Dungeon Rampage digs deep in its treasure chest for (official) launch

Boy, are there lots of goodies inside. Dungeon Rampage has officially launched on Facebook, DungeonRampage.com and Kongregate, meaning it's time to say goodbye to the "open beta" tag and hello to tons of new content. Rebel Entertainment has the skinny on all that's to come to its real-time multiplayer action RPG along with some burning idea for the future.

But first and foremost, Dungeon Rampage is now available on three different platforms. However, that won't stop players from dungeon romping together in real time regardless of where from. "You won't even necessarily know," Rebel GM Mike Goslin points out. "You'll just get matched with [players] who are at that node regardless, and then if you make friends with them they'll just show up in your friends list regardless of whether they're on Facebook, DungeonRampage.com or on Kongregate."

%Gallery-159879%

Goslin seems quite proud of this technical achievement, but is even more excited by the prospects down the road. Aside from sending gifts to friends across platforms, Goslin sees a future wherein players can asynchronously rope their friends' avatars into a pseudo-solo session of Dungeon Rampage if they're not online to join in for real.

"We think you get the best of both worlds. It's really powerful. You have the problem in synchronous [play] where, if your friends don't happen to be online, there's not much you can do," Goslin says. "So, we want to take advantage of the asynchronous, so you're always able to do something. Plus, we'll match you up with people that you don't know and perhaps you enjoy playing with them. You'll establish friendships."

With that, another incoming feature is to allow players to add players from the current matchmaking system as in-game friends as soon as a session is through. But that's just the surface of what's inside the proverbial treasure chest of Dungeon Rampage updates. As a thank you to the game's first 800,000-some monthly players, Rebel will reward them score a special Chieftain skin for the Berserker hero. Rebel has gone a tad ... skin-happy (see for yourself in the gallery above.)

Skins are one thing, however, and Rebel knows it has to bring more to keep its players' attention. Say hello to the Pyromancer, the first new hero to hit Dungeon Rampage post-launch. A fiery rendition of the Wizard, this spell caster is possessed by a flaming demon that, when players activate his Dungeon Buster, bursts forth and engulfs the battlefield in flames.

"Think of him as kind of human flamethrower," Goslin quaintly explains. "It will kind of compliment the others, somewhere between ranged and area-of-effect, and he'll be pretty powerful. He tested off the charts. So, he'll be probably one of the premium heroes, but he'll balance out. It's a type of attack that we don't have a lot of in the other heroes currently. "

Speaking of new attack types, one of the major upcoming changes to Dungeon Rampage will be a soup to nuts overhaul of the RPG's weapon system. Soon, weapons found and purchased in the game will have what Goslin calls "modifiers", unique attributes that not only give visual effects, but change the way that a given class plays. For instance, one Berserker blade will both set enemies on fire and knock them back, while another will crack the ground and increase players' chance for critical strikes.

"You'll develop a style of play that you like, go out and as you find weapons say, 'Okay. I like this kind of ax. I'd like to get one with a different modifier,'" Goslin tells us. "So, you'll just keep opening chests, adventuring and finding increasingly cool weapons. It's a progression or sorts. You don't get to customize them yet, although that's something we've talked about doing."

To compound upon the depth, enemies will soon be weak and resistant to different weapon types, slowly teaching players how to tackle each arena in the quest to dethrone Lord Dinglepuss. The first step toward that goal will soon arrive in Dungeon Rampage through an assault on that jerk's posh castle grounds. Today, you can do just that on Facebook, Kongregate and DungeonRampage .com, but tomorrow (figuratively, of course) you might get to play elsewhere.

"As far as actually running the game as a single player experience on mobile, we can do that already. It performs really well in that context, and the user interface is pretty simple," Goslin reveals. "We've kind of done some R&D there. We're not ready to announce anything, but that's one platform we're very interested in."

Rebel Entertainment is by no means messing around when it comes to its social game debut. The company has placed a massive bet on an audience that's yet to prove itself in a big way on Facebook. Now, the hope is for the 800,000 players that agree to spread the word--these gigantic updates might do the trick.

Click here to play Dungeon Rampage on Facebook Now >

Are you psyched for the official launch of Dungeon Rampage? Which platform will you play on? Sound off in the comments. Add Comment.