How many times have you been running around a dungeon in some RPG thinking, "I could do better than this!"? Well, now's your chance to prove it! Coming soon from XSEED for the PSP is an interesting title called Dungeon Maker: Hunting Ground, which looks set to blend an action RPG with a dungeon editor and come up with something novel and exciting - we had a chance to get hands on with a preview version of the title, so let's take a look and see how it's progressing.

The premise of the game is pretty simple - you have come to town as a new Dungeon Maker looking to hone your skills and build a dungeon in the hopes of eventually trapping the horrible 'Wandering Demon' that has been menacing the region. You are not the first though; many novices have tried to create the ultimate dungeon throughout history - but all have failed.

Why build the dungeon in the first place? Well, you are a hero and monsters threaten humanity in the region, so the desire for all dungeon makers is to lure those monsters away from people and into dungeons where they can kill them off. Of course, this is where it all gets interesting - certain monsters like certain environments and some appear only in rooms of a certain size or at certain levels of the dungeon.

One of the interesting things about Dungeon Maker is strength of the integration of the player and the town. While everyone is depending on you to deal with the monsters, it is clear that they will play an important role in your success or failure as you proceed in constructing your dungeon. You need to generate a decent dungeon from the very start in order to attract monsters so that you can kill them to gather up items and gold so you can buy more dungeon elements to build a bigger and better dungeon to attract more monsters so you can kill them... and so on. But aside from 'dungeon grinding' (not dissimilar to level grinding in a standard action RPG), everyone in town seems to be looking for something - you start trading coins for information and quests with a 'Mysterious Old Man', but as you defeat more monsters and build up your dungeon you gain a better reputation in town and attract more attention, which means that more people will be looking for you to bring them things. This is generally not an issue - except that the monsters you need to kill to obtain most quest items push the limits of your current capabilities.

The game has two major interfaces, each with several sub-elements. There is a town level and then an in-dungeon interface. Around town you use an 'overworld' style map and just move from location to location with the cursor. Each location has at least one person to speak with and several options of items to discuss or trade. There aren't really dialog options - people either ask or tell you things, and you go from there. Quite often they want an item, and when you find one in the dungeon and bring it to them they reward you - usually the reward is disproportionate to the item. This is a good thing though, because quite often you are living day-to-day in terms of having enough resources to continue with your dungeon. This trading system works very nicely, with plenty of information provided and a simple 'item for cash' system that avoids the complexity of a barter system, which can work very well on a PC system but not so well with the limited screen size and controls of the PSP.

The dungeon interface itself is at once simple and deep. Basic exploration is quite simple - you move around using the analog stick or directional buttons (hooray for flexibility!) and attacks and items are mapped to different buttons. When you approach an undeveloped area of the dungeon, the buttons swap to dungeon-maker mode, so that you can simply add elements on the fly. Beyond that, there is a large menu that provides access to everything - your inventory and equipped items, magic and potions, and you can also change architectural elements, such as adding new appearances to areas or erasing places you did a lousy job of designing in the first place.

There are two absolute keys to making Dungeon Maker worth the large time investment - the dungeon builder and the action RPG combat. I have discussed the dungeon-making process, but the combat also deserves some attention. It is an interesting system that is at once familiar yet different - the actual combat will be familiar for anyone who has played an action RPG on their PSP, but the motivations are entirely different. To defeat enemies, you can use special ranged attacks or standard hack 'n' slash tactics. Combat is in real time and enemies attack you once you wander within range. You don't get experience from killing enemies - except for the occasional recognition rewards from the town - so it would be more precise to say that you do not get direct experience rewards for killing enemies. Yet you will run around killing them all, because you either need them to drop something for a quest you are pursuing, or you need whatever loot or gold they might be holding.

How about a round-up of some good things and stuff that concerned me based on my hours of play? Load times are quite short and flow with the game nicely. For the amount of things you can do, the controls are easy and obvious in terms of use and explanation. And there is really no penalty for playing around - as you progress you will cringe when looking at your earliest design choices, but it is possible to just erase and rebuild areas of the dungeon. I also love that I am constantly struggling to have enough resources to keep building and improving my dungeon, armaments and food supply - balancing all this is typically a very difficult thing for role-playing games. And finally, I found that both of the major elements - battles and dungeon creation - were interesting and kept me engaged throughout. Of course, there have to be elements of concern, right? There are some - I wonder how things will play out at the deeper levels of the dungeon; will combat become boring? Will gold become too plentiful - or will you become bored while 'grinding for gold'? Aside from these questions that can only be answered by extended play in the full version, there's little else to worry about.

So far, Dungeon Maker: Hunting Ground looks to be loads of fun - indeed, while I have only scratched the surface so to speak, I don't see any reason that this game won't join the list of really fun RPGs for handhelds that have come along in recent months and are innovative and yet hearken back to older games from PC RPG history. And I can't wait to get my hands on it!

Previewed by Michael Anderson for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).