The Isle of 8-bit Treasures

The prospect of death is an effective motivator, but its sting is lessened by the fact you can always use another life to keep the ball rolling in a game.

Despite its cute appearance, The Isle of 8-bit Treasures takes a different approach. When your character croaks you lose all of your progress, items and experience.

Game Over indeed.

Yet no matter how many times you die, you're sure to come dungeon-crawling back to fun bite-sized questing of The Isle of 8-bit Treasures.

The game has you descending into randomly generated dungeons to battle an army of beasts in turn-based combat. Your ultimate objective is to reach the bottom of each dungeon and acquire special items, picking up useful bits and pieces along the way like potions, status-changing spells, ancient magical scrolls and even crystals which you can use to augment the power of your weapons.

Everything in the game is governed by a turn-based system. Moving, attacking or using an item constitutes a turn. Enemies are able to move or attack by turn as well. So if you choose to replenish your stamina with a potion, any enemies nearby will be able to either move or attack you during that turn.

Dungeons are randomly generated, so in theory you'll never experience the same one twice. The levels are quite short, with only a few floors to traverse before you eventually reach the bottom.

While you accumulate experience in each dungeon, all progress is lost once you reach the final floor when your stats are reset. The only thing you get to hold onto is the items you've accrued during your mission.

This takes the emphasis off of level-grinding and squarely on survival. In many ways, you're able to forget about hunting down experience and simply enjoy the game.

It helps that it's deliberately designed as such to support portable play. Instead of lengthy questing, short levels ensure easy in and out adventuring. The inability to save from within a dungeon is also a factor, making small levels a boon rather than a bane.

Get interrupted by a phone call, however, and any progress made is lost. Having consigned your progress on whatever dungeon you were trawling to the void, the game forces you to restart anew. It's aggravating and needs to be fixed in an update.

Bearing that flaw in mind, The Isle of 8-bit Treasures earns itself a position of esteem in the pantheon of iPhone role-playing games. More than any other title to date, it exemplifies how to deliver bite-sized role-playing without skimping on the adventure.