Tiny Dangerous Dungeons review

Tiny Dangerous Dungeons is an excellent and polished Mini-Metroidvania that will probably take you less than an hour to complete. In a world where Steam has 30,000 games and many of them are demanding so much of your time on an individual basis, I find these shorter experiences to be a refreshing change of pace. Mini-Metroidvanias are like a sample of the Metroidvania genre – giving you just a taste of what the genre has to offer without taking too much time away from Monster Hunter World, Sunset Overdrive, Clicker Heroes, or whatever else you prefer to spend your 100 hours on. Originally a free browser game, then a Mobile game, Tiny Dangerous Dungeons is finally on Steam to grace us with its flavor, and I think it’s a most welcome addition.

The primary focus in Tiny Dangerous Dungeons is providing a tight tricky platforming experience. You begin the game with only your ability to jump, and all other power-ups build upon this core gameplay of deftly landing between obstacles. By necessity the map has to be somewhat simple – you generally have only a couple of new options at a time in order to progress. This setup would become somewhat repetitive were the game any longer, but for the length this design allows the game to introduce new obstacles often enough to make each progression feel fresh and interesting. Each of these challenges culminates with a final boss fight that is simple enough to fit in with the game’s Gameboy theming, but difficult enough to warrant more exploration within the dungeon.

Exploration outside the critical path is rewarded with more HP for your character, which can help a lot with the difficulty of that final fight. Or, if you want a challenge, you can face him with the three hearts you start with. The game isn’t particularly hard in general, but the difficulty curve is really well done. The boss fight is something of an exception to the medium difficulty of the game – presenting a relatively big spike upwards in difficulty – but as mentioned you can always boost your HP through more exploration if you want some help. The map is small enough to make backtracking painless, and even better each of the game’s movement upgrades are designed to make you feel powerful when you return to areas and trivialize old challenges.

The controls are tight with both the jumping and your weapon rewarding accurate inputs. It is difficult for me to think of any real criticisms to levy against Tiny Dangerous Dungeons; in many ways it’s the most polished game I’ve played in the Mini-Metroidvania category. I’m sure that there are some that will be put off by its monochromatic presentation, but people will make their judgement on the graphics without my report. I think there could be a little more to the game’s story and theming, and of course more content would always be welcome assuming it’s as tightly designed. The name “Tiny Dangerous Dungeons” being plural made me think that I’d be playing multiple Mini-Metroidvanias in sequence, which, would be a great package. But, again those things have little to do with the design of the game itself. If you want just a spoonful of Metroidvania before you get back to whatever your 100+ hour vice is, Tiny Dangerous Dungeons is an excellent pick.