Freemium Perdition: Dandy Dungeon Legend of Brave Yamada

Dandy Dungeon Legend of Brave Yamada
Dungeon Crawler/Life Sim
1 Player
System: Android
Developer: Onion Games
Year of Release: 2017

Endearing is a strange way to describe a game with a plot revolving around a thirty-six year old recluse who is fawning after his sixteen year old neighbor, after losing his game development job, after being too distracted making his own video games to bother showing up. And yet here we are. Yoshiro Kimura is the man behind this odd little thing, and after looking back at his previous work, such as Chulip the kissing RPG for PS2, it makes a bit more sense.

The plot really is as simple as I outlined above, you play a bit of a pathetic dude, Yamada, who's just trying to achieve dreams. His dreams are just a little misguided. Soon after abandoning work to make his own dream game he meets his new young neighbor and has an epiphany. If he makes his game about him saving her, surely she will fall as in love with him in real life as she will in the game. The writing managing to ride that fine line between sad, creepy and hilarious.

You play the role of an a strange omnipresent force and as such play test his game for Yamada. It's a fairly simple design, he creates small 5x5 grid rooms that you will direct Yamada around. The more progress you make the more new ideas he programs in. Enemies, power ups, shops, bosses, new levels, new hazards, weapons, armor, etc. etc. Being a phone game each excursion costs some energy which recharges over a period of time, and replays are highly encouraged due to a random loot system. It shows you all the possible loot on the stage select screen, so you'll always know which dungeons you'll need to explore more. Well, navigate more like. Literally all you do is trace a path from the start to the finish, with the goal of grabbing all the items, killing all the enemies and walking over all twenty five tiles (unless there's less walkable tiles due to water or something). Combat happens automatically, though you do get some items like healing potions or magical scrolls that provide various helpful effects.

My favorite part of the game is that after every successful dungeon crawl Yamada is visited by someone, be it his old boss, some other well known video game developers, weird neighbors, timid coworkers and, of course, cute sixteen year old neighbors. Seriously Yamada, ugh. The dialogue is also well written and entertaining. As these characters either help or hound Yamada over his poor life decisions he decides to add them into his game as various characters, usually bosses, as a form of catharsis. I don't know much about Yoshiro Kimura, but I wonder how much of his own experience, or frustrations he put into this game.

That's about it. There are some microtransactions, but it's all small unnecessary items. Rice balls will revive you if you fall in a dungeon, things like that. There's one option though that might be worth it if you enjoy the game. For about eight dollars you can buy some ducks which will refill your energy bar much, much faster. If you find yourself enjoying the game, especially if you see yourself putting some serious time into improving Yamada's life, it's worth it. While free will always be my favorite price, eight dollars is a fair price for Dandy RPG.

I really enjoy the quirky world Yamada lives in, and I really enjoy my time spent here. It's a little brain dead for me though, and the strange characters aren't enough to draw me in for long periods of time. Within a couple weeks of having starting it up I'm already barely playing it, if at all. Then again, it's a free game, and all I've enjoyed all my time spent with Dandy RPG, and I could see myself sinking some more time in sometime down the line. Maybe you'll be drawn in more than I was, even if not, Dandy RPG is well worth a download and an afternoon mucking about in.