Desktop Dungeons

Desktop Dungeons turns the classic roguelike into a single-screen puzzle. Each dungeon is a small grid of rooms and monsters, each marked with its level, and you choose which fights to take, when to explore to regain health and mana, and how to spend the gold and spells you find. Exploring unrevealed tiles is how you recover, so the order in which you open the map matters as much as the fights.

Between runs you build up a kingdom that unlocks new classes, races and dungeons, so a single session feeds a longer campaign. The game won awards at the 13th IGF, and the soundtrack is by Danny Baranowsky and Grant Kirkhope.

The free Enhanced Edition update added the Daily Dungeon: one seeded dungeon a day, identical for every player, so friends can play the same layout and compare how they did on Steam. The Daily Dungeon is not open from the first run: it unlocks once your kingdom has progressed far enough, and is then reached through the Audit Zeppelin building. Each day's dungeon allows one attempt, so a loss counts for the day.

In 2023 QCF Design released a remastered version, Desktop Dungeons: Rewind, as a separate Steam app, and owners of this version received it for free. The original stays on sale and keeps its own Daily Dungeon.

It suits players who like short, tactical runs that reward planning more than reflexes.