Deadly Rooms of Death

Deadly Rooms of Death is first and foremost, a Puzzle Game, created by Caravel Games. The game is about halfway between Exactly What It Says on the Tin and Non-Indicative Name - there are certainly rooms that are deadly, but the plot extends far beyond this simple dungeon concept.

The game's central concept is an idealized version of the dungeon crawl - enter a room, kill all the monsters, then go to the next room. However, it's a turn-based game, so the main player moves, then each monster gets to make one move. The puzzles come from many different features - all the monsters move in predictable fashions, there are dungeon fixtures such as doors and switches, one-way arrows, bombs, and other benevolent or Malevolent Architecture to make the job tougher.

As a puzzle game with an editor, there are several different level sets and stories available, but the main releases so far have centered around one man, Beethro Budkin, who works as a dungeon exterminator under the Smitemaster's Guild. Kings, lords, and other dungeon owners have a recurring problem of their dungeons becoming infested with monsters and nasties, and will hire experienced smiters to go kill everything and return the dungeons to usable status. There is an ongoing question of how seemingly-enclosed dungeons become infested or reinfested so quickly, but the standing answers are typically "job incomplete (unintentional)" or "monsters come from inaccessible places" or "it's a fact of life, they get reinfested every now and then if they aren't supervised". Beethro's adventures lead him towards answering this question, but he gets himself into problems and circumstances far more complicated and sinister than he would have planned.

The game's history is extensive, but here's a simple list of all the main releases:

Here's how the game works in terms of money: The games themselves are free. Caravel Games makes money selling official level sets (some of which are named above) which have more graphics, canonical plots with voice acting, and generally a high level of quality. The games are multi-platform as well, with versions for Windows, Macintosh and Linux available. This means you can download the game, the user-made styles and the user-made holds, all for free, which will last most people for years, and you just have to pay for official Caravel releases.

The games are downloadable at Caravel Games' main site, although this troper would recommend that new players start with the Journey to Rooted Hold demo.

Some non-plot spoilers ahead. If you don't want anything about the setting or established facts spoiled, play the games.

Tropes used in Deadly Rooms of Death include:
  • Already Undone for You: If NPCs are roaming in the same area that the player is, expect this unless the architect is careful.
  • And Now for Someone Completely Different: Possible to implement. There are two examples in The City Beneath that temporarily follow other people.
  • Artificial Brilliance: The Slayer has perfect swordfighting AI. In an even fight, it's impossible to kill him, and he will always kill you if he has the chance, so you'll have to move very carefully to evade him.
  • Artificial Stupidity: In an uneven fight, the Slayer's AI is easy to exploit. One early level in The City Beneath has a Slayer fight you on hot tiles. He will fry himself as soon as he gets close.

Beethro: Well, I think I know who got the brains in that family.

    • Stalwarts and guards are not nearly as careful as the player, and so are often overwhelmed by roach gangs.
  • Back Tracking: Possible or necessary in most cases, since the stairs to the next level could be anywhere. In most "straight" holds it's not necessary to backtrack to previous levels.
  • BFS: Beethro Budkin's sword is called The Really Big Sword.
  • Big Damn Fire Exit: Not a fire, but typically whenever the player has to escape from anything collapsing or some other sort of danger, this is the result (although there will be puzzles in the way).
  • Block Puzzle: It's possible to implement a straight one with mirrors, pressure plates or other elements, but most commendable examples will involve the player doing a lot of other stuff. General consensus is that DROD is not and should not be Block Puzzle: The Game.
  • Bonus Level: Secret levels or secret rooms count as these, as well as any rooms or levels hidden behind a Master Wall or only accessible in the editor.
  • Boss Battle: Mostly averted, since any and all enemies (including the Slayer) can be placed in any quantity or location possible. However, the last room of any hold or any level is typically viewed as this.
    • Journey to Rooted Hold is arguably one big boss battle.
  • Character Portrait: Beethro's ugly mug has been present since the earliest versions. Starting with Journey to Rooted Hold and the introduction of NPCs, other character portraits can also be present to indicate who is speaking or who the player is.
  • Check Point: A room element that can be placed just about anywhere. Community consensus is that all but the smallest or simplest of rooms should have at least one, and rooms with multiple sections, especially long rooms, should have several.
  • Controllable Helplessness: You might have made the room impossible to clear three hundred moves ago, but until you die or restart you can still try to do anything else until you give up.
  • Corridor Cubbyhole Run: Possible to implement, but since the game is turn-based they usually aren't very challenging unless mixed with something else.
  • Crate Expectations: Averted. Although crates can be present in dungeons (a reasonable expectation) their only function is as immovable obstacles, and cannot otherwise be interacted with.
  • Cut and Paste Environments: Averted massively most of the time, since there are six official and several user-made graphical styles, and each hold will typically have tens or hundreds of different, original rooms. However, there are some exceptions. Cutting and pasting is possible in the editor, and in hub levels where connecting rooms are unimportant, rooms can look identical. In addition, there is an idea usually called Constant Room Templates, based off of King Dugan's Dungeon Level 6, where the level contains several rooms that look almost the same, but behave differently and have different solutions.
    • Many secret rooms are harder versions of other "regular" rooms.
  • Cutscene: A feature implemented in The City Beneath. Mercifully, an engine feature allows the player to press the space bar to speed up or skip any cutscene.
  • Death Cry Echo: The default state of the Slayer's death cry. Your mileage may vary as to whether it's awesome

or annoying (especially if you're killing a lot of them).

  • Dialogue Tree: Limited to "yes/no" in Journey To Rooted Hold, but fully implemented and very possible to script in The City Beneath.
  • Do Not Drop Your Weapon: Beethro has a pretty bad case of this - he absolutely positively cannot put his sword down no matter what, even when it would be to his advantage to do so. Averted in The City Beneath with the introduction of Disarm Tokens and Oremites, which finally let the players see Beethro swordless.
    • Perhaps more inverted than averted. Beethro can ONLY drop or pick up his sword on a disarm token.
  • Empty Room Psych: The presence of secret rooms and passages means this is always a possibility with any seemingly only decorative or connective room.
  • Event Flag: The City Beneath has some examples, and variables used in scripting allow anyone to include these in their level set.
  • Exposition Break: A typical way of providing exposition: having puzzle rooms, and then having otherwise empty rooms with cutscenes or exposition so they don't get in the way of the puzzles.
  • Extra Turn: In a typical game turn, Beethro gets to move once, and then everything else gets to move once. In level sets created in The City Beneath, once Beethro takes a speed potion, Beethro gets to move twice, and then everything else gets to move once.
  • Genre Busting
  • Gravity Barrier: Beethro's "smitemaster reflexes" keep him from moving into a pit and dying, and indeed no monster will ever move into a pit and fall. However, TCB introduces platforms, which can move out from under things and drop them into pits.
  • Heroes Prefer Swords: There's nothing in the game engine that says that the player's weapon has to be a sword (and some player characters go without), but almost all weapons in setting are swords. The only exception is the Slayer's hook, and they're typically villains.
  • Hide Your Children: Usually present in most plots and level sets, but the "Halph" NPC type is a child, and can be killed, providing various consequences from having to restart the room as though you yourself died, plot events, or nothing.
  • Invincible Minor Minion: Wubbas are completely immune to swords. However, they also can't harm the player. This means they just usually tend to get in the way. However, they can be destroyed using Benevolent Architecture.
  • Involuntary Group Split: There are a couple of examples in Journey to Rooted Hold between Beethro and Halph, mostly for plot reasons or for puzzle reasons if having him around would be too convenient. This can also happen in-room with any of your doubles or other resources.
  • It's Up to You: Usually justified: you're the only one doing anything about the problem anyway.
  • Level Editor: DROD: Architect's Edition introduced this feature. There are now hundreds of user holds and tens of thousands of rooms available to play.
  • Marathon Level: Most rooms are puzzle rooms with lynchpins or specific manipulation that might only take one hundred to five hundred moves to solve. Some hack and slash rooms might go from three hundred to seven hundred moves, depending upon the room. However, some rooms in user-made holds can take one thousand or more moves to complete.
    • There is a list on the forum of the longest rooms to complete, sorted in descending order of the least number of moves anyone has beaten them in.
    • There was a contest where the goal was to make the longest single room possible. The current record is about 1.7 x 10^45 moves. This may epitomize the Marathon Level:

The architect of "Eternity 4": At the rate of ten moves per second it would take five and a half sextillion (undecillion) years to complete.

  • Metroidvania: A limited example: in any typical hold, there are usually several rooms available to play at once, but levels must be completed in order. Depending on the architect and the specific level set, gameplay could be anywhere from completely linear to completely open-ended.
    • The MetDROiD series is notable for being true Metroidvania's made with the 2.0 and 3.0 engines.
  • Mirror Match: The Slayer is meant to evoke this, since he is a body and a sword just like Beethro, and can do almost everything that Beethro can. However, knowledgeable players know the differences in their behavior and properties.
  • Monster Clown: Slayers seem to exclusively dress in this manner, although details in appearance vary.
  • Monster Mash: Giant roaches, goblins, golems, serpents, and fegundos(phoenixes) are all present and accounted for.
  • Monsters Everywhere: The usual state of affairs. In order to cross any stretch of wilderness or reach any underground location, you'll have to kill some monsters or solve some puzzles.
  • Multi Mook Melee: Possible to set up. Some rooms (entitled "hack and slash") can have the player killing hundreds or thousands of monsters of varying types.
  • Multiple Endings: Averted in the main releases, where there is only one hold ending, but possible to implement in user holds.
  • No-Gear Level: The Disarm Token or Oremites enforce this within one room, and there's also a scripting command that will permanently remove the player's weapon until another scripting command gives it back.
  • No Campaign for the Wicked: All official Caravel releases so far have followed the "heroic" above-ground faction. User holds can certainly use Villain Protagonists, however.
    • Averted in TCB with two "Interlude" levels, one of which follows one of the Empire's negotiators and the other of which follows a goblin.
  • Now Where Was I Going Again?: Usually averted with the help of the in-game map and restore functions, but very possible with managing all of your holds or trying to find secrets or keep track of event flags in one hold.
  • One-Hit-Point Wonder: Almost everything: the player and most monsters. The only exceptions are some larger monsters which split or shrink under conditions (usually something attacking them with a sword).
    • Averted in spinoff Tendry's Tale, where the player and monsters have multiple hit points.
  • One-Hit Polykill: Explosions serve as this, destroying many objects in any squares they hit.
  • Only Smart People May Pass: Essentially the entire game. This is the only security system anyone has.
  • Path of Most Resistance: Secret rooms are completely optional and usually much more difficult than regular rooms. In order to master a hold and obtain One Hundred Percent Completion, you'll have to beat them all.
  • Point of No Return: General consensus is that they're not inherently bad but can be used in bad ways, and that allowing backtracking at most points is best. However, since most levels are self-contained, holds like King Dugan's Dungeon will only allow the player access to the current level. On the other hand, the Restore function allows the user to "go back in time" to any point he ever visited, at the cost of any forward progress, so it's possible to make different choices and then pass the point of no return.
  • Pressure Plate: Introduced in The City Beneath, and a common puzzle element.
  • Purely Aesthetic Gender: The player may occasionally control a female avatar, which works as every other non-combative NPC.
  • Random Event: Completely averted. The game engine is completely deterministic. However, it's possible to create events that are unpredictable by any reasonable player. Even with that, though, a player with editing rights can later open the hold in the editor and look for what triggers those events.
  • Save Point: The Restore system makes it possible to go to any room at almost any point in time, so walking into a new room or using a Check Point serves as one of these. In addition, you can just quit the game and reopen it later without losing any progress either.
  • Scoring Points: Averted in-game. However, there is a metagame scoring system where you can earn points by solving rooms with fewer moves.
  • Scripted Event: A whole scripting language was introduced in Journey to Rooted Hold and The City Beneath, making it possible to create NPCs and other story events, including cutscenes. However, most puzzle rooms will do without any of these, and many architecture contest entries include no scripting.
  • Self-Imposed Challenge: What usually happens if a room provides too many resources or if players get bored or think a level set is too easy. There is an entire Challenges board on the forum. Highscore optimization also counts as this.
  • Set a Mook to Kill a Mook: Usually averted, but the Adder and any other sworded monsters will play this completely straight - their goal is to kill the player, but any monsters in the way will also be killed.
  • Sidetrack Bonus: Almost always present. Secret or side rooms can contain more difficult puzzles that count towards One Hundred Percent Completion, or interesting plot events or snippets.
  • Sinister Scythe: A Slayer's Weapon of Choice is the Hook, which may evoke this image.
  • Sliding Scale of Turn Realism: This game is all the way over at Turn By Turn.
  • Space-Filling Path: Sometimes necessary in order to make sure time passes if the player wants to go from point A to point B, but usually frowned upon in otherwise empty rooms.
  • Speaking Simlish: Usually averted. Speech can have voice clips attached with actual English (or other language) use, or can just be present as text boxes in-game. If you want any gibberish to be played in-game, you'll have to create sound files of it or record people actually saying it.
  • Story to Gameplay Ratio: Varies, but the game usually has more gameplay than story. The gameplay will also usually take more time than the story, due to the difficulty of the puzzles.
  • Stupidity Is the Only Option: Depending on the level set, may be present.
    • One particularly infamous example is in Journey to Rooted Hold Level 3: Beethro walks into a room with an obvious trap and two characters watching him. One of the characters says at the start that delvers are stupid and don't think ahead. To continue with the level, you have to trap yourself, at which point the Slayer will make fun of you. You get to wriggle around a little, and then the Slayer will release you from the trap and let you continue with the level.
  • Super Drowning Skills: The only things that can swim are waterskippers. Anything else - the player, monsters, other room elements - will be killed or destroyed when dropped into water, no matter how close dry land is.
    • Get EB introduces shallow water, which lets the player sneak around like a medieval Rambo.
  • Teased with Awesome: Possible to implement. Since various helpful things like potions, bombs, fegundos or friendly soldiers will only stay in the room they're placed in, you have to solve each room with the resources that are available, so you could have fifty doubles in one room but have to kill a horde of goblins all by yourself in another room.
  • Three Quarters View: Since the entire game is laid out on a grid, this is the art style most of the in-game entities and room features go with.
  • Time Trial: Highscoring is all about this - solving rooms in the last number of moves possible.
  • The Verse: Most canonical and fanonical holds take place in a world setting called The Eighth. There isn't exactly a Universe Bible, but there's some more information here, in the following section of this TV Tropes article, and the forum community can usually figure out what the verse does or doesn't contain.
  • Video Game Long Runners: Four main series games and 20 years of development. Not quite enough to make it into the list, but a record in the indie market.
  • Warp Zone: Possible to implement. There are actual warp rooms in King Dugan's Dungeon and Journey to Rooted Hold.

Tropes in the setting:

  • Alien Geometries: The Eighth, the game world, can be best described as a pocket universe the shape of a pizza slice: walk onto another "slice", you're back where you started. Walk off the outer edge, you implode back into the center. Dig down far enough, you fall into empty space and land back on the surface.
  • Armor Is Useless: Smitemasters explicitly go without any meaningful armor, trading it for speed and mobility. For all the armor any friendly or enemy soldiers have, they are all One Hit Point Wonders too. However, some monsters (wubbas, intact fegundos, segments of serpents) have invulnerability to swords, averting this trope.
  • Beneath the Earth: The default setting for most dungeons, but from Architect's Edition forward it's possible to create settings that are more and more convincing above-ground locations.
  • Call a Rabbit a Smeerp: Fegundos are always referred to as such within the game and forum, but they're clearly phoenixes.
  • Clock Punk: The technology level is mostly medieval-level with some advances in mechanics, city planning and architecture.
  • Gonk: "The Fat Guy With The Big Lips And Pimply Nose" describes Beethro exactly. Beethro is ugly both out-of and in-universe.
  • Low Fantasy: There isn't anything explicitly magical in this setting, but with orbs and Pressure Plates that shoot lightning at doors to open them, flying fegundos, and potions that, when drunk, cause a double of a person to appear out of thin air, there's some stuff that nobody's yet explained with science.
  • Schizo-Tech: The surface kingdoms are in the Middle Ages, but the Underground Empire canonically has radios and advanced genetic engineering available.
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