Dwarven Den is barely a puzzle game; while the earlier levels might seem clever and lure players in with a slow difficulty curve, the game becomes quite difficult past a certain point which left me wondering about what 'puzzles' are when maps are randomly generated, resources are scarce and of course, sold for real money.
The goal of each level differs, sometimes it's to find another character, sometimes it's to mine enough gold, other times you need to trap monsters - although I've found that the game doesn't tell me what monsters I need and how many of them - you are awarded one star for completing a level and you can find two more in chests, but I'm confused about what stars do, so why is it a good idea to waste your energy trying to find them?
You have energy that depletes as you mine and 'tech' that gets used whenever you use gadgets. Things like bombs, traps and compasses are all gadgets you unlock as you play but they become usable only in certain levels - I wish you could use them all when you unlock them, the bomb for instance is great at breaking a huge swath of blocks without spending energy, but you are restricted from using it in some levels. You have a pickaxe, a helmet and a backpack as your gear and you can upgrade it by fusing it or simply paying huge sums of gold to alter its stats. It's a fine system since you find more stuff in chests and there are special abilities on equipment, like increasing the bomb radius and slowing down monsters.
There's a premium currency - gems - that you find in miserably slow increments sometimes in chests and it can be used for everything. More energy, more tech, more lives - you lose a life when you fail a level and need to wait for it to come back naturally - the best gear, special boosts such as gaining twice the energy whenever you get some, things like that. This is where the game breaks down, the addition of gear and these purchases make it a very bad puzzle game, how can you 'solve' a puzzle that was designed with you having paid for better gear in mind? The game is quick to tell you that you can spend gems in order to Not Die, was the level made that way?
I decided to stop playing Dwarven Den when I got to some level where I had to trap monsters and couldn't find enough Tech crystals to trap them all, failed 3 times, then stopped. I even used an item to show me where the crystals were, and the spinning compass arrow told me clearly that I wasn't supposed to be able to finish the level, so be it.
