Ah, nostalgia. It can turn a hardened heart as soft as a rabbit made of pillows.

In the gaming world, you’re never going to get a nostalgic game from a major publisher because there’s just not enough profit to gain from a niche market. Consequently we must turn our attention to the indie developer to ensure the 8-bit salivation leads to a jagged edge feast. On this occasion we head across the sea, over mountain ranges, stop to help an old lady across the road, get a flight back to Australia and go as far as Melbourne for the new release of Dungeon Dashers.

Assumptions that you’ll spend a fair bit of time raiding dungeons are pretty much spot on, taking control of 4 characters to navigate through the main story. There’s a wizard, ranger, rogue and knight, each with their own abilities, which will need to be utilised to negotiate safe passage through the maze.

Before I continue, you’ll need to make a mental note; the role of Dungeon Dashers isn’t to bring a new concept to the table, but to provide homage to the past, while adding a new dynamic to the game play. Happily I can report that Dungeon Dashers does a rather good job of keeping it simple. Your character’s abilities are connected with the physical moves they can make, which means if you like to stand back, use some magic, then duck behind your nearest large fellow, then you have to think about how damaging you can really be. So it becomes a game of chess, but without the ability to know exactly where your opponents lie.

Sounds like a winner right there, however, there are still some underlying issues before I can refer to this game as an instant wonder electro magnific buy (disclaimer: not a real rating). Currently, it’s as challenging as that aforementioned pillow rabbit. Every room I entered instantly becomes a fight by numbers game. Place Knight here, pop on a shield, then sit everyone else behind him. Plus currently collecting all that tasty gold (do not ingest) actually does nothing. Before I get put on the indie hit list, I’ve purposefully failed to mention that Dungeon Dashers is still a work in process. It’s currently on the Steam Greenlight project and there are constant updates.

Now here’s the good stuff. Everything visually is spot on. You can tell they’ve put a lot of care into creating a retro environment as it would have looked in the early 90’s, and the audio accompaniment really adds to the atmosphere. Dungeon Dashers still needs to be fleshed out, but I’m really looking forward to seeing what else will be added if nothing else but to satisfy my nostalgia appetite.

It’s currently available on Steam.