Video Game / Shattered Pixel Dungeon

Shattered Pixel Dungeon is a standalone Game Mod of Pixel Dungeon, maintained by Evan Debenham, initially released in 2015.

The story remains familiar: You are a random adventurer, seeking out the Amulet of Yendor at the bottom of 25 randomly generated levels in a dungeon. However, there's more mooks to defeat, more items to use and abuse, and new artifacts to try out...

The game is available on Android, iOS and PC, via Steam, itch.io and GOG. The information on the development can be found on Evan's blog here.

On top of some tropes present in Vanilla PD, Shattered Pixel Dungeon provides examples of:

• Adaptation Expansion: The additions over the years fleshed out what was an Excuse Plot of the original PD.
• A Handful for an Eye: One of Warrior Tier 2 talents allows him to throw anything that isn't a ranged weapon at an enemy to blind them for a few turns.
• Ambiguously Human: There are two wands (Transfusion and Prismatic Light) that operate differently when used on, to quote the latter's description, "demonic and undead" enemies. Apparently that description matches the mad prisoners and guards of the second stage, and the not-explicitly-undead Dwarves of the fourth.
• Auto-Revive:
  • The full dew vial (later turned to a functionally identical waterskin) doesn't revive you on its own anymore, but you can use its contents to bless an ankh for the same effect.
  • Unblessed Ankhs are capable of reviving you with full health as opposed to blessed ankh's 1/4ths, but force you to choose two items, dump you in a random spot on the same level, and force you to fight back to the rest of your gear.
• Anti-Frustration Feature:
  • Compared to Vanilla PD, you're able to collect dewdrops while wounded.
  • Dwarf Monks can no longer disarm you, which was a invoked Scrappy Mechanic in vanilla PD.
  • Equipments no longer degrade over use, so you won't need to worry in saving Scrolls of Upgrade for repairs.
• Back Stab: Attacks on unaware monsters are guaranteed to hit, but they aren't guaranteed to do much damage. Three weapons - Dagger, Dirk and Assassin's Blade - are exceptions, with minimum damage caps at 75%, 66% and 50% of max damage.
• Bandit Mook: On top of the prison bandits of Vanilla, the 0.8 version introduces the crystal mimics, described below.
• Bee Afraid: Golden Bees now defend their Honeypot if its shattered, attacking anything nearby, including you. They can be placated by throwing an Elixer of Honeyed Healing at them, averting this trope.
• Body Horror: The Demon Spawners are twisted power sources made of convulsing dwarven flesh, which they use to form Ripper Demons when threatened.
• Blessed with Suck: The Lucky enchantment used to make it so the attacks either deal double damage or no damage at all. In practice, the upside wasn't worth the chance of your guaranteed-hit attack doing sod all. Despite attempts to buff it, it ended up ultimately reworked into a Polarizing curse, dropping the "blessed" aspect of the trope.
• Chest Monster: Mimics, what else? On top of "normal" mimics present in Vanilla, the 0.8 update adds monsters looking like gold or crystal chests. The former have an even nastier bite than the common variety, but are guaranteed to drop uncursed items, and the latter can eat your items and displace the player character, which means blocking off the room won't be useful, but don't require a key which means a well-equipped player can get both rewards from crystal chests.
• Clipped-Wing Angel: The Dwarven King's third phase - he begins to spawn absurd quantities of Mooks and all damage dealt to him gets deterred... but once that deterred damage gets to him, all the mooks die, which means you need to smack the boss a few times and then dodge the cannon fodder for a few turns - and at that point you probably have a spare potion of invisibility in your bandolier.
• Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: Gnoll Shamans from 0.8 onward come in three varieties, each wearing a mask of a different colour to indicate what kinds of debuffs they inflict. Red-masked Shamans weaken your attacks, blue-masked ones make you take more damage, and purple ones make you less likely to land and dodge attacks.
• Contractual Boss Immunity: The bosses and demon spawners can't be one-hit-killed with Grim weapons (which deal bonus damage instead) or corrupted (they get a debuff doubling all damage taken instead).
• Cursed with Awesome:
  • Shattered averts the base game's Blessed with Suck by reworking the potentially-hazardous glyphs and enchantments into curses. Most of those curses still have some upside, such as Anti-Entropy freezing foes or Stench and Corrosion affecting nearby foes as well as the player. The game even encourages using curses this way with the Curse Infusion item.
  • Cursed wands' effects are random, but a lot of them are neutral-to-beneficial, making them a downplayed case of this trope.
• Difficult, but Awesome: Wand of Fireblast and Corrosion are tricky to use due to their sheer potential for collateral damage. Starting forest fires, burning scrolls the enemy drop, or dealing damage to yourself are just a few ways of how it can backfire on you. That being said, the damage potential of these wands can wipe an entire trap-room full of enemies in just as few as 3 casts.
• Energy Bow: Huntress' Boomerang got replaced with a spirit bow, requiring no arrows and upgrading every five player levels.
• Elite Mooks:
  • Each level has one or two special variants of common mooks e.g. Sewers' Caustic Slime or Caves' DM-201. They usually drop some specific bonus loot.
  • The monster that killed the Sad Ghost will be one of those, depending on the depth you encounter him on. On level 2 it'll be a fetid rat (caustic bites and paralyzing stench), on level 3 - gnoll trickster (attacking from a distance with tipped darts), and on level 4 - great crab (blocking any attack he sees coming, including magical ones).
• Forced Sleep: Scroll of Lullaby or Stone of Sleep can put enemies into magical sleep. The former affects everyone in sight radius, including the hero themselves. The enemies won't wake up unless attacked, the hero and their allies won't wake up unless starving, attacked, or healed to full health.
• Fertile Feet: One of potential Tier 2 talents for the Huntress allows her to regrow trampled or burned grass.
• Forced Transformation: Scroll of Polymorph (replaced by Scroll of Metamorphosis in 1.1) was capable of turning all the enemies in sight into harmless indestructible sheep that disappear after a moment.
• Godzilla Threshold: Flavour text for DM-100 says the prison wardens were hesitant to deploy them against the prisoners, but later did so because the prisoners became too unruly.
• Graphics-Induced Super-Deformed: Retroactively, with the character portraits added in 0.8.1.
• Invincible Minor Minion: 1.2.0 added treasure rooms with Red Sentries, similar to the ones the player can spawn with a Wand of Warding. They're immune to all damage, target only the player, and can See the Invisible. The default/recommended option of getting past them is drinking a potion of haste and taking advantage of the fact that they take time to charge up their attacks.
• Item Crafting: The alchemy system, allowing for creation of powerful potions, spells... or just cooking some mystery meat.
• King Mook: With the addition of slimes in Sewers, DM-100s in Prison and DM-200s in Caves, Goo and DM-300 were retroactively turned into this.
• Lethal Joke Item: Upon obtaining the Dwarven King's crown, if you backtrack all the way to the Rat King's room, he'll offer to trade you his crown for the Dwarven King's. The skills all involve transforming your enemies into rats or summoning friendly rats for battle. These skills can prove surprisingly useful, especially against the brutal enemies of the lower floors.
• Limited-Use Magical Device: There are scrolls, natch, which can be turned into 2 runestones, offering more uses of a weaker (though still useful) spell. Through alchemy the player can create exotic scrolls and spell crystals, offering more powerful or unusual effects.
• Logical Weakness: Fire and frost elementals are weak to the opposite element.
• Mecha-Mooks: DM-100s in Prison, and DM-200s in Caves.
• Monster Allies: Corruption aside, one of the artifacts added is a Dried Rose that allows you to summon the Sad Ghost in the Sewer Levels to fight alongside you.
• Mook Maker:
  • Necromancers, which are a new enemy added by Shattered found in prisons. They can only summon one skeleton at a time, but they can heal it as well as buff it with Adrenaline. They have a decent chance to drop Potions of Healing.
  • If you're particularly unlucky, you can find the rare variant of the Necromancer known as the Spectral Necromancer. Rather than a single skeleton that they can heal and buff, they prefer to throw dozens of Wraiths at you. In exchange, they're guaranteed to drop a Scroll of Remove Curse on top of having a chance to trop healing potions.
  • Demon Spawners are found once per floor in the Demon Halls. These twisting masses of Dwarf flesh help spread the demonic energy that surges through the halls, and summon hordes of Ripper Demons when attacked. Defeating them weakens Yog-Dzewa.
• No-Sell:
  • The Great Crab is capable of blocking one attack he sees coming per turn. That includes usually-guaranteed-to-hit wand shots.
  • Dwarf Monks, when focused, are able to parry every physical attack, including surprise ones.
• One-Hit Kill: Weapons with a Grim enchantment have a chance of doing that, depending on enemy's remaining health and weapon's upgrade level. The hero can end up on the receiving end of it if an animated statue spawns wielding a Grim weapon.
• Our Dwarves Are All the Same: Expanding on Vanilla's example, it was played straight in the backstory, with the added Mecha-Mooks being dwarven-made, but averted in the present day, with the foot-soldiers of the Dwarven King being dwarven ghouls.
• Power Nullifier: Blindness ends up working this way on enemies with ranged attacks — they can only see one tile ahead and attack normally at that range.
• Precision-Guided Boomerang: Huntress traded hers for an Energy Bow, but "heavy boomerangs" remain one of the ranged weapon options available. They return to the place they were thrown from after three turns, automatically caught if the player stands in that spot or hitting an enemy if he wandered into it.
• Retcon: The 0.8 version changes the flavour text of Dwarven enemies, turning the monks and warlocks into brainwashed minions blindly loyal to the King, rather than the protectors of the city's secrets. Notably, the same update adds Dwarven Ghouls, made out of those who didn't agree to that state of affairs.
• Set a Mook to Kill a Mook: The "corruption" effect forces the enemies to fight alongside you, but slowly damages them in turn. Similarly, Wraiths summoned by a Warlock with the "Necromancer's Minions" skill will fight for you.
• Simultaneous Arcs: The Dwarven City and Demon Halls logs occur at roughly the same time, and their authors interact with one another.
• Status Effects: An assortment of them. To name a few not covered by the subtropes:
  • There are two slowing effects: Chilled slows both movement and attack speed, while Crippled halves your movement speed but lets you attack at normal speed.
  • Gnoll Shamans are capable of temporarily lowering one stat with their ranged attacks - which one (attack, defense, accuracy/evasion) depends on their mask's colour.
  • Dwarf Warlocks' ranged spell weakens excessively upgraded gear.
  • Doomed doubles damage taken from all sources, and can be only inflicted in lieu of corruption to enemies with Contractual Boss Immunity.
• Swiss-Army Weapon:
  • Wand of Transfusion, depending on who gets targeted by it, can heal an ally, damage a demonic/undead enemy and charm all the other enemies, while either shielding the user or transferring some of their life force to the target.
  • Wand of Prismatic Light lights up darkened levels, reveals traps and hidden doors, including Tengu's traps, and can blind targeted enemies on top of dealing damage to them.
• Tactical Door Use: As in vanilla, though there are a few mid-to-late game mooks that are unable to leave their rooms, making that tactic useless against them. Even those who will follow you through set themselves up for a surprise attack.
• Three-Quarters View: As opposed to vanilla's top-down view.
• Trap Master: Tengu's retooled boss fight have him surround himself with magic poison dart traps that are undetectable without magic and unable to target him.
• Unidentified Items: Played straight for weapons, armor, potions and scrolls. Notably averted for wands, which needed to be identified in Vanilla PD, scrolls of identify, and one potion and scroll each for each class.
• Wave-Motion Gun: Sufficiently upgraded Wand/Staff of Disintegration becomes this, capable of firing its laser beam across the dungeon floor, and piercing through anything in its path. Mind not to hit the Shopkeeper though.
• You Have Researched Breathing: Stealing from the store is possible if and only if you're wearing a specific artifact, the master thieves' armband.
• You Will Not Evade Me: Prison guards and golems are able to drag or teleport you into melee range.