Japanese developer Wonderland Kazakiri released a really fun dungeon crawling RPG called BlockQuest (Free) back in September of 2015. It was an isometric, voxel-based, tap-to-hop game in a similar vein to Crossy Road, and the absolute glut of games that were trading off the success of Hipster Whale’s mega hit probably made it pretty easy to gloss over BlockQuest when it came out. However, despite utilizing that tried and true formula, BlockQuest was a really great game that stood on its own merits as it wasn’t just another endless high score chaser but a full-blown RPG with pre-designed worlds and a full character progression system. It’s like somebody took an RPG and stuffed it into the shell of Crossy Road, and it turned out beautifully.
About a year later, Wonderland Kazakiri released a follow-up title called Dungeon of Gravestone (Free) which was pretty much just an improved version of BlockQuest that received a ton of updates throughout 2017, including its most recent update from November which added iPhone X support. Now the developers want to take their BlockQuest series in a pretty exciting direction with BlockQuest Maker, a game which Shaun got to briefly see back at Tokyo Game Show last year. Basically BlockQuest Maker is exactly what it says on the tin: You can make your very own dungeons and play through them, just like in either of the BlockQuest games, and then share them for the world to play. You can even earn gold from people playing your created dungeon, so there’s incentive to make good ones that see a lot of players so you can then reinvest that earned gold into more options to add to even more created dungeons.
The way things will work in BlockQuest Maker is everything uses a single type of in-game currency. There’s a “Diver" mode where you simply play through the dungeons made by other players or the official ones made by the dev team, and there’s a “Builder" mode where you’ll build your dungeons. Playing dungeons costs coins but you can also earn coins by completing dungeons. Then there’s a “Mine" on the home screen where every 15 minutes you can earn some coins by watching an ad. Also as previously mentioned you can earn coins by charging a fee for other players to play your created dungeons. Coins are used to unlock all the many MANY different items in the game. The more you play and the more you build the more you’ll earn, and thus the more items you can unlock.
It’s a pretty smart free to play system, BUT, Wonderland Kazakiri will also be offering a couple of IAP packs to premium up the experience. One is a Parts Pack that will instantly unlock all dungeon parts in the game as well as any future parts that are released through updates. Then there’s a Pro pack which will remove all ads in the game, including the ones you’d normally need to watch to get your gold from the Mine, and basically increases every limit that’s in the free version of the game. So you can download more dungeons for offline play, you can create and save more dungeons, you can share more dungeons online, you can build bigger dungeons, and finally you’ll get access to some exclusive parts like NPCs and signposts so you can actually add a bit of story flair to your created dungeons and if you’re dedicated enough can even create your own RPG.
Pricing for each of these bundles hasn’t been given just yet, but we do know that they’ll be offered up in a combo package for a discounted rate than if you were to buy them both individually. It all sounds really cool but also quite ambitious, so I’ll be curious to see if Wonderland Kazakiri is able to pull off this great vision they have for BlockQuest Maker. We’ll find out soon enough though as the game is set to launch on both iOS and Android next week on January 24th. If you like the idea of a Crossy Road dungeon crawler and haven’t checked out either of the previous BlockQuest games, I’d highly suggest picking them up for free as even if you’re not interested in making your own dungeons these are some really fun casual RPGs that are worth your time.
