Dungreed

Entering Dungreed, I was told it's a worse version of Shovel Knight, which I remember playing at some point in the rather distant past. For whatever reason, it didn't stick with me, so I didn't have the highest hopes for Dungreed either, but in I went.

Dungreed is a sidescrolling room-based dungeon crawler. It features about six floors of content worth 20-30 minutes each, plus a bossfight for each floor, and then a little extra. Of course dying means going back to the beginning, so unless you're really good, the game will last longer than 3 hours until first completion. But 6 hours? 10 hours? That depends on you.
You begin each run with a basic sword. By exploring the dungeon, you can find other weapons, both melee and ranged, as well as some other equipment. And as is tradition, all of that is lost when you die. What you keep is experience, any money you didn't spend in the dungeon (up to a cap), and any equipment you unlocked or villagers you saved. The saved villagers can offer you upgrades, which break all of what I told you in small ways.

It's a solid formula, and it is evident the game has been polished and made with care. The upgrade options are varied, there's a healthy amount of RNG... The weapon variety is perhaps the strongest aspect of them all, providing a lot replayability as you experiment with different weapons.
The pixel art is solid and the soundtrack ranges from mediocre to pretty damn good on some tracks.
But it's also missing a lot. Mostly, it's just short on content and balance. The game's over fairly quickly, but even before it ends, you can probably see most of the room layouts multiple times, most enemies to the point of boredom, and a ton of useless equipment. On the balance side, overall the game is far too easy for my tastes, with no adjustable difficulty. Multiple pieces of equipment or certain strategies which I don't want to spoil allow you to just facetank or rush through everything. Despite the fun combat, it's not a challenge.

All in all, Dungreed offers a short but polished action roguelike experience, probably enjoyable by all fans of the genre, but more so by the more casual-inclined. I feel it had the potential to be something much greater had it introduced more content, more variety, and more options and challenge. As it stands now though, it was fun, I liked playing it to first completion, but I wouldn't play it again or try to 100% it. As such, a slot on my favorite games' list, albeit below the line.