This week’s game of the week Hello Adventure! by Swedish developer Free Lunch Design marks one of the few dungeon crawling games on Facebook. Free Lunch Design (mainly known for its arcade hit Icy Tower) is part of game studio Muskedunder Interactive, recently honored as a ‘Rising Star’ – one of 25 fastest growing young companies within the technology sector in Sweden.

Developer: Free Lunch Design
Genre: Role-Playing-Game
Platform(s): Facebook
Launch: August 2011
Languages: English
Monthly Active Users on Facebook: 120,000 (November 21)
Monetization: Free-to-play with paid premium currency

What’s inside?
A dungeon crawling fantasy RPG turned into a casual Facebook experience.

What’s it all about?
The goal is to beat all kind of monsters across a map by clearing out dungeon after dungeon in different settings.

Fun gameplay and rich settings are the key appeal factors of the game.

How to play
Typical for the genre of dungeon crawl role-playing games, there are missions that let players navigate through labyrinths, fight monsters, and loot the area for useful items. Due to the game’s casual nature, there is not exactly a deep storyline around the game’s missions and quests.

Adventures start at the player’s base camp, which can be upgraded over the course of the game.
Instead of energy, the players need health that is consumed in battle and restored over time. Health can also be regained through cooking something at the fireside.

Special items require Facebook Credits.

Players need Gold to buy cooking ingredients and equipment, e.g. better swords or armor. Gold can be earned by defeating monsters and selling magic farming produce like floating potatoes (‘Floatatoes’). More health, Gold or special items are available for purchase using Facebook Credits, which are integrated directly into the game instead of an own premium currency.

Players are prompted to add friends who are needed to complete missions and friends are encouraged to gift each other items every day.

Bottom line
An easy to pick up approach combined with rich settings and the fun of discovering more and more dungeons and creatures make the game enjoyable. Also, many of the characters and items are quite funny. Hello Adventure! is part of a new generation of social games that put emphasis on fun gameplay rather than compulsive clicking.