This is a difficult platforming involving one family's quest to end the threat of Keela the sleeping dragon. Apparently its gonna wake up inside the labyrinth of rooms its imprisoned, everybody. And this family has the only weapon that can hurt it, a sword called-fittingly, the Dragon Slayer. But whoops, they didn't leave it in their house, or at the sweet looking castle nearby. No, its buried in the big crazy maze of rooms the dragon is also hanging out in.  Uh... yeah.

Graphics: 8
These are old-school sprites, and they show a good amount of detail. There a lot of odd character designs, from rogue Christmas tree things, to one-eyed spiders, to a lion statue that flies and shoots fire. While weird, they all look great. The backgrounds too, were quite good for the time, and help make the huge number of rooms you explore easier to stand out (I have to get back to the room with the shark statue made out of blocks, for instance). The bosses are fairly big, but a little underwhelming. Especially when you finally face the dreaded dragon Keela. 

The player sprites also look good, and each has unique design and color scheme. The dad is in green and looks burly, the son is in blue and looks to be wearing a lot of armor, but he looks really young. And so on. Each also has their own weapon they throw, my favorite being Pochi's bullets. I don't know why the family pet can stare enemies down and shoot bullets at them, but more power to you. The pet actually doesn't look like his picture.. You select him by picking the family dog.. But when you see him, Pochi is a big pink dinosaur. Lol.


Sound: 5
Sound is OK, each character makes the same high-pitched "HIC" sound when they fall from a height higher than their jump range (which means it hurts them). Taking damage noise one should expect to hear a lot, especially since there are few invincibility frames to save yourself repeat hits. Poison hurts you if you pick it up, and has its own, miss sound effect.  The enemies are a strange, silent bunch, and make no noise at all. There is a nice Zelda-ish' sound effect when you find new items, that grew on me. The weapon of each family member makes a different noise when the swing it, not sure why, but its at least something unique about each one.

The music is hit and miss. There are some nice tracks like the Overworld (which is just one single screen, shame), and each family member has their own track. I liked Pochi (Dog got beats, the music for the two kinds of shops you go into, and the first music when you enter the dungeon. The boss tracks, and some of the family music, I didn't care so much for. The end credits music was shrill and I muted quickly.


Addictiveness: 8
Unless you have a walk-through, expect to get lost, a lot. And probably die a couple times with each family member. Its OK though, its still pretty fun. The boss fights aren't too hard, not as difficult as figuring out where to be and what items to use to get to them. Unlike many old maze games that look boring, this maze is full of colorful, enticing rooms that draw you in and make you want to see whats in them.

My first couple of times playing this game, I didn't make it very far, but I also didn't mind just starting again and learning each step of the way. Some items really open up a lot of play area - such as the gloves for dad, or the jump boots for the sister.


Story: 6
The Wizard in question I assumed was some evil person, but its actually the family you play as, their descendant. The one that trapped the dragon in the first place. Why they had to make it so convoluted to get the weapon to kill the dragon, I don't know.
Ok one cool thing is your whole family is in on helping defeat the dragon, so your player characters are Mom, Dad, Son, Daughter, and Pet. You can't just play one of them, you have to play all to beat the game - as each character has areas only they can go to. Most of these are blocked by special items unique to them, Mom has a pair of wings which make her float, but only her, for instance. The grandparents are in charge of your password system, which in the days of save states, probably not useful unless you want to skip ahead with a code.

Each person tries to find a crown, which is basically the end of their stage and teleports you to a boss. The hard part is, the bosses are fixed by their number, not whoever finds them. So if you find dad's crown first, he will fight the spider. But dad's a tough guy, and you should probably use him on a harder boss down the line. You gotta be careful someone like Pochi, who doesn't have very many tools at their disposal, doesn't end up fighting the hardest 4th boss. The son is the last character to play, cuz only he can hold the dragon slayer sword (why??), and he will fight Keela, once he finds it. Yeah, son also has take the 4 crowns his family got, go in the dungeon do some searching to find .. A sword.

Depth: 8
There is only one dungeon in the whole game (and its like so close to your house, whaaaat), but man its big. And some areas feel more like puzzles than platforming. Dad's rooms are mainly block puzzles. Unless you're Pochi the pet, every enemy touching our heroes will hurt them. To fight the enemies takes magic to use your weapon, and surprise, it starts running out quickly. To save yourself, you have plenty of inns scattered around the dungeon to heal at, and shops that can sell you expensive items you may not be able to find on your own. Since each store only sells 2 items, you have to wander around a lot to find what you might be looking for. Hopefully you can get a treasure chest and it will have an item inside for you, saving you the task of grinding for gold.

Difficulty: 8
This is a tough game to figure out on your own. I had a friend who bought this back in the day, and between homework and band stuff, it took him about 2 months to beat it. You had to make your own maps on paper, and then figure out the right order to beat the bosses with which character --- assuming you found all the items unique to each character and could get the crowns.  Nowadays this game isn't so savage, but just the idea of not knowing where to go first, and the game not holding your hand through any of it - well it was kind of cool, actually. I think games nowadays have too much tutorial. Still, confusing until you start putting some of the stuff together.  But the disappearing blocks are what I hated most about this game. You'll be walking through an area and woop- the blocks below you are fake and you fall right through. Sometimes the area you need to go to it actually through some hidden blocks on the wall. They are almost impossible to spot and theres quite a bit of them to find.

Conclusion: Do you like figuring out a games secrets on your own? No tutorial or easy mode? If you like the idea of a dungeon crawler platformer that lets you play not as a team of adventurers but a tight-knit family of butt kickers, then this might be your game. Its mazes are confusing, but if you keep at it, you can persevere.

Nice work, of course.

This sounds like an interesting, and frankly, quite bizarre little game. Also...shops and inns in a dungeon? Why? Surely they can't get much business there.
Anyway, yeah, thanks for making a good review for us.

I'm glad to see that someone did a recent review of this game. This was one of those lesser known games that I for some reason Enjoyed during the NES heyday. I still enjoy it to this day. A strange game, but I liked the fact that it tried to be different than most of the other games released during this era.

Great review. I enjoyed reading it.

stores in dungeons? Its a secret price-gouging strategy of cut-throat merchants to maximize profit from the desperate. Also see Milon's Secret Castle, Deadly Towers (Brrr!), Spelunky.. its a weird trend. I just want to know how they keep from being robbed.