Monsters' Den

Yup, it's pretty good. Gameplay-wise it's even better than FastCrawl, since there are more options on attacking, since every character has 5 special moves to make (costing mana) apart from the standart attack.
 
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Yup, it's pretty good. Gameplay-wise it's even better than FastCrawl, since there are more options on attacking, since every character has 5 special moves to make (costing mana) apart from the standart attack.

I only tried out the Fast Crawl demo, so I'm curious of how it compares.
Den seems to be pretty good for the first 10 levels, but after the boss it losses the feel of struggling to make it to the next level.
 
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Exactly how many levels are out there? I only got to level 4 btw, and there was a "boss" monster (I should probably say group) on every one, and while I admit to playing on the lowest difficulty setting I still find it pretty fun

In direct comparison to FastCrawl, FC has better graphics than MD, a game can be completed faster, has traps and secret areas and the like and so on, and rather larger dungeon levels. MD has more character classes, more diverse enemies from level to the next (it seems like FC was shuffling about a dozen different enemies and they get rather boring after a few games) and more character options i.e different attack skills. FC offered a melee attack for fighters with the optional rather less powerful ranged attack, mages got to choose between fire or ice single or multi target spell, clerics - apart from the healing and their warriour would-be ness I don't remember much, and rogues were not bad. Every character (did I mention you could "create" a party at the start of the game as opposed to FC where it was completely random, however I seem stuck with it for the rest of the game meaning no rescuing new party memebers) starts with a normal attack not costing mana (or whatever it was called in MD) and 2 skills that do cost mana. On every new level youy decend to you gain a character level and get to purchase a new skill ( there seem to be up to 8 for each character class) and you can switch them around as to what's available to best suit your playstile. (A tip - the Rogue's I forgot what it was called but it gives after the rogue's successful attack a random party member a second strike seems pretty useful) And in MD there are no supplies, which while a nice touch in FC were a bit of a nuissance/
 
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There is a mini boss for each level where you fight 5-6 monsters. If you clear this you get extra points in the scoring system. At level 9 there is a dungeon boss. After that it just goes forever, but you never encounter a dungeon boss again.

From reading the comments on Kongregate it seems there are quite a few ways to optimize the party and skills. Some of it is suprising like my Mage who has a staff with poison. When he casts electrical storm, poison gets added as an effect to all the targets. I guess he casts spells through his staff??

My biggest problem with MD is all the loot you have to wade through.
 
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That's because the spells calculate their damage on the weapon at hand, and since in your case it has poison dmg added, it is applied to everyone you attack (in the case of the electrical storm - every monster).

The lood is excessive, i agree, but I got the knack of it at some point.
 
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Ok, played it a while and I definitely like it! Ive got lots of downtime at work next week so I'll fire it up there. When I'm at home I like to try and play games Ive actually paid money for ='.'=

Two words, when comparing the two - NO SUPPLIES!
It's very similar in many ways, but the one BIG detail is the supplies-per-movement thing which I dont care for at all. I like to freely explore, you know, I dont need that kinda pressure in my life. While it's not a FC gamebreaker for me or anything, it is an integral part of the game which cannot be ignored. More skills are definitely better, and the little "cleared" and "explored" meters are nice. The graphics are better than Fastcrawl's.

I just manage the loot right away (every time I score some basically) to keep it from snowballing into a huge pile. I cant seem to swipe the game from my temp files, so it appears one does have to be online to play, and use their thing there. I usually just swipe flash games and play them scaled down in a little window to avoid scandalous eyes of fellow employees and the brass, also keeps the net log clear if youre being monitored in that fashion. Which I dont think I am. I think ='.'=

Thanks for turning us on to this game!
 
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I just gave this game a go, and it's pretty fun for a dungeon crawl. I can see it as a nice diversion when I don't feel like loading up a more involved game... very fun!
 
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There's been a sequel in the meantime, Monsters' Den Chronicles. Looks much better graphically and offers subclasses. I haven't played both much yet except for the first few steps. In Chronicles character creation is a bit weird: you select your party via predefined characters and once in the game, on the inventory screens you can customize them — select gender, change name, hair color etc.

Looks pretty fun — initially I wanted to do an LMK party, but the way the game is set up a healer wouldn't hurt, so I added a P (or C in this case).
 
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