Dungeon Drafters - Switch Review

Jake Mounsey -

Dungeon Drafters is a deck-building Mystery Dungeon game set in a world where magic is cards and cards are magic. In this world, the four archetypes lived in harmony, but one day, a mysterious fifth archetype appeared and disrupted the balance. After getting swept up on the beach, it is up to one lowly adventurer to discover the mysteries of this fifth archetype and restore balance to the world.

The Good

Dungeon Drafters’ card combat and grid based movement compliment each other very well. Each turn, the player gets three actions, which they can spend on either moving, a basic melee attack or playing a card. This all combines together to form a very satisfying tactical core combat system.

Dungeon Drafters’ card pool is split up between five different archetypes. You have Raider, which focuses on direct physical damage; Oracle, which deals indirect magical damage; Traveller, which combines smaller damage outputs with additional movement options; Warden, which focuses on healing and defensive options; and the illusive Stranger, whose cards are extremely powerful at the cost of being very difficult to acquire. These archetypes allow for a lot of experimentation with many different playstyles.

TL;DR

  • Well thought out combat system
  • Fun and interesting card pool

The Bad

When you start the game, you get to pick one of six playable characters, each starting with a deck that focuses on two card archetypes (e.g. the shinobi uses Raider and Traveler cards while the bard uses Traveler and Oracle). The thing is, all this choice does is determine your starting deck. Some might say that not being tied to one particular playstyle is a good thing, and I understand that, but personally, I don’t like homogenisation of playable characters; to me, it makes it feel like picking your preferred character isn’t even a choice at all.

While Dungeon Drafters does have a story, its actual progression is a mystery to me. After the tutorial, you are just kind of dumped into the main hub, get shown where a bunch of dungeons are, and are told to go figure it out yourself.

Speaking of the main hub, I have no idea where anything even is. The hub town is ridiculously huge, with no recognisable landmarks. I had to rely on using the NPCs to learn my way around, but even that was difficult because they’re all slightly modified sprites of the player characters, which are often used multiple times.

TL;DR

  • Character choice doesn’t matter
  • Progression is unclear
  • Navigating the hub world is a nightmare

Final Score: 5/10

Dungeon Drafters is a decent game, but I can’t deny that I thoroughly enjoyed its limited Steam Next Fest demo more than its full release. I was expecting it to expand on what we saw in said demo, but instead, it focused on stuff that wasn’t in it.

Thank you for checking out our Dungeon Drafters Switch review, thank you to DANGEN Entertainment for providing the review code and thank you to our Patreon Backers for their ongoing support: