The Indie Informer

It is not easy to successfully combine accessibility, strategy, cozy, combat, and management sim. So, Dungeon Inn caught my eye with its ambition to do just that. Standing on the shoulders of its loveable band of — let’s call them — opportunistic entrepreneurs and fueled by a deadly feud, the game convinced me of its outlandish premise within an hour. It launched in Early Access today, and, because I love a cuddly game with a little blood on its hands, I’m looking forward to its final release.

A testament to a clever and streamlined tutorial, explaining all the title’s disparate elements and systems would make it sound wildly more complicated that it is. So, let’s start with the narrative. Sara and her two cat business associates are out to make money. Whether that means skirting the law a little bit is neither here nor there — as long as the team doesn’t get caught.

So, our plucky fortune-seekers take advantage of their world’s most fatally serious rivalry, sneaking from the heated Seaside faction’s territory to secretly sell good to the detestable Mountain dwellers — and vice versa. Eventually, however, the team strikes up a devil’s bargain that will gain them more gold than they ever dreamed of, with plenty of risk to go with it.

They set up an inn at the base of a famous dungeon, so well-known that it attracts member’s from both town’s adventurer’s guilds. The plan is to build a two-winged tavern catering on one side to Seaside travelers and Mountain on the other. The money-making potential is unthinkable, unless the two factions should discover the duplicity. The danger is real and the board is set.

Gameplay unfolds in digestible, strategy-based, turns with goals set at the beginning of the round. The inn, placed between the Seaside road and the Mountain one, requires you to entice ever-moving passer-bys to come to stay the night before they’re big excursion using limited tools and resources. These include roadside sings, food sands, and games. Each method has a cost and a duration limit, so timing becomes vital.

Timing also determines your amount of danger. Should visitors of opposing factions approach the inn at the same time, they will face off. The winning team will celebrate victory in your facilities, their suspicion that you are aiding the enemy lowered. The losing team dies to the last fighter. The you get to bury the bodies and hope for the best.

Hosting increasing numbers of adventurers and dealing with random events successfully will yield glittering results. The money and resources you gain from growing prestige will allow you to add more sleeping chambers, put in a pub, or build a workout room. In turn, you’ll attract more business, but that also makes keeping on everyone’s good side a little more complicated.

Dungeon Inn is so nonchalantly grisly and outwardly snuggly, I can’t help but love the concept. In addition to its brilliant little narrative nuggets, its gameplay really is easy to grasp in a short amount of time, This opens up a genre to players that might otherwise feel too intimidated. Keep your eye on this one, folks.