Almost 30 years ago, I was bored one evening and decided that what I really wanted was a D&D-like game I could play by myself. So I slapped together a little boardgame called DeathMaze that SPI published a year or two later. Since then, there have been probably hundreds of similar games published -- indeed, even from the inception of digital games, with titles like Wizardry. At present, my favorite game of the genre is FastCrawl, which is a nicely polished version; but "free" is a nice price to pay, and Monster's Den isn't bad either.
It's the usual thing: Select your starting characters and enter a randomly-generated dungeon. Combat is turn-based, with the usual front row/back row arrangement, but no real positional importance beyond that. There are unlockable skills, and loot, of course. Simple, straight-forward, mildly fun; no great surprises, though, and it does seem that the earliest levels are the most challenging, which is a pity.
Not a bad way to kill an hour or two.
mmmm, fast rpg goodness. I
mmmm, fast rpg goodness.
I made games like these too in the past with pen and paper and a D20. Collecting numbers is still tasty!
It's ok, but...
The inventory system is a little clunky. Plus, it gets really repetitive after around level 10.
I'd like to see a Monster's Den V2 that has a one or two more classes, along with more skills for the existing classes.
indeed, you spend too much
indeed, you spend too much time toying around with the inventory. Perhaps less loot should be around?
I found this one quite
I found this one quite entertaining actually. I got down to level 3 before I realized OH, THAT'S how I should build my party!
The right combonation of skills, positions, and classes makes you potentially unkillable - which is fun at the beginning and less-so as you crash through level after level, slaying bosses without a single party member dying.
My one big complaint is the inventory. Management becomes quite monotonous after a while. You end up picking up three or four useless items from every fight, and have to compare them to your current items before you decide to keep it or not. It means that after every fight or treasure chest, you're going back into your inventory and going, "Hmmm, +1 stamina or +1 dexterity?" ad nauseum
still, fun for some mindless dungeon hacking though. Sometimes that's just what I need.
Good simple fun.
I must agree to all the comments so far. This game is a good one, but the inventory management is a bit tedious, as you have to compare items all the time, indeed.
Apart from that, the game is entertaining.
There is a Monster's Den V2
Called Monsters' Den: Book of Dread. It does feature new classes, but I do not know what else, as I haven't actually played it (lazy, lazy! Or perhaps overworked. I don't know).
And an aside regarding DeathMaze: there was a pirated (I have to assume--it did not bear costik's name or any reference to SPI, and nobody gave a rat's ass about copyrights in the Soviet bloc) edition in late 1980s Poland (published by Encore, the first Polish publisher of sf/fantasy games, mostly pirated from SPI, and including War of the Ring, Gondor, Voyage of the BSM Pandora)... it was my first exposure to (then) modern boardgames and, indeed, dungeon crawling of any form (I believe I've seen references to Warhammer and D&D in a few English magazines that made it through the iron curtain, but that was about it). Blew my mind away.