The following ruleset was taken from the How To Host A Dungeon Wiki and was originally created by Dyson Logos over at Dyson's Dodecahedron. I heartily recommend  giving his blog a read as it is rather impressive and he draws some wonderful maps.

How To Host a Dungeon 

Muck Dwellers are one of many underground humanoid civilizations that are based around underground waterways, lakes and oceans such as the chaotic Kuo-Toa. They possess cruel and alien culture and art, with little science and practically no interest in hedonistic pursuits.

Setup

Draw constructions of the Muck Dwellers in green. Muck Dwellers prefer round and ovoid shaped rooms and curving passages near underground water.
If you don’t have an underground river or aquifer, roll on the following table for the appropriate water source to be added:

Roll	Water Source
1-3	Open Aquifer: Draw a cave 2 beads vertically in size, half this is taken up by water.
4-5	Closed Aquifer: Draw a cave 2 beads in size, filled with water.
6-7	Underground River: Create an underground river as per the Primordial Events table.
8	Underground Lake / Ocean: One one side of the map draw a cavern two thumbs in size that extends off the map filled with water and then continue as per the underground river from the Primordial Events table.

Muck Dweller represent soldiers, nobles and priests, while represent food, minor treasures (such as beads and pearls), tadpole muck dwellers and artworks. Muck Dwellers require to support their civilization.
Pick a spot adjacent to a water source for the Muck Dweller city. Draw two living quarters for and one tadpole pond for – as many as possible should be in direct contact with the water source. Place 2 and 1 in these chambers. This is the city of the Muck Dwellers – give it an interesting and hard to pronounce name like “Bloop-dil’ubloong” and write it on the map in pencil. It is now year zero of the Muck Dweller civilization.

The Muck Dweller Year

Any time you move beads from the city to a pool, you must leave at least 1 and 1 behind. If you can’t do this, don’t move the beads. If the Muck Dweller city is depopulated without a civilization-ending calamity, the largest pool attached to a water source claims one treasure from the ruins (or 1 if the city had no treasures) and becomes the new city.

Spring

In the spring, Muck Dwellers reproduce and care for their tadpoles. If there are at least two more than in the city or pool, remove 1 and add 1 .

Summer

In the summer, Muck Dwellers harvest the bounty of the water and raise their tadpoles. Add 1 to the city or pool if it is attached to a source of water. Muck Dweller cities or pools within one thumb of a source of ore or gems will dig out a mine the size of one thumb to collect 1 of ore, or collect 1 of gems.

Fall

In the fall, Muck Dwellers travel to spread the word of the fish gods. If the city has 2 and 2 or more, Muck Dwellers work to expand the empire.
If the city is on a river, they travel until they are at least one finger length down the river from the nearest city or pool and create a new pool there using 1 and 1 from the city (they may travel further if this gets them to a source of ore, as no two cities or pools can start within a finger length of each other).
If the city is not on a river, but there are other sources of water on the map (such as a river, lake or aquifer), then the Muck Dwellers dig a tunnel up to one half-finger length towards the water source.
If the city has the population to expand but is no more room for expansion on the water and no mining to be found within 1 thumb of any existing city or pool, the city becomes stagnant and loses 1.
In either case, if an expansion group of Muck Dwellers passes within a thumb of gold, mithral or gems, they will stop and immediately create a dry pool at that location to mine the ore or gems.

Winter

In the winter Muck Dwellers retreat into their cities and build. Tally the population of the entire Muck Dweller civilization and draw in any Muck Dweller Constructions marked at that population level that have not already been built – they can be built at either the city or the pools, at your discretion.
If there are more than in a city or pool during the winter, remove one .

End of the Muck Dweller Age

If the Muck Dwellers dig a tunnel to the surface, they panic at the sight of the sun and retreat under the leadership of their priests, abandoning their ‘contaminated’ cities and pools.
If the Muck Dwellers dig a tunnel beyond the bottom of the map, they discover things that were never meant to be uncovered by such lowly slime-covered creatures and are destroyed.
When the Muck Dweller Age ends, remove all Muck Dwellers and minor treasures and tadpoles from the map. In each city and pool, place 1 (Tadpoles that grew to maturity without the guidance of their culture and religion).

Muck Dweller Construction

Pop	Muck Dweller Construction
3	Breeding Pond. Draw an ornate room slightly larger than one bead that connects to both a room containing a and a (either directly or through tunnels).
4	Tomb with 1 Treasure (1 that does not count in population checks)
5	Chamber of Secrets. Create a two or three bead room one thumb away from the nearest Muck Dweller construction with no linking tunnel (it’s a secret). It contains essential religious secrets that are valueless to other civilizations.
6	Exploratory tunnel one half-finger long, roll d12 for clockface direction of exploration.
7	Temple of Mother Hydra. Create an ornate temple containing 1 (tadpole) and 1 that is a religious artefact and doesn’t count in population checks.
8	Dig an exploratory tunnel upwards one finger from the highest point of Muck Dweller constructions.
9	Temple of Father Dagon. Create an ornate temple containing 1 (priest) and 1 that is a religious artefact and doesn’t count in population checks.
10	Dig a deep shaft well down to the bottom of the page.

Revised River table (using d12 instead of D10)

Roll – Underground River
 1-3 : The river moves 1 finger horizontally across the page.
4-5 : The river changes angle sloping upwards while continuing across the page.
6-7 : The river changes angle sloping downwards while continuing across the page.
8-10 : The river moves 1 finger horizontally across the page, with a natural cave 1 bead in diameter in the middle of it. If the river is within 1 thumb of the surface, draw a sinkhole connecting this cave to the surface.
11 : Waterfall, dropping 1 half finger straight down.
12 : Underground lake d6+1 beads wide, river continues from other side.
This doesn’t drastically change the table or it’s results, but adds the underground lake.
More of a change comes in the Revised Natural Cavern table using a d8 instead of a d6:

Roll – Natural Cavern
1 : Draw a tunnel 1 finger long that passes through the cave
2 : Plague: Roll a d4. Write “plague” and the number rolled in the cave. Any group that encounters this cave will lose this number of (B)
3 : Gemstones: Draw a cave 1 bead in size. Roll a d4 and place that many (W) in the cave
4 : This is an empty cave
5 : Primordial Beasts: Place 1(B) in the cave. This represents primordial beasts that fight just like a wandering monster.
6 : Open Aquifer: Draw a cave 2 beads vertically in size, half this is taken up by water.
7 : Closed Aquifer: Draw a cave 2 beads in size, filled with water.
8 : Fate: Write “fate” in the cave. If any civilization tunnels into this cavern, the civilization will come to a natural end. If this occurs, the Fate cavern becomes a normal empty cavern.

For further variants on this and the existing civilisations please go check out  Dyson Logos post here or the How To Host A Dungeon Wiki.

Curious about How To Host A Dungeon? here is a link to last month's post.
Need more Civilisations? Here is my very own Kobold Rules.
The Great Spider Civilisation

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Its been a pretty busy few weeks preparing for the weekend of this month with three birthdays with one more party to go and to be honest I'm getting rather sick of cake.

However for my housemate it seems that this month will be getting even more hectic now he has become an uncle this weekend so I wish him congratulations and to enjoy tormenting his brother in the years to come by giving his nephew the loudest beeping, rattling, speaking toys he can buy.

While some of my group are off to the London MCM Comic Con  (which I hope to attend next year) the rest of us will be taking part in a grand experiment combining Diplomacy, Rogue Trader and Only War the results of which which I hope to post next month.  

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Just a heads up folks this is going to be a long post.

In the last week it has almost been impossible to avoid the debate around Valve and Bethesda's experimental attempt to create a paid module community in Skyrim though the progression of events surrounding this have come so fast that many would not expect it to have ended so soon.

For those of you who have been out of the loop on the 23rd of this month steam announced that starting with Skyrim they were intending to allow modders to list and sell their creations:

I personally had concerns from the get go as I've often relied on mods to fix issues in games the developers have ignored or to extend game play in areas it is lacking however I did see the benefit it could bring by rewarding modders for their hard work and perhaps bring life back to other modding communities in the future.

Though it seemed my concerns were warrant as very quickly the Skyrim community turned in on itself with several mod developers announcing they were transferring to paid mods no longer updating their free version with the biggest two been Wet And Cold famous in the community for its amazing weather effects and SkyUI which overhauls the Skyrim interface and a lot of modules use this as a base thus forcing users to pay for it even if they want to use free modules.

As you can imagine this went down badly with many of the community but one of the most well worded replies was posted by a user called zeralesaar

Being a part of the Workshop monetization effort makes you directly complicit in decaying the paradigm of mods that are shared freely by the community to enhance the game experience. By putting your mod behind a pricetag, you affirm the idea that individuals demanding money for a medium that has always been free and based on principles of community and free exchange is acceptable. Whatever your views on the subject, I feel that this is a major first step in corroding the quality of the modding community by first segregating it into paying and non-paying users and, second, sending a message to corporate interests that the "micropayments and DLC" model of gaming should stretch as far as things like minor retextures or mesh alterations for which companies themselves may charge, which would essentially put us back in the territory of Oblivion's Horse Armor DLC again, and likely result in the restriction of modding resources in future iterations of titles like those of The Elder Scrolls.

You, as a mod author, have a responsibility to the community to help shape the future of game modding constructively, and this decision to monetize a previously free work does not seem to do so. I hope that you make the right decision and both pull your mod from the Workshop paylist and encourage Bethesda/Valve and any other involved parties to discontinue this system.

This fear of mods becoming just another wave of DLC and reducing the communities willingness to teach and share seemed to be a common factor in a large number of replies:

I completely agree with you. I feel like its already to the point where 1/3rd of a game is withheld at release for DLC. Hell look at battlefield 4, it had a map pack the DAY it was released. for me, mods have always been about stretching a game to its limits and working with people within the community to break those limits and now, no one is going to want to work together or share assets because people will just try to make money off of it.  

While this maybe seen as a knee jerk reaction and indeed there were more than a few abusive community members who were acting like entitled spoilt children over the matter this was seen very definitely as a threat to the modding community as a whole by the mod developers that Valve and Bethesda claimed to be supporting. In response a section of the community formed the Forever Free a group dedicated to maintaining the spirit of collaboration within the community as show by their statement:

There is nothing wrong with an artist choosing to sell their work – only failing to communicate that fact, when the work of other artists relies upon them. This is not about drawing lines in the sand or putting up walls: only leveling the playing field, and keeping things transparent. Modding will always exist, but the modding community is a fragile ecosystem, and it lives or dies by the spirit of positive collaboration and open communication. Forever Free is simply this: a recognition that the decisions of any of us have an effect on all of us.

By certifying content Forever Free, and prominently displaying the FF badge at the top of their mod’s description, an author stakes his name on an indelible public promise that that content is here to stay, and will never disappear behind a paywall. Fellow modders may feel safe in the knowledge that that work is safe to build on, and players have a guarantee that they will never be asked to pay for future expansions, bug-fixes, or premium content.

This community is not just a collection of people with the same hobby: it’s a brotherhood united by a shared passion and a legacy of achievement. Instead of burning bridges, let’s start building new ones.

Now this was just the effect on the Skyrim and Nexus modding community and you may of noticed I haven't even gotten into the details of the Steam workshop or even the general massive backlash by the online pc gaming community but one of the major sticking points was the revenue produced by these paid mods to Steam and Bethesda.  
  
 Now when a mod creator placed a paid mod onto the Steam workshop they could set the price or choose to have a pay what you want system similar to humble bundle (this option was actually rather supported by the community even in the backlash as a method of donation to deserving modders.)
Regardless of the price set, the size of the mod and if it will remain supported the mod creator would only receive 25% with the remain 75% to be split between Valve and whichever publisher the original intellectual property belong to (in this case Bethesda taking a 45% cut), Valve also only pays out once you've earn £100 so you would have to make £400 in sales before your first pay check and very much weakened Valve and Bethesda's claims of implementing this to support modders.
While supporters claim that 25% is an industry standard many cannot help but feel that this model would be toxic to the community as it supports the method of flooding the market place with quick to make, low quality mods and re-textures in order to make money and seems like an unfair and unjust amount and a 40/60 split would seem fairer and more accepted by the community.

It is incredibly buyer unfriendly in addition as you have only 24 hours from purchase to request a refund, so what happens if the publisher updates his game and the mod breaks?
Well according to Steam Support they request you post a polite message on the workshop page and contact the author so your pretty much out of luck if they've decided they don't want to bother trying to fix it or the game has change so radically that its unfixable.

Even on the first day problems set in with several mods been stolen and put up as paid mods and Chesko’s Fishing mod for Skyrim which was used by Valve as the poster boy for the project was removed on the first day by Chesko.
This came about after Fore who's idle animation was used in Chesko mod stated that he had not given permission and that he didn't want it used for paid content:



Chesko who reply revealed he had been under a non-disclosure agreement during his mods development and given bad legal advice by Valve on the issue:


Chesko in an upstanding show of integrity issued full refunds and removed the mod from the store however this didn't stop some in the gaming community and several gaming blogs from pretty much harassing and accusing him of theft.
Chesko as a last shoutout to the community posted a full account of everything on reddit giving a insight into the whole process and his announcement that he will be leaving the modding community for a time to focus upon it as a hobby. While it is sad to see a talented modder leave the community due to the actions of Valve and juvenile idiots who spammed his contact details with death threats thankfully some of the negativity that had been aimed towards him due to participating was alleviated and was turned back towards Valve and Bethesda.  

Chesko, you've handled things pretty calmly and actually have been really open with that. If anything, I respect you a lot more than any of the other modders who participated for that. If you want to open up your own site, I would be glad to support you there. 

I'm really annoyed with Valve, both for doing what they just did to you and for being so greedy as to take a 30% cut and leaving you with 25%. They basically threw the modders at the incoming fire and said "You deal with it". F**k Valve. I hope this makes everyone realise they are not the great company everyone pretends they are.

The message is: "We noticed great talent but we can't be arsed to offer them a job. We still want to profit off of their work, though. Let's pretend we're doing them a favor." 

Honestly, while the modders may be defendable, there is no way you can even try and defend any companies involved.

Yep. If this works out for Valve and Bethesda, modding will get you noticed but NOT hired. They will profit off of you in a way where you get all the responsibility, catch all the flack, do all the work, but have no contract and make a few pennies and no more. And you lose control over your work and how it's represented. Wanted a nice portfolio? Well if 'EA SlaveMarketPlace' decided to get a shitty format and difficult to browse website, AND keeps you from offering your downloads elsewhere... guess what shows up in Google first, over your personal website with images of your creations.
All across the gaming industry. Why offer people jobs if they do excellent work for free without you even offering them a penny? This could set a really shitty precedent, and being a game dev at some companies you're already expendable and exploitable enough as it is. This shows companies have zero problem making this even worse. 

They knew what they were doing and they didn't care what it would cause. It's simply pure greed. Less work, more money. Less work, more money. Less work, more money. Time and time again.

With a EA level PR disaster on its hands and a petition to remove the paid workshop working its way into the thousands Valve activated damage limitation and has pulled the paid workshop from steam though from their official announcement it sounds like they may try to bring this back again in the future for newer titles rather than existing ones. 
 Likewise Bethesda has tried to reduce ill will and have released their own statement and are actually replying to a number of well written replies.

 Even though Steam has pulled the paid workshop at this time its still very much in the public eye and can be kept track of here.

Also if your curious about a slightly more in-depth view into the problems and how they could be possibly fixed in the future Paul Tassi over at Forbes has a pair of good articles on the matter:
Valve's Paid 'Skyrim' Mods Are A Legal, Ethical And Creative Disaster
Is There A Way To Make Valve's Paid 'Skyrim' Mod Store Work For Everyone?

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A few years ago I came across an unusual game system created by Tony Dowler, initially created as a way of designing dungeons and cave systems for Dungeons and Dragons it later developed strange hybrid of creation toolkit and solitaire game.

The game is played in a series of successive ages:  

The Primordial Age: In this era the land is developed and sets the stage for the future develop of the dungeon, mineral reserves and ancient monsters lurking in the dark are all things that appear here.

The Age Of Civilisation: One or more precursor civilisations now come to the land each with their own unique rules and develop over a number of rounds until they are wiped out by disaster, monsters, war or they cause The Great Disaster that is a decade of cataclysm that last a decade.
In the original ruleset Dwarves, Dark Elves and Demons are the available though several others have been created by the community. 

The Age Of Monsters: Monsters now roam into the ruins of the destroyed civilisations and surface kingdoms take root, monsters are separated into three different classes:
Delving groups which represent intelligent ,well organised creatures such as Druegar and Hobgoblins.
Breeding Groups which are monsters that rely on replacing losses quickly to thrive and survive these represent Kobolds, Orcs and Goblins.
Alpha Predators these are the largest monsters of the dungeon seeking to eat or rule all others, Dragons, Fire Giants and Owlbears all come under this category.    

Each round now representing a year these monsters roam and expand their territories, fighting each other or raiding the Surface Kingdoms, on occasion adventurers and wandering monsters venture into the depths seeking treasure and glory with mixed success.
The Age Of Monsters comes to an end when the surface kingdoms are wiped out or a single monster group obtains enough treasure to begin the Age Of Villainy.

The Age Of Villainy: An Alpha Predator has grown in power or strength to become a menace to the whole region or a powerful creature of individual new to the area attracted by either the wealth of its inhabitants or the devastation they have cause. As these villains seek to consolidate their power adventurers now arrive in droves each year attracted by the growing rumours and tales of those who return. The Age Of Villainy ends only when the Arch Villain is victorious or lays slain.

The basic mechanics are relatively simple consisting mostly of random tables and If statements, in spite of this the slow build up of history of your dungeon can bring it to life and makes reading chronicles of other peoples dungeons quite engaging.    

If you'd like to see an example of play then watch the following video by GreenGoat:

A free version of the game minus its artwork and some extended details is available over at Planet 13 or for direct download here. 
If your interested in purchasing it then it can be acquired at Planet 13 or at Tony Dowlers blog.

For further posts on How To Dungeon here are links to:
Dsyon Logos Muck Dweller Civilisation 
Silverain Kobold Civilisation
The Great Spider Civilisation

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Hey everyone this post will be short this month, I've been pretty busy with a course recently so I've not had much free time to write however I do have a few articles planned so I may be posting a third article this month or next in addition to my normal posts.

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First of all let me say I am a big fan of both Adventure Time and The Legend of Zelda Series and when I saw this game I was rather excited as this seemed like the ideal formula for an adventure time game and if a sequel is released with the issues in this game addressed it could be a real hit.

I also wish to mention that due to constant issues with crashes (which will be expanded upon) I was unable to complete the entire game but from the various lets plays I've seen since the game itself is rather short (4 dungeons from which I completed 2) but with a lot of back tracking.
 
Now in this review I'll go over the following areas in depth, Story/Theme, Controls/Game Mechanics, Graphics/Sound though it should be noted there may be overlap at times.

Story/Theme

Adventure Time: The Secret of The Nameless Kingdom strongest point is its loyalty to it source material, the games plot could easily be made into a two or three part episode and be well received and its newly introduced characters all have the charm and strangeness one would expect from Adventure Time.

Nearly all the monsters can be recognised from the show however there is no real reasoning or theme why they are in a location and are often recoloured and reused elsewhere throughout the game with only with more hit points to create an additional challenge, there is also no shortage of cameos from major and minor characters, all of which are voiced and have perfectly written in character lines.
This been said there is not nearly enough character interaction between them with each only having a handful of lines. Another minor issue is that unless you are very familiar with the series many of these cameos will be unrecognisable and having a small character journal which unlocks a paragraph about each character you meet would of been a nice addition.

Outside of cutscenes Finn is the only one who speaks at least in the early periods of the game, these short lines are spoken each time Finn picks up an item or treasure with 4-5 lines of alternative dialogue for each. While these didn't bother me so much as I naturally phased them out I do know players who would be driven crazy by this over the first hour so this is just a warning for those who have little tolerance for such things.
This also highlights another issue which is the lack of banter or comments by character to the environments or bosses as you go through the game, this feels like a real wasted opportunity and unfortunately means there is little to distract from the lacklustre game play that is the core of the game.

While there are side quests in the game they are of "Find Item A give to Person A collect item from person A give to Person B" which is typical of top down adventures, the only trouble been the location of these characters are not marked on your map and are often in tedious/awkward to travel to locations.

Controls/Game Mechanics

As basic controls go the game is passable, if you have played any of the gameboy Legend of Zelda series you'll feel pretty much at home however in spite of this you'll find travelling and combat becomes a chore.

First of all Finn seems to move slightly too slow which combined with the large amount of travel, exploration and fetch quests in the game begins to grow frustrating, also there are numerous stairs and cave entrances/exits which you need to traverse and unless you are exactly in the centre of them you just walk against them rather than up/down/through them which often leaves you open to been struck if your just passing through an area trying to avoid combat.
This can be a further problem when moving up or down stairs as due to this been an animation you cannot attack or stop but this often lead to cheap hits from monsters gathered at the top or bottom, while there seems to be an invisible barrier in place to try and prevent this it doesn't work very well and actually causes issues with any block pushing puzzles that require you to push the block past a doorway.

These movement issues begin to also affect combat as well with many monsters been able to out pace you in general or with sudden bursts of speed resulting you get hit (as any monster touching you harms you) or miss a swing often as unlike Link Finn requires to stand still to attack with his sword which again slows down the gameplay and makes combat somewhat unsatisfactory.

The Grass sword is your  main weapon throughout the game as Finn and has seeming extremely short range, I say seemingly short range as the hit box for the blade is very difficult to judge but as a starting weapon it has reasonable power with some early monsters dying in a single blow.
However by the second dungeon many foes take up to 4-5 hits combined with a slightly too slow swing animation and the inability to move when attacking means you'll be getting much closer than I suspect you need to and as such take damage more often than you would normally.
The sword can not be swung diagonal so if your moving diagonally and need to attack you will swing in the direction closest to the angle you are moving which again can result in been struck by enemies approaching you diagonally.

Even hitting a monster can actually do more harm than good in most cases as it knocks away and with most monsters possessing range attacks and you'll often get hit just as your moving in to finish them off. The ideal way to avoid this is to obtain the boomerang stand in which like the Legend of Zelda series paralyses monsters briefly if you hit them (and can be thrown diagonal) and then go in swinging.

You also get a ranged attack yourself by the second dungeon but you again need to stand still when using it, its slow to fire, it does less damage than the sword, if you miss you have to wait until it strikes a wall or goes its full screen travel distance before you can fire again which means its only good as a utility item in most cases.

Your main defence other than hopefully moving out the way of the monsters far faster attacks is a shield which bluntly borders on useless, Like the sword it can only be used in the main four directions it is also extremely picky about positioning and will only block attacks that are central on Finn, a few pixels either way and you'll get hit. Its inconsistent about exactly which attacks it will block for example it will block a monster that is running at you with a blade knocking it back but if a monster just walks into you it won't stop them and when using it to push spiky objects you can suddenly slip past its perfect blocking spot and be damaged.

With these issues combined with the fact that monsters respawn the moment you re-enter an area you'll quickly start trying to avoid unnecessary combat unless you need money, this brings us to the next few points the shops and baggies..

Baggies are small plastic bags and essentially fill the role of glass jars from the Legend of Zelda but serve a wide range of functions, they are your potion bottle, your bomb bag, your monster catcher, by the second dungeon and I had already found eight items that can go in them, however they are as rare as hell and you'll often need a spare one to get through a dungeons puzzles so as a result all the different healing or buff items which you could collect (which are lost if you don't have a free bag btw) or buy (at absurdly high prices) will be ignored or you'll be forced to waste them as you need the space.
Those of you familiar with Legend of Zelda know that there are multiple different values of Zenny and Zenny chests littered everywhere, in Adventure Time: The Secret of the Nameless Kingdom you get coins (or Rubles in game) in values of 1 sparsely (3-6 a screen if lucky) on average and chests are rare often giving you trail mix or one of the other healing item components (which you also have to pay to create). To be fair the most expensive thing I have bought was 200 coins but the combination of low coins, little bag space and high prices means I rarely go near a shop.
One final issue with the Baggies is the inconstancy of how to put items them sometimes you will have to use Jake to grab an item other times you must equip the empty Baggie and use it, both these animations force you to stand still which is again frustrating when the item your trying to pick up moves around, while this doesn't have a massive game play effect it just feels that they shoehorned this in as a way to make Jakes grabbing hand have a use.

Now I must mention that to save the game you must do it manually and the only reminder to do so is when you are about to quit the game, this wouldn't be so bad in some respects but given how unstable the game is and how it can randomly at anytime crash to desktop it is damm right infuriating and I lost 2 hours of play twice. In this day and age there is no excuse not to have an auto save after a dungeon entered, side quest is finish or a boss defeated, its sheer laziness not to have this function and to be fair this underlying laziness and feeling of bare minimum effort is something that seems to plague all the Adventure Time games so far.

Graphics/Sound

You may have noticed that I've made references to the Legend of Zelda series through out this review this is partly due to the genre of the game and how highly it resembles Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past but also because the game itself is forcing a comparison between itself and Link to the Past in its very visuals throughout the game. Take these two screenshot as an example:

 

The environment and Finns actions all reference Link to the Past in design and many of the puzzles are similar, however I will give credit to Adventure Time: The Secret of the Nameless Kingdom's bosses as these do not follow the common "Use the item obtained in the dungeon to beat them" pattern and are honestly the most enjoyable aspect in the game.

However the issue with all these design similarities is you lose a lot of the uniqueness of the Adventure Time series and makes it ever so apparent you are playing a poor Legend of Zelda clone, if they had gone a little further perhaps making the first dungeon a room by room copy of Hyrule Castle with a twist before moving into there own unique design for the rest of the map that would of served the purpose so much better than the constant presence of Legend of Zelda references.
The game unfortunately looks rather ugly as well due to the contrast between the smooth backgrounds and the pixelated sprites of the characters within the game, again the cause of this is laziness by the developers as the sprites have been ripped without enhancement from Adventure Time: Explore the Dungeon Because I Don't Know.

As for the music there isn't much to say, its inoffensive and feels appropriate and upbeat most of the time but you won't be humming it and you'll forget it the moment you close the game.

Summary: Reasonable Zelda Clone that while has charm and is faithful to its source material suffers from poor communication and player feedback regarding objectives and puzzles, clunky controls, lack luster pickups/powerups and finally no autosave with a tendency to crash after cut scenes potentially losing hours of play time.

Thanks to various emulators and the Nintendo store there are far better games available at far cheaper prices.

6.5/10 Do not buy at full £30 price, purchase only with 80% off or more.

If you would like to see further reviews of this game and Adventure Time: Explore the Dungeon Because I Don't Know then I recommend reading the reviewing the following reviews over at the http://metro.co.uk

Adventure Time: The Secret of the Nameless Kingdom

Adventure Time: Explore the Dungeon Because I Don't Know

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This is just a short update on this months post, unfortunately I've not had use of my pc for nearly a week due to a CPU overheating problem, thankfully its fixed now after replacing my thermal paste but unfortunately I've picked up a nasty stomach bug over the weekend while taking care of a friend who was suffering from it.

There is a good chance that this months article will not be posted until the 29th/30th.

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