Dungeon Encounters

The game has received positive reviews from critics for its gameplay.

• Developer — Cattle Call • Publisher — Square Enix • Released — November 14, 2021 • Genre — Role-playing • Modes — Single-player • Composer — Nobuo Uematsu • Designer — Hiroyuki Ito • Director — Hiroyuki Ito • Producer — Hiroaki Kato • Programmer — * Kazuki Takei • Toya Uchida • Hiroyuki Kito • Writer — Hiroyuki Ito • Platforms — * Nintendo Switch • PlayStation 4 • Windows

Dungeon Encounters is a single-player role-playing video game with strategy and dungeon crawl elements. The player controls a party of four members, and must venture through each of the 100-floor dungeon and reach the bottom level. Before entering the dungeon, players can visit shops and purchase weapons, armor, and abilities. The game has minimalist presentation and gameplay, lacking proper visuals, story, and complicated systems like stamina or hunger. Instead, the dungeon is composed of the board game-like layout with squares and branching paths. Stepping on numbered squares triggers either an event or a battle. White numbers represent a special encounter, providing character abilities, treasure chests, or an opportunity to heal the party. Black numbers represent enemy encounters, with player characters initiating battle. Battles are progressed through the Active Time Battle system. Each player or enemy unit has a meter that must fill to trigger their turn. In each turn, a unit can launch an attack with their equipped weapon or one of the party's abilities. Each unit has a Physical and Magical Defense number, which are numerical soaks that prevent physical and magical damage. These must be fully exhausted before attacks can reduce the unit's health point, as even a single point remaining in the defense will block damage.

Dungeon Encounters was published by Square Enix and developed by Cattle Call, known for the Metal Max series and The Legend of Legacy. The development team included several Final Fantasy veteran figures, such as director Hiroyuki Ito, producer Hiroaki Kato, character designer Ryoma Ito, and composer Nobuo Uematsu. Despite visual similarities, Ito and Kato denied that tabletop games were inspiration for the game. However, both developers agreed that tabletop games and Dungeon Encounters do share the universal fun of the role-playing games. Dungeon Encounters was first announced at Tokyo Game Show 2021, two weeks before its release date, 14 October 2021. It was released for PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and Microsoft Windows via Steam.

Kato said in an interview Dungeon Encounters is complete and there were no plans for any future updates, but he and Ito showed interest in producing a sequel. Ito also considered releasing an easy version of the game, similar to Final Fantasy IV.