Games Thursday : Monster’s Den - My Favourite Flash RPG
Reminiscent of both pen & paper RPGs and gamebooks, Monster’s Den allows you to create a party of four to journey into nine randomly generated levels of a dungeon to explore, kill and loot. Don’t even think of attempting to play this game during your lunch break or at work, since completing the entire game requires at least half a day. Trust me, I tried 
Besides, dungeon crawl RPGs like these are inherently repetitive after an hour or so so make full use of the autosave slots and savour it slowly two or three levels at a time 
© Biclops Games
Form a party of four adventurers from a total of five classes - Warrior, Cleric , Mage , Ranger and Rogue - and descend into the dungeon immediately : there’s no need for that time-consuming dice-rolling for stats and talking to NPCs for quests.
© Biclops Games
From the current highlighted room, simply click to move into adjacent rooms where treasure (treasure chests) or monsters (crossed swords) await.
© Biclops Games
The turn-based combat will be very familiar to players of Strategy First’s Disciples series but with far more tactical options. Levelling up in this game is done by moving to the exit for the next level and not by clearing the level of all enemies. Since fallen foes drop weapons and equipment, it’s highly likely that you’ll attempt to wipe out all enemies before proceeding to the next level.
© Biclops Games
When levelling up, your characters not only increase their stats but receive new class specific skills as well which translates to extra tactical options during combat. Several class-specific skills complement each other like casting the Ranger’s Nature Balm (which increases health regeneration of an ally) on a Warrior using Shield Wall (which increases the warrior’s damage resistance and redirects all damage to the party except for area attacks to the warrior).
© Biclops Games
As you progress through the nine levels, you’ll fully appreciate the streamlined and intuitive interface as it makes managing your characters’ skills and inventory a breeze. Moving over an item of equipment shows the attributes of both the currently equipped item for that slot and the selected item for easy comparison. Equipping a piece of armour or weapon is as easy as dragging an item and dropping it on the character portrait. Your party shares a common inventory store of 45 items so there’s no need to manipulate items to attempt to cram different-sized items into a virtual backpack a la Diablo.
© Biclops Games
The addictiveness of this game in my opinion, lies in the abundant loot which results in almost continual weapon and equipment swapping and upgrading as you explore each room on a level.
I dare say it’s one of the best Flash RPGs I’ve ever encountered and I do play a lot of games
Play Biclops Games’ Monster’s Den.
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Game Book Covers @ Mithrandir’s Gamebook Grotto
DoomRL - Doom Roguelike
As someone said on TIGSource, this looks extremely like FastCrawl (Shareware), although I tend to survive longer in Monster’s Den than in FastCrawl. I came over FastCrawl while looking around CrossCut Games‘ forum - I’m still (patiently) waiting for their casual crawl Dungeon Delvers.
Looking at the screenshots for FastCrawl, I find the tile graphics for FastCrawl much more attractive but Monster’s Den seems to have the more streamlined interface of the two - FastCrawl seems quite confusing - gotta download the trial to try out soon