History VideoGame / DesktopDungeons

** [[TechnicolorPoison APHEELSIK]]: Inflicts the poison status on a monster.
** BLUDTUPOWA: Converts health to mana.
** [[KillItWithFire BURNDAYRAZ]]: Burns your enemy for damage proportional to your level.
** BYSSEPS: Adds 30% bonus damage to next attack.
** CYDSTEPP: Grants protection from next killing blow.
** ENDISWAL: Destroys a wall.
** GETINDARE: Grants players first strike in their next physical attack.
** HALPMEH: Heals for health proportional to your level.
** IMAWAL: Changes an enemy into a section of wall.
** LEMMISI: Reveals 3 random unexplored tiles.
** PISORF: Randomly teleports a monster in the alpha; knocks them back in later releases.
** WEYTWUT: Randomly teleports ''the player'' in the alpha; swaps their location with a monster (slowing the target in the process) in later releases.
** WONAFYT: Randomly teleports a monster of your level to an adjacent square.

* {{Angrish}}: The Berserker's class quests consist of them going on a murderous rampage, and both the quest tooltips and the enemy names have been replaced with . This is also how the sword Whurrgarbl got its name.

* AltumVidetur: The kingdom's motto is ''Ut sit semper felicem terra timebat monstra,'' which roughly translates to "May the land of fearful monsters be forever blessed."

** One subdungeon called the [[Film/PansLabyrinth Paan Labyrinth]] contains several imps called [[Film/{{Hellboy}} Hellbois]].

* BagOfSpilling: Every dungeon run starts at level 1.

** On the enemy side, gorgons, warlocks, and ''goats,'' of all things, have high attack and low health. The goat boss is particularly noteworthy, in that he will one-shot all but very lucky dwarf monks or very lucky gorgons that try to face him in melee. The gorgon boss, Medusa, will automatically kill any hero not at 100% health, even the aforementioned dwarf monk.

* AwesomeButImpractical: The chemist has an always-on class feature that gives ordinary health and mana potions random effects, which can be very impressive if the RNG is kind. It costs you the ability to use these potions for healing and mana restoration, which is the impractical part.

* CombatMedic: Any character can potentially be this, as they all have some magical ability. Ironically enough, in this case ''the wizard subclasses'' are the best medics, as they have the most mana/best magical efficiency. The priest subclasses are more tank like than anything. Sorcerers are great in that role because all spells recover their hitpoints.

* DamageSpongeBoss: The Super Meat Man has almost a thousand hit points, triple that of most of the bosses. Fighting him isn't a matter of surviving his attacks but of whittling his health down before you run out of resources.
** The Matron of Flame and Frank the Zombie also qualify, if not to as great an extent - they have lower health than Super Meat Man, but it's still greater than that of most bosses and they hit significantly harder. Frank in particular has been the bane of many Crypt runs, especially since he's immune to Poison.
* DeathOfAThousandCuts: Largely averted - you can't hit-and-run an enemy to death, because when you heal via FogOfWar, so do any injured enemies. If you poison them, however, this strategy becomes viable (and a few classes rely on it).
** The monk tends toward this even without poison, because of its low attack, high resistances and double regeneration.
** In the alpha, the transmuter can regain health by eating the dungeon's walls, which if done without exploring, keeps the enemy from healing as well.

** Inverted with the Glowing Guardian - his "Humility" boon similarly lowers your level by one without lowering your stats.

** Picking up the Terror Slice will turn any character into this - it gives a 100% attack bonus, but reduces your hp total to 1.

* HiddenAgendaVillain: [[spoiler:"H" - Horatio the Immortal - makes it clear that he hates the kingdom and feels it's intruding on his territory. However, he explicitly refuses to say why this is.]]

* InventoryManagementPuzzle: A large part of the game is choosing which glyphs and pieces of equipment to hold onto and which to convert. There are six item slots, each of which can hold five small items (like potions) or one glyph or large item.

* JerkassGods: They're evidently constantly squabbling, and take great joy when the others have their altars smashed up. Furthermore, Jehora Jeheyu is insane, Mystera Annur is halfway there herself, Taurog is a BloodKnight, Tikki Tooki delights in fighting dirty and will punish followers [[DisproportionateRetribution for boring him]], Dracul is a GodOfEvil, and the Glowing Guardian, the only [[GodOfGood unambiguous force for good]], is also [[LawfulStupid incredibly strict to the point of madness.]] The Earthmother and Binlor Ironshield are too obsessively focussed on their narrow interests (plants and mining respectively) to care about anything else, and the Pactmaker is so ambiguous it's not clear if he/she/it should count as a god or as a [[DealWiththeDevil deal-making devil]].

* LimitedMoveArsenal: In the alpha, your character can only have three glyphs equipped at a time - except for the wizard, who can have four. In the commercial version, each glyph takes up the same space as a standard piece of equipment - again, except for the wizard, for whom they count as small items.
* LinearWarriorsQuadraticWizards: Surprisingly enough, ''inverted''. Melee classes can get extremely powerful ''ridiculously'' quick. It's not uncommon for 3rd level fighters to be hacking imps, gorgons and vampires apart that are two to three levels higher than them. BURNDAYRAZ (the only spell that's truly offensive in the sense that using it directly deals damage) only deals 4 times your level worth of damage. This means that the absolute highest amount that you're going to deal with it is 40, and that's if you somehow make it to level ten. However, the major advantage to spell casting is that, unlike normal combat, most enemies ''can never retaliate''[[note]]Some enemies now have the Retaliate: Fireball ability[[/note]]. This means that, in theory at least, you could go an entire game without taking one point of damage.
* TheLittleShopThatWasntThereYesterday: Mysterious shops, after you bought the goods inside, mysteriously disappear. Mysteriously.

** Grimm's Grotto invokes this on purpose--it uses an old version of the level-generation algorithm which does NOT guarantee enemies you can beat spawn near the start, so there's extra emphasis on having a way to avoid being walled-in at the start.

* MarathonBoss: Super Meat Man. He has ''954'' health. The second meatiest boss "only" has 636. Meat man doesn't even hit that hard, unlike a lot of bosses who can casually one-shot the player. Meat Man's real threat is that he ''simply won't die'' without obsessively hoarding your resources for the entire dungeon and then blowing them all on him.

** Namtar, another vicious boss, seems normal enough--except you have to kill him six times! Unusually, after the second his forms get progressively ''weaker'' (but so do you as the level effects eat at your stats).
** The Indominatable, on Vicious mode, can survive 50 killing blows. However his attack power drops each time he does, so by the halfway point he's doing scratch damage (or would be except you should have a dozen or two layers of corrosion by then). And you can explore to regenerate as you wear him down as long as you're careful with the numbers.

** Most of the Vicious dungeons are also this, with a harder-than-normal level after which you go to another area to jump through some extra hoops. Of particular note is the Naga Arena, where after a dungeon full of enemies with permanent weakening debuffs you have to fight ten bosses in a row.

* MinMaxing: The way races, classes, and patron gods interplay causes some combination to be incredible and others to be total wastes. Of course, sometimes that's part of the challenge.

** You can also do this to other characters with IMAWAL [[spoiler: or automatically when playing as a Gorgon.]]

* PowerAtAPrice: For most gods, the "price" is something you're not allowed to do, but particularly of note is Dracul, whose boons all come with a price (such as maximum health). Tikki Tooki takes this literally, as you can buy piety with him and in the alpha version he charges you half your gold to worship him.
* PowerUpLetdown: In the alpha, it's just not worth it to worship the Earthmother. Not only do you have to use IMAWAL to get any piety (see UselessUsefulSpell), but one of her "boons" turns all bloodstains into indestructable, impassible plants. Congratulations, you just ''sealed off the entire dungeon!''. In the commercial version though the IMAWAL glyph has been heavily upgraded and she is actually quite powerful.

** In the alpha, worshiping Jehora Jeheyu, the god of chaos, invokes this. Two of his boons are complete crap throws. The first one trades all of your accumulated piety to give a proportional chance of him either A.)restoring your health fully or B.) Destroying you. The second boon has him change all of the monsters in the dungeon into other monsters, including ones that you haven't unlocked yet and that shouldn't even be able to appear in that dungeon! In the commercial release the first boon still exists (but does nothing if it fails) but is overshadowed by a guaranteed level up boon.

** Super Meat Man lampshades it - his boss intro is desperately claiming he isn't based on anything... And in the commercial release, he drops the pretenses altogether, but admits he has permission to be here.
** Tower of Goo has an upgraded version in the commercial version... called ''"Whurldof Goo"''.

** A series of randomized quests unlocked later on is called the [[VideoGame/{{Portal2}} Perpetual Questing Initiative]].

** One subdungeon called the [[Film/PansLabyrinth Paan Labyrinth]] contains several imps called [[Film/{{Hellboy}} Hellbois.]]

** Taurog seems to be an {{Expy}} of Trog from VideoGame/DungeonCrawl.

** ''Poison'' prevents health from regenerating, and can be applied to both the player and enemies; ''Mana Burn'' can only affect the player and acts as Silence, depleting the player's MP and preventing them from regenerating more.[[note]]Though technically they can have MP and Mana Burn at the same time, with BLUDTUPOWA.[[/note]]
** ''Burning'' is applied only to enemies hit by BURNDAYRAZ or Whurrgarbl. It increases the power of additional burning attacks (to a point), and does additional damage before disappearing if the player uses a non-firey attack or attacks a different enemy.
** ''Slowed,'' in addition to [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin making an enemy move slower,]] provides 1 bonus experience if they're killed while it's active. It overrides First Strike.
** ''Petrified'' turns a non-boss enemy into a statue, which acts as a wall (and if destroyed, there's gold underneath). Provides no experience, but adds 50% to the experience gain from the next standard kill. Certain enemies (mostly gorgons) also have this in the form of "Death Gaze," which - for the player - is equivalent to a OneHitKill.

* TechnicolorPoison: The poison glyph itself is green, and your opponents health bar turns purple when it's used.

* UndergroundMonkey: Thankfully absent in most dungeons, but the class quests often feature enemies with recycled sprites but different names and abilities. Trolls, however, have several palette swaps in the main dungeons with wildly-different abilities

* VillainousBreakdown: Namtar starts out boastful and sure of his invincibility, but as you carry him deeper into the Pit his protests become increasingly desperate, until at the end he just begs you for mercy.

** Halflings and Gnomes gain potions when converting items, whereas all other races get some type of permanent benefit. Goblins as well - rather than increasing their stats, conversions gives them experience, allowing them to quickly gain levels when necessary but depriving them of any special benefits beyond that.

** [[TechnicolorPoison APHEELSIK]]- Inflicts the poison status on a monster.
** BLUDTUPOWA- Converts health to mana.
** [[KillItWithFire BURNDAYRAZ]]- Burns your enemy for damage proportional to your level.
** BYSSEPS- Adds 30% bonus damage to next attack.
** CYDSTEPP- Grants protection from next killing blow.
** ENDISWAL- Destroys a wall.
** GETINDARE- Grants players first strike in their next physical attack.
** HALPMEH- Heals for health proportional to your level.
** IMAWAL- Changes an enemy into a section of wall.
** LEMMISI- Reveals 3 random unexplored tiles.
** PISORF- Randomly teleports a monster in the alpha; knocks them back in later releases.
** WEYTWUT- Randomly teleports ''the player'' in the alpha; swaps their location with a monster (slowing the target in the process) in later releases.
** WONAFYT- Randomly teleports a monster of your level to an adjacent square.

[[http://www.desktopdungeons.net/ Desktop Dungeons]] is a Roguelike (or perhaps a [[PuzzleGame puzzle game]] disguised as one) created in [=GameMaker=], and a very unique one, in that each dungeon that spawns takes about ten minutes to play. You choose a race and a class, set out, and try not to die. All your resources (HP, MP, even ''monsters you can kill'') are heavily restricted, and careful rationing of resources is vital to your success.

* JerkassGods: They're evidently constantly squabbling, and take great joy when the others have their altars smashed up. Furthermore, Jehora Jeheyu is insane, Mystera Annur is halfway there herself, Taurog is a BloodKnight, Tikki Tooki delights in fighting dirty and will punish followers [[DisproportionateRetribution for boring him]], Dracul is a GodOfEvil, and the Glowing Guardian, the only [[GodOfGood unambiguous force for good]], is also [[LawfulStupid incredibly strict to the point of madness.]]

* TheWikiRule: [[http://www.qcfdesign.com/wiki/DesktopDungeons/index.php?title=Main_Page Here you go.]]

* AcceptableTargets: The game has numerous jokes about bankers being evil, starting with a quest where you must defeat two banker bosses who use the vampire sprite. The thieves guild also features jokes about politicians.

** Goo Blob looks like a protagonist from ''{{Gish}}''.

* MarathonLevel: The aptly-named Tower of Gaan-Telet. You have to clear four increasingly hard floors (with nasty effects when you enter the third and fourth) followed by a boss with 999 HP. But on vicious mode it's instead TEN floors, with the monsters scaling up, with nasty effects on all but the first, and the boss has 5000 HP.

** The monk and tends toward this as well. The monk, because of its low attack, high resistances and double regeneration. In the alpha the transmuter can regain health by eating the dungeon's walls, which if done without exploring, keeps the enemy from healing as well.

* QuintessentialBritishGentleman: Parodied with the Orcs, who enjoy a mix of [[ConspicuousConsumption upper-class pretension]] and brutal warmongering - they live in a gated community marked by a massive skull-shaped sign.

* UselessUsefulSpell: The IMAWAL glyph in the alpha version. Turns an enemy into stone, killing it instantly. Sounds good, yes? Except that you don't get EXP for it, which is the most valuable resource in the game, and you now have an impassable wall where the monster used to be. In later versions, petrifying a monster gives you bonus exp for your next kill, which (particularly against low-level enemies) can make it far ''more'' valuable than simply killing it.

** The name of the quest that asks you to clear [[TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon The Tower of Gaan-Telet]] on [[NintendoHard Vicious]]: VideoGame/DarkSouls.

**

* PowerUpLetdown: In the alpha, it's just not worth it to worship the Earthmother. Not only do you have to use IMAWAL to get any piety (see UselessUsefulSpell), but one of her "boons" turns all bloodstains into indestructable, impassible plants. Congratulations, you just ''sealed off the entire dungeon!''. In the commercial version though both the IMAWAL glyph have been heavily upgraded and she is actually quite powerful.

** Druids are named similarly to the Gauls in ''ComicBook/Asterix,'' e.g. Getanadafix or Lernutrix.

* SuspiciouslySpecificDenial: The [[VideoGame/MeatBoy Super Meat Man]] in alpha. "Don't look at me like that. I'm totally not a violation of anyone's intellecual property or anything."

The Alpha version of the game is [[FreewareGames freeware]]. A commercial version with much more content, more detailed art and a semi-relevant plot line was released on UsefulNotes/{{Steam}} on November 7th, 2013.

* BoringButPractical: The Pactmaker, who has no piety loss conditions and will boost your piety for every level you gain. Most classes can work their worship of him into a viable strategy.

* JerkassGods: They're evidently constantly squabbling, and take great joy when the others have their altars smashed up. Furthermore, Jehora Jeheyu is insane, Mystera Annur is halfway there herself, Taurog is a BloodKnight, Tikki Tooki delights in fighting dirty and will punish followers [[DisproportionateRetribution for boring him]], Dracul is a GodOfEvil, and the Glowing Guardian, the only [[GodOfGood unambiguous force for good]], is also [[LawfulStupid incredibly strict to the point of insanity.]]

* LinearWarriorsQuadraticWizards: Surprisingly enough, ''inverted''. Melee classes can get extremely powerful ''ridiculously'' quick. It's not uncommon for 3rd level fighters to be hacking imps, gorgons and vampires apart that are two to three levels higher than them. BURNDAYRAZ (the only spell that's truly offensive in the sense that using it directly deals damage) only deals 4 times your level worth of damage. This means that the absolute highest amount that you're going to deal with it is 40, and that's if you somehow make it to level ten. However, the major advantage to spell casting is that, unlike normal combat, most enemies ''can never retaliate''[[note]]Some enemies now have the Retaliate: Fireball ability[[/note]]. This means that in theory at least, you could go an entire game without taking one point of damage.

** The name of the quest that asks you to clear [[TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon The Tower of Gaan-Telet]] on [[NintendoHard Vicious]]: DarkSouls.