“Demo Disk” – It’s Six Random Characters and a Single Floor Dungeon, That’s the Whole Game (2020) [PC]

Demo Disk is a series of first impressions posts for new releases and quick opinions.

If you couldn’t guess from the title, It’s Six Random Characters and a Single Floor Dungeon, That’s the Whole Game is silly. Most of the games from the one-man studio Cannibal Interactive are, and it’s unlikely you’ll have heard of them. I learned of them around the time of their last release, I Have Low Stats But My Class Is “Leader”, So I Recruited Everyone I Know To Fight The Dark Lord, the 99 character JRPG. 

You may notice a trend in their naming scheme.

Don’t let the silliness of the games’ names fool you into thinking they are low substance or only exist to make a joke. While Six Random Characters is, in fact, very silly, at the same time, it’s a love letter to several classic series with a surprising depth to the content. Six Random Characters is a roguelike 3D dungeon crawler akin to Wizardry, with combat, monsters, and humor reminiscent of Dragon Quest and a magic system you might recognize as similar to the Shin Megami Tensei series. It may seem like a strange combination, but it works surprisingly well. 

What really astounded me was the variety. With 70 unique classes and 28 races, with each class matching with 4 races, and plans for up to 105 classes in upcoming updates, don’t expect to see the same characters over and over. Yes, that’s 420 eventual characters, and you’ll find yourself getting attached to them. I found myself unwilling to stop playing, starting new runs as soon as the last ended just to see who I had on my team and see what new spells and abilities I had to play with this time.

Unlike some other roguelikes where it gets easier as you improve abilities, how well each run of Six Random Characters goes depends on your team composition, your abilities, and your skill in using them. However, it’s also incredibly well balanced. You will always have someone with a healing ability, if not a dedicated healer. Computers with new skills, “treasure chests” (see that toilet? That’s where the treasure is), and vending machines (filled with a variety of different healing food themes, including breakfast food, Chinese food, and soups) can be around any corner and are often your only markers for where you’ve been. Challenging enemies hide among groups of simple ones, but the wrong actions on even the easiest can send you to the Game Over screen, so learn your skills and classes and pay attention. Like, don’t waste your healer’s turns trying to recover your “Boss” class character. Bosses can’t heal by magical means.

All in all, the game keeps things tense and presents ample challenges, but you don’t feel like the game is ever cheating you. Mistakes feel like they’re on you, not on the RNG being cruel. Even full team wipes are more “I should have targeted that enemy first” or “I should have healed that character sooner.” Your characters won’t change much as they level up, but the way you approach each run will. In the end, provided you make it to the end, it’s you against one of four bosses, and I could not have been more amused by and satisfied with the one I faced off with. Depending on how lost you get, a successful run can take anywhere from thirty minutes to an hour, so it’s a game that’s easy to pick up when you’re craving an RPG and have a little time, but don’t want to dig into a whole new RPG.

Maggie Maxwell spends most of her days buried in her fiction writing, only coming up for air to dive into the escapism of video games, cartoons, or movies. She can usually be found on Twitter as @wanderingquille and @MaxNChachi or streaming on Twitch with her husband, also as MaxNChachi.