Dungeon Raid

Introduction

Dungeon Raid, developed and published by 4Cats, released on Steam on 4 September 2026 at NZ$12.60 during its launch discount, having previously existed as a free demo on itch.io. It's a card-based dungeon-crawler roguelike with a simple premise stated plainly on its own store page: dive floor by floor into a dungeon, use cards, items and spells found along the way to fight off enemies and the dungeon's final boss, and try not to die, including from hunger, along the way. The store page lists six unlockable heroes, each with their own passive abilities and spells, more than ten unique bosses, and a card-upgrade system players can lean on if a run feels too difficult. It's a week-old release with a modest but genuinely mixed launch review sample: 25 total reviews at the time of writing, 19 of them positive, landing the game at Mostly Positive on Steam's own scale.

What's working: a relaxed pace, real character variety, and a following carried over from itch.io

What comes through clearly across Dungeon Raid's positive reviews is how many of them frame the game specifically as a low-stress, replayable card roguelike rather than a demanding tactical challenge, and how many reviewers followed the game specifically from its earlier itch.io release. One reviewer puts it directly: "I enjoyed this when I played the demo on itch, and when it finally released, I had to get it immediately." A separate reviewer who also played the itch.io version recommends buying in specifically because of what the full release adds: "if you find the demo reasonably fun, buy the full game, it is a lot more involved with upgrades and replay value." A further reviewer frames the overall feel succinctly: "I like this low stress card based dungeon crawler... this is a low key relaxing after work game," while noting the starting knight character is comparatively limited compared to the unlockable vampire hero, which offers more build options.

Character and build variety draw specific, repeated praise from the sample's more detailed positive reviews. One lengthy English review, while carefully noting the game's shortcomings elsewhere, credits the character roster directly: "the characters (I've unlocked all but two) all play fairly differently from one another. Each character feels unique." A detailed Russian-language review, translated, goes further into specifics: "you can collect different interesting builds and combine relics, you can also opt out of relics and complete the game without them... there are many different enemies with different abilities that you want to adapt your future relics, cards and spells to." That reviewer specifically praises the game's non-sexualised character design within its dungeons-and-dragons-adjacent theme, singling out the necromancer as a personal favourite. Pixel art and music are called out independently by more than one reviewer as a specific highlight, and a further reviewer credits the developer for staying active and responsive to player feedback on the game's forums.

The honest problems: a thin tutorial, shallow combat depth, and balance reviewers call extreme

Set against that reception, Dungeon Raid's negative reviewers raise specific, detailed and converging complaints, several of which point squarely at how the game introduces itself to new players. The most detailed negative review states plainly: "the tutorial covers maybe a third of the mechanics. It doesn't include how to upgrade weapons or use the alchemy mechanic," adding that the button for discard, alchemy and upgrade functions sits in the top right of the screen "not explained nor graphically highlighted to draw your attention to it," and that class skills are similarly tucked away, unexplained, in the bottom left. That same reviewer reports enemy information is inconsistent: hovering over some enemies reveals only "common enemy" while others show special attacks or conditions, with no clear explanation of which enemies will telegraph their intentions and which will not.

A separate, similarly detailed negative review targets the game's combat depth directly rather than its onboarding: "the game lacks depth, especially on the combat side which is what the game is mostly based around. The weapons are nothing more than stat sticks, most enemies are nothing more than stat sticks. So it just comes down to maths," adding that meta-progression currency ends up feeling like the only real reason to keep playing rather than genuine in-run decision-making. A further reviewer echoes the same complaint more bluntly, calling the game "utter garbage" with a "lackluster tutorial" and arguing its tile-based dungeon exploration and card-battler combat "doesn't match," while still specifying a numeric score of 5 out of 10 rather than dismissing it outright. A separate reviewer raises balance rather than depth as the core issue: "feels like there is some balance issues, and it lacks on engagement and player decisions, with an unhealthy dose of RNG," while still crediting the game's tile-exploration and card-holding mechanics as interesting ideas the game doesn't fully explore. Length concerns recur even among positive reviewers, with one noting "it's a bit short for the price" and a separate reviewer reporting they finished a full run in roughly three hours, and at least one reviewer reports a specific visual discomfort with jarring colour-block transitions between dungeon floors.

Verdict

Dungeon Raid backs up a genuinely mixed but net-positive launch reception with real, specific strengths: reviewers who followed the game from its itch.io demo describe a relaxed, replayable card roguelike with distinct playable characters, pixel art and music that draw repeated praise, and a developer reviewers credit as actively engaged with player feedback. Its honest problems are just as specific: a tutorial more than one detailed reviewer says omits roughly a third of the game's actual systems, interface elements left unexplained and visually unhighlighted, a combat system that at least two thorough negative reviews describe as reducing to simple math once its patterns are learned, and balance that one reviewer calls extreme. None of these complaints are vague frustration; each points at a specific, nameable gap. For fans of low-stakes, relaxed card-based roguelikes, especially existing fans of the itch.io original, this is a reasonable recommendation at its current discount, with the plain caveat that new players should expect to learn several of its systems through trial and error rather than the tutorial itself.

Wanderer callout

The reviewer who described Dungeon Raid's alchemy and discard controls as sitting in a corner of the screen, unexplained and visually unhighlighted, is naming exactly the kind of onboarding gap Wanderer watches for in its own interface: a feature a new player never discovers isn't a hidden bonus, it's a system that doesn't exist for them.