AdventureQuest 8-Bit: Dungeons & DoomKnights Review (Nintendo Switch OLED)

by Jim Smale · Published January 29, 2024 · Updated January 26, 2024

For this AdventureQuest 8-Bit Dungeons & DoomKnights Review, we must try and defeat DoomKnight and his army of the evil undead. Explore a huge world and battle vampires, ghosts, death knights, liches, ancient evils, giant flying eyeballs, chicken cows… and other unspeakable horrors!

AdventureQuest 8-Bit Dungeons & DoomKnights Review Pros:

Beautiful 8 Bit graphics.
195MB download size.
Chiptune soundtrack.
The music player is in the extras menu.
Screen settings – CRT filter, frame/border, aspect (pixel perfect/4:3/widescreen), and color palette (vanilla/game child/game child contrast/virtual child/greyscale).
A beautifully created game manual that acts as a tutorial, shows off the map, and is housed with many images and tips.
Chaos mods – play the main game in black and white mode, play the game as the dog, or play a spin on the Pac-Man genre.
Necronancy is a different game where you play as Nancy the necromancer.
2D adventure RPG gameplay.
Solid tight controls.
Hack and slash combat.
Enemies can drop coins and items randomly.
Save points are found in the world.
The game plays out on a screen-by-screen basis.
Respawn enemies by leaving and red entering a screen.
Many secrets to find.
The game has excellent Easter eggs and nods to classic games and tropes.
Main and mini-boss fights.
Get a bloodthirsty Pomeranian sidekick!
Meet new memorable characters.
All character interactions are done via in-game art sequences.
Instant reloading upon death, you go to your last save point. Enemies can stay dead upon respawning.
The health system at play is 3 dots and you can pick up health.
Modern retro adventure game.
Gets very addictive.
Over time collect upgrades for more health or skulls.
Skulls are used to send your dog out through dog doors and get killed.
Excellent level design.
With some deaths staying permanent with enemies and doors staying open it does make replaying parts a bit easier or less stressful.
Does have the cool thing of having a respawn point right next to big boss fights.
Progression is very satisfying.

AdventureQuest 8-Bit Dungeons & DoomKnights Review Cons:

Takes some getting used to not pressing the start button to pause.
Jumping is fine but it’s not how modern games are it’s a case of pressing jump and then moving rather than both at the same time.
The manual doesn’t mention the controls.
Is difficult a lot of the time but always fair.
Movement is not always as smooth as you would like.
Doorways are very sensitive meaning you can constantly walk in and out of a door by accident.
A game like this has the get hit by enemies the moment you enter a screen niggle.
Checkpoints are far apart.

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