Roguelike dungeon crawlers feel fantastic to play if you really enjoy the way the battlefield changes with every run and how you, as a player, grow with the experience and items gained before each death. The genre works well in pretty much any setting, and that appears to be exactly what Folder Dungeon is trying to prove.
As you might guess from the name, Folder Dungeon is a roguelike dungeon crawler in which you battle through a computer’s operating system. You’ve got to slash or backslash your way through enemies, grab powerful upgrades to help you hit more of them harder, and get to the exit folded before your time is up and the computer overheats and shuts down. I really love the way it’s inspired by a genre I mainly associate with fantasy settings and puts it into context using the types of PCs I grew up with.
There’s no quick fix for a blue screen of death here
Each run in Folder Dungeon is set up like a dungeon crawler map. You’ve got enemies to defeat, items to pick up, and folders that act like doors to allow you to go deeper into the system. However, every action produces heat that threatens to shut the entire system down, and that’ll kill your run.
Combat is turn-based, so you’ve got to think about how many hits you’re going to take if you leave enemies alive for longer than necessary if you just want to grab some treasure and leave. Not all is what it seems either, with secrets hidden in certain folders, meaning there are some incredible rewards potentially hiding just one step out of your way. But that move might also cost you all your progress so far.
The aspect of Folder Dungeon I’m most excited about is the way you can combine your upgrades. It looks a lot like the system that makes runs in The Binding of Isaac so much fun, adding upgrade upon upgrade until you’ve got a hugely powerful build to breeze through each folder with. If the system is balanced well, this could make the game endlessly replayable as you restart it from scratch to see how long it takes you to complete with specific limitations on your build types.
The only downside at the time of writing is that Folder Dungeon won’t be released until 2025. But you can wishlist it on Steam right now to keep on top of all the news about it from YouTuber turned micro-publisher 2 Left Thumbs.
