is several years old, it’s still receiving tweaks and updates. The developer is even planning to release a new class at some point this year! Best of all when coming from the mobile context is that the game is just a few dollars to purchase, and then that’s it. There are no in-app purchases, and you’re free to play as much as you want without any advertisements or distractions. Overall, if you’re a fan of roguelike games, then it’s hard to recommend Shattered Pixel Dungeon enough. It’s a solid value for a terrific game.