Windaria is a classic anime movie from 1986 that tells a tragic tale of love and betrayal in the midst of war.

Dungeon of Windaria is a roguelike based on the anime made by Compile Heart and Idea Factory in 2008. If you haven’t watched the movie the game won’t make any sense at all. Its “story” is a rough summary of the anime that is even less detailed than what you would find on Wikipedia. Apart from that and a few stills taken from the anime, the game and the original don’t have much to do with each other.

That’s why even if you have watched the anime, you’ll still find yourself scratching your head. A roguelike? “Dungeon” of Windaria? B-but there weren’t any dungeons in the movie! Well there are now, courtesy of Idea Factory. One dungeon, anyway – the Forest of Illusions. It makes as much sense as anything else Idea Factory does.

The Forest of Illusions dungeon is divided into two levels: the first 6 floors, which are relatively easy and are used for stockpiling food and weapons, and the rest of the floors which feature harder enemies and fewer useful drops and can be anything from 10 to 20 floors long.

The game is divided into 4 chapters. First Izu’s journey to Paro. Then Anath travels through the Forest to meet Jil. Then Jil travels to through the Forest to meet Anath (same meeting, same dungeon length, same cutscene plays out at the end). Finally Izu makes his way back to his village. Since the chapters are fairly short and there are no bosses at the end of any of them, I finished the game quite easily. I estimate it took me about 5 or 6 hours, multiple retries included.

Compared to other roguelikes I’ve played, Dungeon of Windaria is more challenging in a number of ways:

• You lose everything and go back to level 1 when you die. Some games keep your level or give you a starter weapon.
• There are no towns. That means no warping out to stash goodies in a warehouse or shop or strengthen weapons or anything. You’ll find money lying around but it only affects your score, nothing else.
• You don’t carry anything over between stages. In most other roguelikes if you manage to clear a stage you get to hang on to some stuff to make the next stage easier.
• Items are not automatically identified even if you use them. You need a Scroll for that. The scrolls aren’t identified either even if you use them. You basically have to read and quaff everything in sight in the hopes of finding something useful. If you die and restart everything is unidentified again and you have to start the process from scratch. The only lucky thing is that weapons and armor are auto-identified when you put them on. Just hope they aren’t cursed!

On the other hand it’s also easier in a number of ways, which is why I managed to finish it:

• The stages are really short.
• You can see from the start that there are only four chapters, which motivates you to finish.
• There’s nothing to do except dungeon-crawl, which helps you stay focused.
• Enemy density is pretty low. Unless you step into a monster house you will almost never be surrounded. Trap density is low too.
• Enemies don’t often show up in corridors, so retreating to the nearest hole in the wall and camping out there is a valid strategy.
• Food drops are plentiful so you’ll almost never starve to death.
• Unlike many other roguelikes, projectiles and thrown items are pretty powerful.
• Even failed forays drop “medals” that you can “spend” to get helpful items at the start. All the good stuff costs a lot of medals, but at least you know you can buy your way to victory if needs be.
• It’s a game that prizes careful movement and clever use of items over raw power. It feels really good when you get into a huge pinch and take a deep breath, go over your items carefully and find just the right scroll or item to turn the tables on the enemy. Yes! Take that! Haha!
• You can finish the game pretty easily with weapons and armor you find early on. Just roam around until you get the lucky run where you find a Claymore (+10 attack) or one of the element swords and find the Iron Armor that gives +10 def. If you can plate them so they don’t rust you’re set for the rest of the game.

So yeah, Dungeon of Windaria is just a generic roguelike that Compile Heart/!f slapped a few screenshots from Windaria into, but somehow it’s also one of the most satisfying gaming experiences I’ve had all year. If I had to complain about a few things, it would be that 1) The character designs used in-game are ugly and do the originals a great disservice and 2) It’s too short! I wanted at least one bonus dungeon to explore because there’s nothing to do after finishing the four chapters. Apart from that it’s a fun, random game to play. It’s got me pumped to play more roguelikes this month. Let’s start with Izuna 2!

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