Sproggiwood has been out for PC for several months now, but it just now made it to phones and tablets via iTunes and Google Play. A mischievous forest spirit named Sproggi kidnaps a humble Cloghead farmer and sends him on a quest to forge a new civilization. Is it worth grabbing for your device? It's time for a Sproggiwood review!
Sproggiwood is a pretty classically styled roguelike game. Explore randomly generated dungeons, battle monsters in a turn based RPG system. There's a ton of different loot and consumable items that can be found in the dungeon as well.
The turn based combat is a lot of fun, and the art style is downright adorable. You'll be going "Aww!" the whole time a legion of spiders is slowly devouring what's left of your limp, lifeless body.
There's a set of classes you unlock as you clear dungeons, and each has a unique set of abilities for use in combat.
Pro Tip The Thief class is particularly hard compared to some of the others, because it doesn't have a good "get out of trouble" skill, and can't really do ranged damage either. By comparison, the Archer is downright simple.
Most classic roguelikes feature permadeath, and Sproggiwood does as well, although like most modern roguelikes there are systems that allow you to keep some of your progress despite your failures. All the gold you collect is stockpiled, and can be used to buy upgrades between runs.
All of that upgrading is done at the town. There is a set of buildings you can pump cash into to make your life easier - things like additional starting hitpoints, or more treasure chest spawns. It's also possible to permanently buy any gear you find in the dungeon. If you find a weapon or potion you like, for example, you can buy it and then take it as part of your default gear from then on out.
Pro Tip A Health Potion is a smart investment early on - health management is really key to survival, so being able to take a free health restore into dungeons can be a big help.
Soggy Sproggi
Most of Sproggiwood is executed well - the combat is fun, exploring the random dungeons doesn't get repetitive or grindy, and the upgrades feel significant. There are a few areas that fell flat for me, though.
One is that most of the gear is the same between classes. Weapons and armor are carbon copied from one class to the next, just the names change a bit to match that class' gear.
The town interface is also a missed opportunity. There's not much to do building-wise that isn't cosmetic. You can recruit monsters to your town, but they don't really do anything either.
Besides the main quest, there's no side quests or anything that I found. Most of the game is playing and replaying the core 10 or so dungeons to get gold to buy upgrades.
The only other notable downside is the price - Sproggiwood runs around $9.99 on the App Store and on Google Play. That's pretty pricey, and might make some people think twice before picking it up. However, I firmly believe in paying for games that are worth it, so I hope that it doesn't scare you off.