The United States is something else. I’ve been dealing with the shitty idea that I may never become a teacher because the expectations of employers is above and beyond ridiculous. Eight years experience to be a teacher? My actual ass. With the stress of never achieving my passion, I have been playing more video games. It easily takes the edge off. This week I decide to delve into a mine filled with other-worldly monsters wanting to get out; this week I played Tunnel of Doom.

Tunnel of Doom is an top-down action rouge-lite with a little tower defense mixed in. Developed by Antti Vaihia and published by Digerati Games, it is currently on Steam and is TBD.

A mine has collapsed and it is up to Angel to find the remnants of the mining team and her husband. Upon entering the mine it apparent that goblins have infested the area and they want out. Probably to feast on humans or something. It is up to Angel to gather resources, build traps and get those sweet rouge-lite perks to stop the bad guys.

The shopkeeper shines a tad more light on the motives of the bad guys but that is pretty much it.

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Gameplay is the typical run of the mill rouge-lite stuff. Random generated dungeon with random routes, random enemies, random resources and random shopkeeper placement. As angel travels from room to room, she can collect resources like glass, stone and wood to aid her in battle rooms. Battle rooms allow Angel to craft weapons and traps using resources to defeat the bad guys. There is no timer and Angel can take all the time she needs to craft the perfect defense, which feels pretty good. Placing towers and traps are incredibly easy here and takes little to no time at all to grasp the concept of tower defense. Enemies come out of their warrens and infest the area, they have got the good old health bar and when there is no more red, enemy dead. Upon completion of the room, Angel can disassemble the traps and quickly leave with extra gold in her pockets to spend at the shop.

The shopkeeper has the run-of-the-mill perks and consumables to use, along with blueprints for towers that Angel can use for her fight against the goblins. A cannon, a water and fire tower and the towers that I bought on my runs.

Angel has a set amount of hearts and when they deplete BOOM! and you start over from square one. There are events within the mine that requires Angel to save miners and if she cannot, grief makes her lose hearts as a consequence.

Controls are pretty simple and fluid. WASD to move, a melee button, a shoot the bad guys button and when in the screen to build towers, everything is super intuitive. Towers have a cost and then you place. Red means no good placement and blue is good.

The game looks good. Lots of soft colors and nothing that kills my eyes. The art style is nice, especially when the dialogue appears, that is usually in bubble speech form.

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All-in-all, super cool demo. I really enjoyed the tower defense aspects integrated with a rouge-lite game. I really wish that it would have informed the player about how certain towers worked. In hind-sight, it may have been stupid, but “needs water” is a vague description. The game is surprisingly difficult as well. You may think you are looting lots of resources but when it comes to building towers and traps… You end up hemorrhaging resources and sooner rather than later you will realize you have ZERO. Guns and melee help but it really helps when you have a tower to have your back. The difficulty is off-putting put when played enough times, it becomes a general thrill to play.

Cannot wait for it to release.