Warden’s Duty puts you in charge of an overcrowded prison where every cell holds a goblin, rat, dragon or worse. Your job is to empty them all, one floor at a time. There is no map to walk around. Each cell is a single choice: how will you deal with whatever sits inside? Ondřej Žára built it for the Seven Day Roguelike Challenge in 2015, and it trades corridors and line of sight for careful bookkeeping.
How to Play Warden’s Duty
Each floor is a grid of cells, and a small map in the top corner shows where you are. Step into a cell and the creature inside fills the screen. Below it is a list of actions, usually a melee attack, a magic missile and a bow shot. Pick one with a number key and colored bars show exactly what it will do to your health, mana, arrows, gold and experience. Press Enter to commit.
Melee costs health, magic costs mana, and shooting uses one or two arrows. Strength cuts melee damage and magic affinity lowers spell costs. Every kill gives experience, and filling the bar raises your stats and restores you completely.
Not every cell holds a monster. You will also meet treasure chests, some of them trapped, plus traps, magic pools and shopkeepers. When every cell is empty, you go down a floor. The run ends when nothing left on the floor is affordable.
Warden's Duty Controls
| Action | Keyboard |
|---|---|
| Start the game, confirm the selected action, play again after game over | Enter |
| Move to a neighboring cell | Arrow keys, W A S D, or H J K L |
| Choose an action in the current cell | Number keys 1 to 9 |
Tips and Strategies
- Read the bars before pressing Enter. The preview is exact, so compare all options for a cell instead of defaulting to melee.
- Plan the whole floor. Look at every cell first. Save mana or arrows for the toughest critter and spend health on the weak ones.
- Time your level ups. A level up heals you fully, so it can be worth taking a costly fight just before your experience bar fills.
- Keep some gold. Shops show up on certain floors, and arrows, potions and training all cost gold.
- Use elemental breaths wisely. Some elemental creatures leave you a one-time breath attack. It works best on a creature of a different element and badly on one of the same element.
- Skip what you do not need. Chests can be trapped and pools can hurt you. Both offer an “Ignore” option, which still clears the cell.
Features
- Exact outcome previews for every action, shown as gauges.
- Endless descent with more cells on deeper floors.
- Shops, chests, traps and magic pools mixed in with the fights.
- Fire, water and poison resistances that grow as you level up.
Tested and updated:
