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Ah, it’s like what Drawn to Life was supposed to be but just sadly wasn’t.
The name “Cladun” is a portmanteau of the word “clan” and “dungeon” which describes the game rather well. In Cladun, you build a set of custom characters that congregate as a clan and go out dungeon raiding together. It has a sort of pleasant feel about it, sort of like creating a big pixel-anime family. In a way its similar to the way one might setup a family in Sims except instead of managing their mundane daily life you handle their RPG adventures.
There are also birds. So many birds.
Creating whatever character you want, the game drops you off in a random dungeon where a bombastic dungeon master figure named “Parchmin” (don’t asked who named these characters) gives you some basic gear while side-hand commenting about how he hopes the next sap he finds in the dungeon is “actually strong.” He tells you that you can escape the dungeon by finding its door, but then runs off leaving you to fend for yourself. Fighting your way through the dungeon, you end up on a paradise-like island with three residents–a grumpy book worm, the girl next door and a spacey girl who suffers from sexual masochism disorder… you know, the normal cast you get in animes aimed at teens.
Riding the “aimed at teens” train of thought, its clear that this is where the game finds its strongest home. I have to give it credit thought–whereas most aimed at teen games focus on teasing sexual tension, rebellious lifestyles or whatever’s trending in teen pop culture, Cladun x2 plays more on the harmless side of things by trending towards creativity, fan fictions and shipping. You may create “your character” but you’ll also need to create an entire family of clan members that work in tandem. Depending on how you manipulate the magic circle mechanics, you’ll take up to 8 additional party members to support you statistically as you dungeon delve.
Character creation is as light or as deep as you want. There are a slew of sprites to choose from…
But you can also completely customize the entire sprite. The ENTIRE sprite. Like… each frame. Each pixel. Every color. Oh, and the character’s armor and weapons. It’s kind of awesome. This allows you to make an entire cast of your own characters, or you can go on the steam forums (or if you’re talented make your own) and copy existing sprites people have made of popular characters like Black Mage, the chick from Crypt of the Necrodancer or Panty and Stocking to name a few.
You can also set up all of your character’s relationships, either using the preset relations, or just typing in your own. It’s totally pointless but admittedly pretty fun. I enjoyed getting to put in my favorite Paladin’s Quest characters at least.
Cladun isn’t a perfect game–because the sprites might account for pixels that are or aren’t there, the hitboxes feel kind of wonkey sometimes, but I think that’s understandable given the circumstances. There is a complexity of mechanics in the magic circle system but the gameplay itself is incredibly simple. Run, jump, attack is pretty much it. The writing is passable but awkward at times and the plot isn’t likely to be deep. I think it’s worth Tier 2 though–if you’re creative and have some time to dump into spritework, you can essentially make any character you could want which is pretty cool.
