When I got my very first iOS device, there were a few genres in particular I had hoped and imagined would be well-represented on the App Store. I’ve talked before about my early search for a good Picross-style game, but the other kind of game I was looking for was a first-person, turn-based dungeon crawler, along the lines of Wizardry, The Bard’s Tale ($2.99), or Etrian Odyssey. I felt that would be a pretty good kind of game to play on a smartphone, and surmised that there ought to have been plenty by the time I made my late entry. The problem is, even with the recent renewed interest in the sub-genre, it’s actually pretty niche, and even the genre descriptor causes confusion thanks to the conflation with Diablo-style dungeon crawlers. I asked many people at the time, but nobody seemed to be able to point me towards anything that satisfied what I was looking for.

There are the ports of the original Bard’s Tale trilogy, which are excellent but definitely not designed for the platform, requiring you to do a lot of things that were never intended to be done without a pad of paper at your side at all times. Then there’s The Quest ($4.99), an all-around superb RPG, one of the best on the platform. I love the game, but between the single-character party and the lack of certain combat elements, it also doesn’t quite scratch the itch. QuestLord ($5.99) is another very good RPG, but like The Quest, it’s doing something different from what I was looking for. Even years later, I feel like very little on iOS has really nailed the idea of a modernized Wizardry clone aside from Silversword ($3.99) and, of course, the one actual Wizardry title on the platform, Labyrinth Of Lost Souls (Free). Well, I can’t say that Dungeoneers Quest ($0.99) checks off all of the boxes, but it’s got itself pointed in the right direction, and I’d easily recommend it to anyone looking for that particular type of game, with a caveat or two.

The first thing you should know is that this is a fairly streamlined experience. There aren’t any puzzles to speak of, and the dungeons are procedurally generated, so you won’t see much in the way of crafty designs and cunning traps. The game is almost entirely about taking your party into the dungeon, going as deep as you dare, then getting out one way or the other. Ideally, you’ll take a warp home and get to keep everything you earned on that trip, but if you push your luck and get wiped out, you’ll wake up in town without any of your on-hand gold or any experience your characters had gained towards their next levels. It’s not the stiffest penalty, especially compared to the more well-known examples of the genre, but the farther you get, the more painful death becomes.

Even leaving the dungeon by your own choice has its costs, though. First, you have to actually find the spot on the map that will allow you to warp. You can’t return to a level once you leave it, so pushing on to the next floor represents a serious risk. Since the dungeon is procedurally generated every time you enter it and your only entry point is the first floor, leaving also basically has you starting from the beginning. The other downside is losing your built-up Focus. Similar to a mechanic found in some of the Etrian Odyssey games, fighting fills up a special meter. This Focus meter allows you to get the drop on enemies with attacks and special moves. Leaving the dungeon completely drains it, which makes you want to at least use it up before you head out.

Whichever way you end up back at the town, you’ll probably be stronger somehow. Plenty of useful loot drops in the dungeons, and even if you can’t use it, you can get a decent price for it at the shop. That shop is also a good source for nice gear, and its selection changes every time you come back from the dungeon. Magical gear flows pretty freely in Dungeoneers Quest, so it’s pretty easy to deck out your characters completely. This ends up making the later part of the game a bit too easy, in my opinion, but I may have just been inordinately lucky on drops or something. You’ll end up selling a lot of it, since gear is often specific to certain character classes. Your party of four characters will almost certainly be unable to use a fair bit of what you find.

That’s alright, though, because it keeps the gold flowing nicely. After you play for a bit, there’s very little risk of not having enough gold to at least keep your characters alive and healed up. When you return to the town, you’re able to stow any gold you’re not using into a vault, keeping it safe even if you die later on. If you save enough, you’ll even be able to increase your storage size, allowing you to hoard even more loot. I never really needed to, but if the game delivers on its ambitions, it might certainly be useful in the future. At the moment, there’s just one large dungeon available, but the game description seems to suggest that more might follow. I kind of hope that comes to pass because there were a bunch of skills I never even came close to unlocking in my playthrough of the current dungeon.

There’s a pleasant amount of customization to be found in the character builds. There are five different races to choose from and six different job classes. As in most games like this, the races act as stat modifiers while the job classes determine what gear you can equip and which skills you’ll have access to. Whenever you earn a level, you’ll get two points you can distribute towards your skills, but most of the skills are inaccessible until you reach particular level milestones. There’s a fair bit of skill overlap with certain classes, but the total list includes a total of 65 different skills. Given the effects of each of the skills change as you sink points into them, you’ll have a lot of things to play around with.

For the most part, encounters are random and non-visible. Exactly which enemies and the sizes of the groups you’ll run into depends on which floor you’re on, and you will occasionally run into fixed boss battles that can be spotted ahead of time. As there aren’t any items to use, survival largely comes down to how many magic points you have left for healing magic. Don’t forget to bring at least one healer in with your group, or you’re going to have some pretty short adventures. The battles themselves are typical turn-based affairs where you choose your whole party’s actions at once, then watch things play out according to initiative. Generally speaking, they’re fairly challenging, especially if you’re aiming to conserve magic points. Handling one fight isn’t too tough, but until you know where that next warp crystal is, there’s no way of knowing how many fights are sitting between you and safety.

While I definitely enjoyed myself playing Dungeoneers Quest, there are a few things that gnawed at me a bit over the course of the game. The battle speed is a bit too slow for my tastes, and I’d love to have the option to adjust it. I’d love to have any options at all, actually. As I already mentioned, the balancing in the late game is pretty tilted, and I certainly wouldn’t mind a bit more variety to the visuals. I think the UI could do with a fair bit of work, too. It’s a little too cumbersome to get at my healing magic between battles. Tapping on the portraits of your characters feels like it should work as some kind of shortcut, but it doesn’t do anything. The movement controls are alright on an iPhone, but if you’re playing the game on an iPad, you might find the swiping to be a bit fussy. I know I shouldn’t be compiling a wish list of features here, but as that train has already sailed, I’d like to have the option of a simple virtual directional pad for movement.

Even with these issues, the game did a great job of satisfying my urge for a straightforward, traditional dungeon crawler. It’s got a few modern touches, like an auto-map, that make it a lot easier to play than something like The Bard’s Quest. Although there isn’t much more to it than navigating and battling, both of those elements were done well enough to carry the game for the most part, and I’d certainly be happy if the game gets expanded as planned. Should that never happen, you’ve still got a nice 10 or so hours of classic-style gameplay here, with no IAP shenanigans. You certainly have to appreciate a bit of old-fashioned sensibility to get the most out of Dungeoneers Quest, but if you’re open to that sort of structure, you’ll likely have a good time here.