Deadly Rooms of Death - Gameplay

Gameplay

King Dugan has a problem. He let his guards eat their meals down in the dungeon, and they spread crumbs all over the place, so suddenly his lovely dungeons are swarming with cockroaches, not to mention goblins, serpents, evil eyes, and other nasty things. It's really gotten out of hand. Beethro Budkin, dungeon exterminator extraordinaire and the main protagonist, is called to the castle and, after a short briefing by Dugan, thrown into the dungeon with the doors locked securely after him. With only a Really Big Sword™ at his disposal, it's up to our hero to clear the place, so that the prisoners can receive their torture in a clean and safe environment.

The game is entirely tile based and takes place on a 38*32 rectangular grid. King Dugan's Dungeon is made out of 350 interconnected rooms, 38*32 tiles each. Any such room is a separate puzzle, and to solve it you must defeat all the monsters in the room and exit it. Each element or monster must occupy a positive whole number of squares, and no two monsters or objects of the same type can occupy the space at once. The player controls the movement of Beethro Budkin, a dungeon exterminator equipped with a Really Big Sword™. In the fictional world where the game takes place (the Eighth), his job as a Smitemaster is to clear dungeons of invading monsters. Most gameplay stems from, or elaborates on, this concept.

Since this game is also turn based, monsters or objects will only move once per turn. In almost all cases, monster movement depends exclusively upon where it is in relation to the player. As a result, Deadly Rooms of Death requires logical problem solving rather than reflexes. Each turn, the player can wait, move into any of the eight bordering squares to his current one (if not already occupied), or rotate his sword 45 degrees. Since the game is turn based and tile based, using your sword to block advancing monsters or to manipulate them is an essential strategy, as is counting square distances to objects, since this will determine how many moves you or a monster requires to reach an object or square.