Back in the early ’90s Smash TV was one of the more popular games in arcades. Very loosely and unofficially based on the 1987 cult classic Schwarzenegger flick The Running Man, Smash TV was a dual-stick shooter where you’d move from room to room blasting wave after wave of enemies for cash, prizes, and fame on a futuristic game show. Several years prior the famous Gauntlet had a similar top-down style of hack ‘n slash action, but with larger maze-like levels instead of single rooms as well as a fantasy theme rather than a futuristic one. So if you were to somehow combine the structure of Smash TV with the fantasy theming of Gauntlet, what would you get? Probably something like Smash Dungeon from Plastic Cow Games. Here’s a glimpse of an early in-development version of the game.

Smash Dungeon will feature “procedural levels, upgradable skill sets, multiple boss battles, lots of pickups to enhance your abilities, unlockable charaters and more" and was originally intended to be more of a Gauntlet-inspired title but has morphed more into a Smash TV style of game. One of the coolest features is that the enemies have some pretty unique abilities and attack types, and if you head to the thread in our forums you can see some additional short clips about those. Plastic Cow Games is just a single person and states that “there’s still a long way to go" but I’m really liking how Smash Dungeon is looking even in this early stage, and they note that they’ll be looking for some beta testing help in the coming weeks so if that’s something you’re interested in be sure to keep your eye on this one.