Adventure Time is one of those shows which manage to appeal to large audience, and attract a decent sized amount of fans whose love for the show which border on being an obsession. Unfortunately, it’s only the truly rabid fans who will want to really buy Adventure Time: ETDBIDK.

The plot is simple, Princess Bubblegum summons Adventure Time heroes, Finn the human and Jake the dog, to delve in the dungeon under her castle which has been housing all of the kingdom’s criminals and monsters. A logical enough setting for a dungeon crawler, at least. The nasty beasts have seemingly escaped from their bindings and it’s up to our heroes to to kill creatures, collect treasure, and beat bosses.

Playable characters include Finn and Jake, followed by more unlockable favourites from the show, including the floating vampire Marceline. Each character has their own unique traits, but they don’t vary too much. Your character performs simple melee attacks with a mash of the attack button, which does not vary. It’s a simple, weak attack, but monsters are momentarily stunned with almost every attack, meaning mashing the button can kill almost any enemy that isn’t a boss. Your character can also block, and use a secondary weapon, which can be collected inside dungeons.

Weapons are wacky and fit well with the Adventure Time universe, and often have their own traits. For the most part, you are likely to find one weapon type which you find most effective and stick with it, and all enemies are easily beaten, aside from boss floors. Boss floors offer a different type of stage, often a unique enemy or a challenge of some kind. These floors are rarely too difficult.

The hub world is, well, tiny. You get to explore a tiny section outside of the dungeon, just a small outdoor lobby that can’t be left, which contains playable characters you can switch to, and several vendors offering either upgrades or weapons. Upgrades can be applied to health, strength or other basic attributes, and Tokens can be purchased which upgrade things like movement speed for when inside the dungeon. All purchasable items are bought with Treasure, which can be found lying around in dungeons, and will likely be your main reason for even bothering to play the game at all.

Dungeon layout starts small but soon becomes larger, but dungeon crawling soon becomes just that, a crawl. The game is a complete bore to play without a movement speed upgrade, as when dungeons become larger the standard movement speed is definitely not fast enough. Enemies are almost all easily felled, offering little challenge. All you as the player do is mash a single button when near enemies to kill them, and press another button to pick up health and treasure. There is very little new to this game to warrant playing. As usual, everything is more fun when tackled with friends, but even with your pals with you, the gameplay isn’t interesting enough to grasp attention for too long.

Graphically, Adventure Time: ETDBIDK is certainly colourful, but seriously underwhelming. Honestly, this is a multiplatform game which genuinely looks like it should be a 3DS or even DS exclusive. All character models are sprites, given that 16-bit retro look, but honestly, characters would’ve looked better in a more show-accurate Paper Mario styled adventure. Dungeons are 3D and have your sprite characters run about killing sprite monsters. A few enemies are rendered in 3D, but not many, and there isn’t much impressive about any of it. These graphics would honestly be disappointing even on a download-only title, but should not be acceptable on a full-disc release.

Whilst dungeon crawling your ears are subjected to a repetitive retro chiptune, and you have your characters call out familiar catchphrases and words of celebration. Most character voices are done by the original voice actors, and add a bit of autheticity to an otherwise rushed licensed game.