I had heard a lot of good things about Dungeon Raid throughout most of 2011, so when this game went and dropped to 99 cents on the App Store a couple of weeks ago, I decided to snag it. The gameplay is clearly reminiscent of the Puzzle Quest series, which is a large part of what interested me, but I wasn’t sure I needed to play yet *another* twist on a match 3 game. As it turns out, Dungeon Raid has a lot more going on than I expected and it packs in a ton of replay value. The only problem is that I can’t help comparing it to Puzzle Quest. And when I do that, it feels like something is missing.

Dungeon Raid’s match 3 gameplay is highly addictive and I daresay, better than Puzzle Quest’s. You drag your finger across the screen to connect matching items in any direction in order to clear them. You chain swords through enemies in order to attack; the more swords you include in the chain, the more damage you will do. However, enemies will also counterattack every turn as well. As you progress, you level up your armor, weapons and skills and gain special abilities and spells, but over time enemies also improve. There is a lot of strategy in deciding what to do with your turn. Sometimes the best offense is a good defense, and other times leveling up is the key to success. It’s a balancing game.

All of this is great, but the thing that is missing here is… a story. Look, I’m not going to pretend that Puzzle Quest has a well-written story or characters I actually care about. However, the story and quest system act as a framing device for the match 3 stuff. The only thing Dungeon Raid offers is a single endless gameplay mode, and once you die, you have to start all over again from scratch. This works fine for most puzzle games, but when you introduce a lot of RPG elements, it’s frustrating to gain all of these abilities and cool weapons and then have them all wrenched away from you in a split second.

It seems that part of the goal was also to emulate the feel of roguelike games, a genre that I am still not all that familiar with, but one that involves permanent death. If that is the case, they have succeeded. Dungeon Raid does have a save feature, but it is only used for resuming a game in progress. You cannot resume after dying. Don’t get me wrong — this is still an ideal distraction for the gamer on the go. In the end, I guess I was expecting just a little bit more from. It’s definitely worth 99 cents, but I’d say that the regular price of $2.99 is pushing it.