Old dungeon crawlers like The Elder Scrolls: Arena, Wizardy and King’s Field had simple stories and a heavy focus on hardcore first-person dungeon crawling gameplay, and the vertically oriented Hag’s Castle looks to revive those conventions on modern mobile devices. The story is one of the most simple you’ll see in any sort of RPG, and serves mostly as a justification for the gameplay, which is just fine in this case. Your aim is to venture into the dungeon of Madam Hag and thwart her attempts to use demonic magic for evil, while also saving a baby dragon familiar. To do that, you’ll descend through the dank dungeons with your trusty sword in one hand and some magic of your own readied in the other.
Holding your phone with one hand, you’ll move about dungeons by tapping on arrows, and use your sword and spells to clear out foes as you make your way through wine cellars, gardens and of course the titular Hag’s Castle. The combat is a mostly real-time affair; your front movement button is context-sensitive, and when it turns into a sword, it’s time to rumble. Tap the icon with the right timing to catch enemies in mid-movement for optimal damage. Your dragon familiar, the source of your magic, sits in your left hand and chimes in whenever it pleases with an explosive spell that can knock down a lot of easier enemies with a single hit. It’s about as simple as first-person real-time combat can get, and since there’s no way to block or dodge, you can expect to take a lot of hits, and not be able to face off with stronger foes until you’ve made some progress and gotten stronger.
Death, in this game, will take you back to the last checkpoint with seemingly no other consequences, making this a sort of roguelike. Being easy to play, simple, and relatively forgiving, this will make a good entry point for newbies to the genre, while longtime fans can get a quick fix with the game’s simple mechanics and easy one-handed play. The mobile game is priced at $3.99 on the Play Store, but with fairly good graphics, simple gameplay and more than passable design chops, it may be worth it for those who want an easy first-person dungeon crawler for Android.
