Dungeon crawlers are by their nature often disgusting, gruesome and downright epic! Usually we get great games that focus on bloodshed and straight up brutality and action. We don’t tend to get family friendly adventures that offer smart dynamics, but Midboss might be the game we’ve been waiting for.
Midboss places players into the role of a flaming Imp, who dreams of being the ultimate eternity but is often shot down by various other monsters, ghouls and creatures. One day our cheeky Imp decides enough is enough and embarks on a quest to become the biggest, baddest and most Supreme Being there is. In order to do this, our Imp will have to use their greatest power, allowing them to possess various creatures and beings. This comes in handy as pretty much everything in the world is against our mischievous Imp, doing everything their power to stop them at every turn.
Players will have to journey through various dungeons in a turn base manner to achieve their goals. In order to progress further and obtain win the game, players will have to possess different creatures, allowing them to engage in combat more effectively or to play it safe and sneak their way past various obstacles. Throughout the player’s journey, new gear and vital loot can be collected to help further increase your power and engaging in combat situations with a possess form will level up various perks. Interestingly when players die, death cards are created which harbour the details of your demise and can be shared through social networks. Death cards will contain items collected through that play through which players can take one item into a new game.
There are some interesting aspects to Midboss that makes it charming in its own right. Yet there are several issues that plague it from reaching a high mark.
Firstly, the game is highly repetitive. Often each play through follows the same route, even with a randomised world, they often look pretty identical. It follows the same formula of venture out, possess and explore. Very little is interesting about the worlds you venture into as each location is just a different variation of a dungeon.
Possessing is also very limited in its approach as each NPC you can take control of feel very similar to one another, with very few differences. Mainly you gain some new abilities depending on the creature your possessing. It’s very basic and allows no new dynamics to enter the gameplay, thus keeping the experience feeling not so tedious. It would be neat if you possessed a bat that could access high places or be a rat that could enter small access points into new locations. There is the advantage of attack stats improving but you could be a dungeon rat with a great sword and still deal an impressive amount of damage to enemies.
It’s great that there are plenty of options for customising your games but as stated before the world is the biggest problem as it hardly changes, lacking variation in design and just becomes tedious and uninteresting.
Overall Midboss is simplistic in nature and in the right hands can be fun. But there’s a lack of interesting dynamics and the repetitive pacing make this a tedious experience. I’m sure with some updates and new features added, Midboss could be a great game for everyone, but sadly it’s limited and a chore after playing it for a few hours.
+ Interesting concept
+ Good art design
-- Highly repetitive
- Lack of deep and meaningful customisation
- Bland level design
A Steam copy of Midboss was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review
