Nitrome has been one of our favorite developers, so it’s always great to see a new title drop from them on Thursdays. This week its Stretch Dungeon, and after spending some time with the game, we’re back with our Stretch Dungeon review.
Stretch Dungeon is one of those games that falls into the “quick play” category. While it’s not a full-fledged tapper like the He-Man game we reviewed last week, your sessions can be rather short depending on your skills and patience. It’s a game about a bearded old man in a cage, and your job is to set him free. Needless to say, you’ll go about it in an interesting way as the Stretch Dungeon is not your typical prison.
We don’t know how our little grey-bearded friend got into his current predicament, but it’s your job to help him escape. You’ll do this by pressing and holding on the screen, which sets him loose from his cage. Once he’s out, you have to control things as he goes into a free fall down through the labyrinth. The way you go about this makes the game, as the dungeon is stretchy and full of deadly hazards.
You can’t actually control the bearded one in Stretch Dungeon, you have to control the walls around him. When you tap the screen or press and hold, the walls of the dungeon will contract and expand. This allows you to bounce the gentleman past spikes and other traps that would end his escape or hold him up while a trap beneath completes its circuit. It’s an interesting way to get about, especially when you are trying to snag gems or smash pots along the way.
Stretch Dungeon doesn’t offer up much in the way of extras as it took me a while to figure out I couldn’t unlock anything with my hard earned gems. That said, they come in handy for another reason as they are used to extend your journey if you hit a tricky spot you can’t get past. In my case, that was a spike wall, which I burned through over 100 gems to get past.
Stretch Dungeon is a free game and along with it comes the usual dose of ads and in-app purchases. The ads did get a little annoying at times, but could easily be toned down, while the IAP’s are minimal and not needed to play. You can earn plenty of gems through playing although there is an option to kill those ads for a small price from within the game.
It didn’t take us long for our Stretch Dungeon review, but it’s the type of game that doesn’t require many words. It’s simple, quite a bit of fun, and extremely frustrating if you are impatient. I almost made it to the second world before wanting to smash my phone to bits and am truly impressed by anyone that gets through all four. The graphics are great as well and what you would expect from Nitrome, and the same can be said of the overall vibe of the game.
If you dig fun physics-based games that can test your patience, you will definitely want to check out Stretch Dungeon. It’s available for free on Google Play and the App Store and is a good one for all ages.