Delve Deeper

Good casual game with enough strategy to keep you occupied.

"Sometimes a bad is just a bad game."

To the people who liked the game: If there had been a bit more polish, more time to make a better UI, make more creative assets, if this game just had a little bit more... HEART then maybe it really could have been a fun, turn-based, hex-grid board game. I wanted to like this game. It felt reminiscent of maybe some other hex-based strategy board games you already know and love and have multiple copies of stacked next to those old D&D books? Hello, am I talking about you? Is that why you're looking at this game? Me too.

Here's my main complaint against Delve Deeper: apart from the bugs; compatibility issues; limited startegic/tactical game play; the biggest grievance I bring is this:

The time spent watching the movement of EVERY individual unit takes way too long to cycle through a given turn to feel like your player actions and choices even mattered; I spent most of my play time waiting for the computer player units to move.

TL;DR: THIS GAME DOES NOT RESPECT YOUR TIME.

This game felt like a version of Civ without any of the fun feelings of making strategic choices but also taking waaaaaaaaay too long to payout for the time invested. However I still maintain that there is not enough game here to even justify the $5 price point.

SO!

Do you want promises of Adventure? Combat?! Dwarven Hijinks and naturally the, Filthy, FILTHY LUCRE? Well then dust off those old board games and D&D books I mentioned earlier if you have them - they will entertain and enrich you more than this game ever, ever could.

Delve Deeper: A Mix of Fun Elements

Review:
Delve Deeper is a game that combines various fun elements, earning a moderate 3/5 rating from me. It offers an enjoyable experience with its unique blend of strategy, exploration, and humor. While it has its strengths, there are certain aspects that prevent it from reaching its full potential.

One of the highlights of Delve Deeper is its strategic gameplay. As a player, you lead a team of dwarves in mining expeditions, searching for valuable treasures and defending against rival factions. The game requires careful planning, resource management, and tactical decision-making. The strategic depth adds a layer of challenge and satisfaction as you navigate the underground mines.

Exploration is another aspect that adds excitement to Delve Deeper. The randomly generated maps provide a sense of adventure as you uncover new areas, encounter various obstacles, and face off against different enemy types. The element of discovery keeps the gameplay fresh and encourages replayability.

Additionally, Delve Deeper incorporates humor into its gameplay and presentation. The quirky interactions between the dwarves, amusing item descriptions, and lighthearted atmosphere inject a playful charm into the game. The humor adds a light-hearted touch and keeps the experience entertaining.

However, despite these positive aspects, Delve Deeper falls short in certain areas. The game can sometimes feel repetitive, especially during extended play sessions. The lack of significant variety in gameplay mechanics and objectives can lead to a sense of monotony over time. Additionally, the graphics and audio design, while serviceable, may not be visually impressive or memorable compared to other titles in the genre.

Overall, Delve Deeper offers a mix of fun elements that make it an enjoyable experience for fans of strategy and exploration games. While it may not have the depth or polish of some other titles, its strategic gameplay, sense of humor, and exploration mechanics provide solid entertainment. If you're looking for a light-hearted and strategic adventure in an underground setting, Delve Deeper can provide some enjoyable moments.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
A Mix of Fun Elements: Delve Deeper combines strategy, exploration, and humor to create an entertaining experience. While it may lack variety and visual impact, it still offers enjoyable gameplay for those who appreciate its unique blend of mechanics.

this game is awesome. i checked the company name to see if it ever went anywhere, but sadly no. its a cool game and it would make an even better board game. it essentially is one, and a really great one at that. check it out. not joking, its great.

So finicky, not fun to try and move around or do things at all. Tutorial is poorly put together and difficult to try and do because of this

Would be a fun game mind all the random crashes you may get while playing and have to restart over doesnt make it playable just disappointing

I can see why the reviews look a bit worried.
Most of them straight up hate on this game.
And yeah, It's simplistic and quite outdated.
This sort of felt like a strategic board game.
It is basically a turn-based game of mining.
Once you learn it, It's very easy to just win.
In many ways it even felt like a multiplayer.
But sadly: There is no multiplayer available.
All you can do is play against the AI in this.
I think this could've had some MP features.
But I enjoyed it for what it is: A neat game.
I only gave it around 6 hours, but: I liked it.
And I even enjoyed the two available dlc's.
It's a very basic game, but it's really good.
Just sit back and relax, It really isn't awful.
I dunno why some people hate this game.

A Fun little board game that's great for short, casual entertainment that requires more thought than your average bejeweled and whatnot. Negative reviews seem to mostly stem from issues running this on windows 10, or people having really high expectations for this.
Gameplay hours are higher than shown due to offline play

Buy on sale

PS: SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS DO NOT LIST WINDOWS 10 AS A SUPPORTED OS, BUYERS BEWARE

A simple yet surprisingly deep cross between turn-based strategy and boardgame mechanics.At the start of each game you pick a map, set a turn limit, select a starting point (most maps have these be fairly even but some give different starting areas their own pros and cons) then select your five dwarves. Each dwarf in your mining crew can be one of three classes: Warriors who are slow but have the highest health and damage and a moderate carrying capacity (making for ideal guards to block off passages), miners who have a little bit of everything and have the highest carrying capacity, and scouts who carry the least, are fragile, and their low damage is only made up for with a high critical rate but have the highest mobility rate making them ideal for stealing chests (of which any of the three classes can only carry one), lighting tunnels to curb monster spawns, and grabbing valuable ore deposits deeper in the caves.

Once the game starts each player takes a turn placing tunnels (which are preset tiles with various branching paths that must either link to another tunnel or an open space) and then moving their dwarves. When they end their turn the dwarves will leave a lantern or torch to light the tile they're in (if it's not already) and mine one unit from an ore vein if there is one and they have room in their inventory. They may also pick up gems and gold laying on the floor (whether dropped by enemies or prespawned treasure) and collect treasure chests laying about within the caverns. Once their inventory is full, or you simply feel the need to deposit your loot you must send the dwarf back to either your starting point (which will also heal them at the start of the next turn) or a gnomish bank (for gold, gems, and mithril) or an antique shop (for chests) to turn them in and raise your score (though you only get half value for the latter two options). Once the turn limit is reached the game ends and the player with the highest score wins.

While seemingly simple there is a great deal of strategy involved in all of this, with your choice of dwarves determining your strategy, whether you go all scouts and blitz down treasure in hopes of getting good rewards (all of which are randomly selected from a list and may sometimes boost (or reduce) the stats of the dwarf turning them in on top of increasing (or again reducing) your score) early, a bevy of fighters that are slow to advance but can spread out and easily deny territory while holding their own against wandering monsters, or all miners and stripping the walls of valuable metals and not having to worry about making return trips nearly as often, or carefully mixing up your units to cover all bases. There's also the decision between depositing materials at a nearby dropoff point for half their worth or risking it and heading all the way back to your base for full value, doubling the time it takes to get back on the field but also allowing the dwarf to recover. It is also worth noting that you do not have to attach tiles to tunnels you put down, and can in fact place tiles ahead in pre-existing spaces or attached to your opponent's to help cut them off and make it easier for you to advance later.

Overall it's a rather fun littler game that I'd like to see more of, and while I only played it single player I imagine playing it multiplayer would be even more fun. My only complaints are the fact that the monster spawns can get a little out of hand in long running games (especially if you're slow to breach pre-existing tunnels), and the fact that this only features local co-op which limits the ability to play multiplayer and takes away a lot of the usefulness of the map making function.

(Game received as part of the carnival prize list during the 2011 Steam Summer Sale and have been enjoying it off and on ever since.)

Delve Deeper is a game where you are a team of dwarves and square off against another team of dwarven diggers racing for loot for glory with the dwarf king.

A couple other reviewers have called it a "Board game" and that's a good way to look at it. It's not Monopoly, or Ticket to Ride, but it is a board game in many ways. The problem is... it's not a very good one.

Much of the game is the dwarves running to different veins to dig up gold and gems. Then run those gems back to the start point to "Score" them. There's monsters that attack, and there's three types of Dwarves, a fighter With good inventory, great attack, and slow speed, a Miner with great inventory, good speed, and average fighting, and a Scout with great speed, weak fighting, and weak inventory.

And to be honest all three are worth having. Fighters are crucial. There's always going to be monsters and honestly they're the ones that are going to have to fight any monster other than a slime. Scouts move fast, so they can grab loot and quickly score it (Especially relics) and the miner is your base unit. Oddly enough, miners are probably the least necessary, but still worth carrying.

But the thing is The "strategy" of the game is the weak point. The other team almost the same moves as you, but worse. You have mostly different tunnels, you can grow your tunnel any way you want, but the idea is to find veins and mine it, combat between teams is mostly an after thought. When combat does happen between teams, well that's when the game becomes a real mess.

You see you're not able to move if you are in combat. So when your players try to move through enemies, they are stopped.

Here's the problem. When you fight a group of enemies with your group of friends, you run into a stopgap. Assume you win, then the enemies dwarves are downed for 1 turn (any you lose is also downed for a turn) So the best thing to do is keep one of your guys in the square you can kill them, they will revive with 1 hp. You'll knock them out and keep them down. Except then you have an enemy move into the same square, now all of a sudden that square becomes a total mess, your guy might die, and then their guy dies as they revive, and the game becomes a stalemate for those characters. You can't move away, you can't fight the enemy, you can't survive, so your characters stay dead.

That type of problem is manageable in a game, it's even desired in a truly strategic game, but overall this game feels like that's almost the default state. Run for loot, try to get lucky and get better loot than the opponent. Hope your random item is better than their random item, and so on. There's very little strategy to this game other than "play well" and then the random numbers will take over. Maybe you'll find a epic relic and get a ton of money or a poor relic and get nothing. Maybe they'll find more gems then coins and you'll find more coins then gem.

Maybe you'll run into a really powerful enemy, and they'll run into slimes. The point is the game only feels "balanced" when you ignore the randomness of it. You might win... you might lose, but really unless you colossally screw up, you don't have much agency in the outcome of the game.

And honestly that could be fun, but I just don't find this game fun. I like board games I like strategy games, I like a lot of games, but this one... well it's only a couple bucks, but I can't recommend it unless you MUST have a dwarf mining board game to play with friends. But really ... there's nothing here that's really special, sadly.

I have to give Delve Deeper a thumbs up. It's basically a board game, and requires board game thinking: cards and pieces and everything. You move around and get gold, count your spaces, open up parts of the area strategically to make you earn more or screw with other players. I played this a while ago and was addicted for a while until that computer died, and I then loaded it up recently to find it still holds up. I got the base game and the DLC because it was so cheap and because I saw the graphics for the characters released free on Open Game Art. I don't understand the low ranking here at all, unless it was the Delver game people lured into a fight about the name after this had already been out. The only bad thing about the game is sometimes waiting for the computer characters to move, but I see now there's a setting for that, so it's my own fault. If you go into this thinking it's going to be an RPG you will be disappointed, sure, but that would be stupid seeing as how there's all the preview stuff available before you buy. If this looks like your type of game, get it. If you want a 3D soldier game with fantasy trappings I'm sure you can find one of those on here instead, and you should.

Delve Deeper is a simple turn based strategic game.
The tutorial in the game is a big dialogue that goes into detail of what the game gives (building tunnels to selecting a dwarf and point it to a tunnel where he can mine gold).

The game resolve where you can play from 2 to 4 players and the game is decided by how much gold you have earned through mining gold, gem, mithril, loot from defeating monsters/players and relics.
(To play multiplayer. You need to play it on the computer the game is on. Meaning you can't play from over the world. (Which is actually a must for a game like this)).

Before you start you can choose to three classes:
- Miner:
This class can hold up to 6 items for gold, gem and mithril. Can walk 4 steps and is overall the points getter in the game.
- Fighter
This class can hold up to 4 items for gold, gem and mithril. Can only walk 3 steps and is overall the one who protect and fight
- Scout
This class can only hold up to 3 items for gold, gem and mithril. Can walk 6 steps and is overall the one to kill weak monsters and light tunnels that is farther away.

The relics in this game make said classes stronger, but said relic will only have effect on the said dwarf who picked said relic up.
Relics can be turned in at bazaars or the camp (where you start) and might give favourable effects that will last the whole game.
(Relics also have some references to pop culture, Dwarf Side of the Moon as an example).

The enemies in the game (monsters/players) make the game a little more strategic as well with building tunnels.
Building tunnels is optional. you can use it to progress deeper in the mine or give an opening for monsters to attack other players. Making the gameplay a little more fun. Tunnels is at first dark, but everytime you or the other player/computer goes to a dark tunnel. the dwarf will light the tunnel up preventing spawning for more monsters.

Every map have it's set amount of rounds that varies. (creating a map will automatically give an amount of rounds).
making your own map is at first a great feature. Only that you need every hex to be filled to make it truelly playable.
Picking out tunnels without showing what pieces you can select (picking a wrong piece meaning you need to click said hex to redo it). You will be taking a lot of time to create a map. since it's a lot of trial and errors.

Overall it's a solid game and maybe a must for all strategic gamers out there.
But for me I can't recommend this game.

Pros:
- Easy, Fun Gameplay
- Strategic to it's core

Cons:
- Slow Gameplay
- Creating a map is (kinda) frustrating
- Multiplayer is local-only

Feedback for this review is appreciated.

Delve Deeper is a game about dwarven greed. But mostly TREASURE! Go down there and grab as much as you can for your most exhalted king. And more importantly, get more than the other teams!

You'll go in with five(5) dwarves, and will need to collect as much loot as you can in games that seem to go by pretty quickly. It's a good game to start up when you're bored or don't know what else to play, or just because you want to grab some more of that sweet gold.

Of your team, you can select 3 classes. The slow, powerful fighters. Fast, but slightly weak scouts, and miners who are a bit average at everything but can haul the most loot. Of course, being dwarves, all classes can mine gold, gems and mithril and carry chests of loot out, but some can carry more than others, and some fight better than others.
And since you are trying to prove you are more loyal to your king and better at extracting riches, you may end up fighting the other dwarven teams as well.

It's a simple game with solid mechanics, where you start your turn with a tunnel piece you can put down somewhere to expand your tunnels, or to unleash a massive horde of goblins into your opponent's tunnels. After that, you move your dwarves and end your turn. After that you fight with whichever dwarves are in tiles with enemies on them. A simple and easy to learn system with plenty of maps and plenty of replayability. And on top of that, it's cheap too

Worth grabbing whenever you have some cash left over for it. It's cheap, amusing to play, has plenty of replayability(So long as you don't play it all the time) and a most worthy king to deliver all your gold to who occasionally comments on things going on in his own special kind of way.

Very amusing game best suited for a causal play during a lul at a small party. Playing solo more than three or four times will pretty much end most of the interest in the game for you - so I strongly suggest hooking this up to your TV and passing the controller around.

Drinking rules encouraged.

The other reviews, I think, want this game to be more than it is. But it's a short, fun, game that doesn't take itself too seriously or try to be a time sink. And you know what, it's ok for a game to be that (especially with the quality put into this one.)

Interesting board game.

Players take turns digging into the field by placing tunnel pieces and then sending their dwarves down to collect as much treasure as possible. Your dwarves can mine for treasure, but that takes time. Larger caches of treasure can be found by killing monsters wandering around the board, although this involves fighting and is much more risky depending on your team makeup. Artifacts are a form of treasure that can have a wide variety of effects, good or ill, and make the game more exciting. The game ends after a certain amount of turns, where the player with the most treasure wins.

It can be quite fun, but for god's sake find a friend to play this with. That is essentially the whole point of a board game, really. And to all of you who bat your eyes at my calling this a board game: you could conceivably convert this to physical form very easily, with a human dungeon master taking the place of the monster AI.

I don't know why all these other reviewers want this game to be something it clearly wasn't supposed to be. I mean, how hard can it be to talk about this game in the way it was designed to be played?

This game is unplayable. Every time I played the game, after a couple minutes, it crashed (the game just silently disappears and returns you to the desktop). Every time. It's a turn based game and I haven't been able to get past a second turn without the game crashing.

It's a known issue, you can read about it in the forums, look for all the posts about the "invalid tile bug". It seems that it's been known and unpatched since at least November 2012.

There are no saves or checkpoints, so if you do want to try again after the game crashed, you have to start over from the beginning every time.

I enjoy the game, and could easily sink endless hours into it. It's like a really complex board game where you collect treasure by mining, fighting monsters, and competing with other dwarven mining teams. However, there's a a fatal defect where the game crashes to the desktop basically at random. That, coupled with the inability to save (or autosave), means that I'm unable to complete a game. Tried different remedies suggested by the developers to no avail. I want to love it and recommend it, but any game with this severe of a defect 1.5 years after release is awful.

This game is mediocre, I got it for $1.48 in a winter sale with trading card market money and barely regret it.

The console controller support is very buggy, sometimes you'll be in the middle of moving a dwarf and the game will just minimize to desktop, and other times it will just crash to desktop with no error. At the match resolution screen you have to switch to mouse & keyboard to get back to the main menu and then the console controller with not be accessible or detected by the game until you reload it.

No save feature exists mid-match, so if the game crashes say goodbye to the last 20-60 minutes of your life. Trying to complete achievements because 100% achievement completion is your thing, this might not be the game for you until at least save feature or the crash to desktop bugs are addressed.

Beware opening tunnels aggressively on computer opponents so that they are swarmed and attacked by 20+ monsters, turn rotation begins to take forever because each one moves individually to each hex when it's occupied by a dwarf they are going to attack instead of collectively based on their movement #, or by monster type. They each attack individually on their invisible initiative count. Although hilarious to win by having your opponents torn to bits it makes a 20 turn match take 2-3 times longer. I couldn't imagine playing a 40 turn match without being able to save.

Fun little game, though without much DEPTH to it. I'd still say I rather DIG this game, despite some of its FAULTS. Like, say, no saving feature when a single game can last for over an hour so it can be TUFF to finish it in one sitting if you lack the time, and it eventually gets a little BORING. DD's devs have been STONE silent for a while though so don't expect any bug fixes or new content, however the free DLC is still quite a GNEISS addition. But you just gotta admit that this little game is just a STEPPING STONE towards something greater.

Speaking of which.

A sequel with multiplayer included is currently in the works, as far as I'm aware, but devs are taking their sweet time with it, and as for the ETA for its release... Well, your guess is as good as MINE.

I'm done.

I gave this game a shot, I really did. I wanted to like it, and even with it's obvious, glaring flaws, I dug deeper to see if there was something there, but after it was all said and done, there wasn't.

The game presents an interesting idea, and it reminded me of something like Dungeon Keeper. You have dwarves, and you have them mine these caves for you in real-time, collecting resources, which you use to attack the other team. You can find treasures, and different items that give you temporary upgrades for that match, and eventually, one team becomes the victor.
Sound great, right? Well, no, actually.

On paper, the game sounds like it'd be cool, and really fun, but in practice, the controls are just awful. You're forced to move the camera around by clicking and dragging, and issuing commands to your units just feels really cumbersome. The artstyle is interesting for a bit, but once you realize how limited the whole thing is, and how many assets they changed the colors on and re-used. that also begins to lose it's appeal. There is basically no storyline to speak of, and what little bit of flavor text they do try to put in there just comes off as bland and annoying.

I could forgive ALL of these things if the design of the game was fun... but it also fails in that aspect. Nothing I did in the game felt rewarding or satisfying, and I think that's the most damning thing you can say about it. It just feels like a bunch of cumbersome clicking without any payoff. It's a bland, useless, mess of a game, and nobody should waste their time or money with it.

Delve Deeper was a little confusing at first, but after spending an hour learning the ropes, I found the game does offer some mild fun. It's a short turn-based strategy game where you and up to three other players control a team of dwarfs and compete against one another in search for the most treasure. There's a handful of different treasure types that are worth different points plus collectible relics which can modify your team member's stats. Each game is played for a finite amount of turns (usually between 10 and 30) and the player with the most points after all turns are played wins. Nothing over the top--just short and simple. It's a very similar game style to Worms.

There are three classes of dwarfs each having different stats like hit points, movement points, and inventory slots which you choose before the match. Each team starts at a different mining location allowing you to decide whether to battle your opponents and take their stuff or avoid them and just mine for gold. There is also an evil team which is computer controlled made up of various monsters throughout the dungeon to thwart your treasure collecting efforts. The old school battle system works pretty well with the rest of the game's simplicity.

Now there are a couple game breaking bugs that you'll need to avoid otherwise the game will just crash. When you are on an invalid dig location and click on the yellow area where it says "No Valid Plays", the game will crash. Very repeatable and very annoying, but if you don't click on the yellow area, the game seems to be stable. Also you'll want to turn off the tutorial, otherwise the game randomly locks up during some battle sequences. I found a few forum posts about these plus claims that the developers have moved on to a sequel so there likely won't be any future fixes.

If you can work around these bugs, the game isn't bad. I can't really recommend a game with major lingering bugs, but there is a decent amount of replayability for fun in small doses.

ENG:

If you like terriaria video game as you like about this game! Relaxed and light play a game, who wants to take a more relaxed and does not want to think too much, turn-based style seasoned treasure hunting game, and enemies, and other goodies, then this is the ideal choice for casual gaming sessions. Includes multi-game support. Testimonial!

FIN:

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