Fantasy Classic: Dungeon Crawler

Into the mountain, six heroes at a time

Fantasy Classic: Dungeon Crawler sets its sights firmly on old-school tabletop fantasy tradition: form a band of heroes in the frontier town of Midenshire, then lead them from safety into the ruined fortress of Vhal Drakhar, shattered and left to rot upon the black slopes of Mount Garang, where strange lights have begun burning again among the broken towers. Released into Early Access on 15 August 2026 by Eternal Play Office at NZ$29.49, it's an explicitly deliberate, methodical game by design, where light, marching order, supplies, wounds and battlefield positioning are all stated to matter, and its tiny early review base responds with real, specific interest even at this very rough, beta-labelled stage.

An unusual answer to managing a party of six

The clearest, most specific praise in the sample concerns how the game handles commanding a full party in combat. One detailed reviewer, who admits going in skeptical after seeing the low review count and a "poorly edited trailer," describes discovering "something beautiful" instead: rather than pure turn-based combat or the real-time-with-pause structure familiar from games like Dragon Age: Origins, this game aims for "high-fidelity automation of turn based combat," letting players define specific personalities and decision profiles for each hero's automated choices. That reviewer frames the approach as a genuine simplification of party management without stripping away tactical control, a specific, systems-level distinction worth taking seriously from a detailed and clearly experienced genre reviewer.

A big dungeon, for a very early beta

Beyond that headline mechanic, a separate reviewer offers a more general but still concrete endorsement, specifically praising the scale of the game's dungeon for only being at "version beta 0.1," calling it already "a decently big dungeon" and stating plainly the game "has a lot of promise for old school dungeon crawlers." That same reviewer's advice to newcomers is itself telling about the current state of the build: read the manual closely, since it "helps a lot," and consider sourcing or generating your own character portraits, since the game's built-in options are still limited enough that some players may want alternatives ready before starting.

The developer's own pitch backs up what reviewers describe

Eternal Play Office's own description of the game lines up closely with what its early reviewers report experiencing. The studio frames Fantasy Classic: Dungeon Crawler as "a game about deliberate exploration rather than rushing blindly forward," listing light, marching order, supplies, equipment, wounds, traps, locked doors, secret passages, spell choices and battlefield positioning as factors that can all decide whether a party returns victorious or vanishes in the dark. That's a specific, systems-heavy pitch, and it's consistent with the kind of careful, tactical praise its positive reviewers are already giving the game just weeks into Early Access.

A combat bug, and a portrait pool reviewers call thin

Set against that promise, the sample's single negative review reports a specific, blocking technical problem: combat reportedly lags and locks up the game entirely once a fight runs to many rounds, a serious issue for a genre built around exactly that kind of extended tactical encounter. That same reviewer separately notes what appeared to be only one available character portrait, a human male, though they're upfront that the bug prevented them from progressing far enough to confirm whether more options exist further into the game. Combined with the manual-reading and portrait-sourcing workarounds the game's positive reviewers openly recommend, the picture that emerges is of a genuinely promising but still distinctly unfinished beta build.

Between the dives, town, rest, and 345 spells to learn

Away from the dungeon itself, the developer's own feature list points to a second layer of depth its early reviewers haven't yet had time to fully dig into. Between expeditions, the party returns to Midenshire to rest, trade, hear rumours, visit local services, and prepare for the next descent, framing every trip underground as a calculated risk between pushing deeper for treasure and retreating before wounds, darkness and exhaustion claim the party outright. On the magic side, the studio specifically advertises 345 unique spells already implemented, spanning healing, protection and utility effects usable both in and out of combat, plus the ability to build custom spells of a player's own, a specific, sizeable number worth flagging for genre fans weighing just how much system depth already exists underneath this beta build's rougher edges.

A promising start, without much independent data yet

It's worth being direct about how early this reception still is: just four reviews at the time of writing, three positive and one negative, a very small and early signal for a release only weeks into a beta-labelled Early Access cycle. Steam's global achievement-statistics endpoint returned no accessible data for this title at the time of writing, meaning there's no broader player-behaviour data available to independently corroborate how widely the reported combat-lag bug or portrait limitations are affecting the small early player base beyond the one detailed account describing them directly.

Final verdict

Fantasy Classic: Dungeon Crawler backs up a genuinely old-school, systems-heavy party CRPG pitch with a specific, interesting twist on automating turn-based combat that its most detailed early reviewer finds genuinely novel, alongside real praise for the scale of its dungeon this early in development. Its acknowledged rough edges are equally specific: a combat-lag bug capable of locking up long fights entirely, and a character-portrait pool reviewers describe as strikingly thin for now. At NZ$29.49, this is a cautious recommendation, worth watching closely for fans of old-school dungeon crawlers, but best approached with realistic expectations about just how early and unpolished this particular beta build still is.