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Noted pundit “Weird” Al Yankovic once sang about the biggest ball of twine in Minnesota, wondering what on Earth would make a man decide to do that kind of thing. “What was he trying to prove?” Yankovic asked, “Who was he trying to impress? Why did he build it?

“What was going through his mind? Did it just seem like a good idea at the time?”

Dungeon Maker: Hunting Ground is video games’ biggest ball of twine in Minnesota. Its protagonist decides, hey, it might be a good idea to buy a cave outside of town and become one part Indiana Jones, one part Frank Lloyd Wright, and one part Andrew Carnegie. So he uses his cave to build a home for monsters, explores it, and becomes an economic juggernaut in order to build more stuff to attract a powerful demon so he can slay it.

Dungeon Maker: Hunting Ground is a weird game indeed.

Build a better mousetrap
 
Hunting Ground isn’t the first game to put players in the role of a nut job who builds a home for monsters, but it’s one of the most solid. As a role-playing game, it offers real-time combat, plenty of chances for players to customize their underground mazes, lots of junk to collect and bite-sized gameplay that’s perfect for the PSP.

A town offers a host of options for players. A building supply store sells hallways, rooms, and wallpapers that can be used to flesh out a dungeon. A creepy apothecary pushes potions, a magic shop provides various spells. A wizened old man dispenses advice in the town square, and there are merchants, a museum curator, and a princess to ladle out quests.

With all the standard role-playing trappings in place, Hunting Ground launches into a rather interesting experience. It’s not enough to build a maze. If players build it, certainly, the monsters will come. If players build it well, however, the monsters will flock. That means that players will have to attract goblins with wood-paneled wallpaper and flooring. It means fountains should be provided as a source of nourishment, and bedrooms placed to give the more upscale fiends a place to sleep. It means that pathways need lots and twists and turns to accommodate minor-league players such as bats and cats, and that treasure rooms be arranged so as to be as far away from the exits as possible.

Thankfully, the game makes dungeon creation easy. Junction points can be built upon with a variety of hallway pieces or rooms (acquired from shops or characters), and players can erase their mistakes without penalty. Wallpapers and floor coverings can be thrown down in huge chunks, which is a godsend considering players can create some elaborate and extensive designs.

The challenge then is not just to conquer but to build—and build smartly. The game is initially stingy with its cash rewards, so players are forced to come up with designs that will bring more and more monsters into the mix. Players can also take inspiration—as well as loot and booty—from other players’ dungeon designs; ad hoc dungeon sharing is supported.

It’s not just a job, it’s an adventure…

Inside the dungeons, the game takes a three-quarters top down view. A nice mapping feature, shown on the right-hand part of the game screen, tracks a player’s progression through a level, highlighting areas that are already explored in blue. Although it’s a neat feature, it’s also all-too-easy to play the game staring directly at the map and not at the hero as he wanders through his creation.

Sadly, it’s possible to do this because the game’s graphics are plain and its real-time combat system is functional, but far from spectacular. Two gameplay buttons are used to make attacks. One provides a quick, sweeping blow while the other offers a more powerful, but slower strike. Here, Hunting Ground becomes little more than a beat-’em-up, and one with a pretty kooky sense of spatial relationships. Sometimes, the hero will be nose-to-nose with a monster, but his blows will swing through the target. Other times, the hero will be able to whack foes positioned behind him and to his left by making a right-handed chop. None of this is particularly debilitating, but it is certainly odd that in a game at least partially about whomping monsters that the combat system is flaky.

The rest of Hunting Ground is fleshed out with simple fetch quests and a by-the-numbers cooking system. Players collect ingredients, learn different recipes, and progress their hero by “eating” foods that increase his attributes. In this way, players are able to slowly build up their hero from a decidedly weird kook who spends his days building homes for monsters so he can kill them into a really powerful and decidedly weird kook who spends his days building homes for monsters so he can kill them.

Weird Al would be very, very proud.

Article by: Greg Orlando
Video produced by: Jonathan Solin