A brave warrior and their pet enter a dungeon, seeking treasures and trying to defeat the hordes of monsters within. It may be a simple premise, but in roguelike game Gun & Dungeons, it’s one that will keep you coming back again and again, with each run giving you better equipment and upgrades to prepare for the next.

This title is created by Topebox, one of Vietnam’s pioneering indie game studios and makers of the similarly challenging infinite runner Sky Dancer. To learn more about the game’s development and how to tame its dungeons, we picked up a few tips from Thai Thanh Liem, Topebox’s founder and CEO.

The team behind Gun & Dungeons are all fans of roguelike dungeon crawlers, so when they felt like they could no longer get enough of a challenge from existing games, they set out to create one of their own. While Gun & Dungeons’ controls are downright simple – one thumb is all you need to swipe and control your hero’s movements – surviving against hordes of enemies in claustrophobic rooms is anything but easy.

To push the game firmly into skill-testing territory, each level is built with movement restrictions and puzzle elements that will have you dodging deadly traps and charging into narrow corridors against rushing enemies. According to Liem, the level designs were completely reworked at least 10 times during the years-long development process to deliver an optimal experience.

And because a hero’s true prowess is defined by the enemies they fight against, Gun & Dungeons has plenty of fiendish foes too. There are more than 60 different types of monsters and 30 bosses, each with their own attacks and behaviour, and they often work hard together to take your hero down. To give you a fighting chance, the stylish and clean voxel graphics make it easier to identify different enemy types and react accordingly – with the added bonus of making them quite adorable in their own way.

Against such a devilish dungeon, the key to success lies with your hero’s loadout. There are multiple gear slots for you to equip all the precious loot from the dungeon, and what you choose to bring can result in very different playing styles, especially when it comes to your weapon.

Gun & Dungeons has about a dozen different weapon archetypes, which are randomly generated with their own attributes and elemental effects. A lightning-imbued, fast-firing weapon can help you clear out lots of weaker foes, but a slow-yet-hard-hitting weapon enhanced with frost can be great against tougher enemies. Tip from Liem: Keep at least two different mainstay weapons in your inventory, because each world poses its own sets of challenges in terms of monsters and level design.

While delving into the dungeon, you can also pick up various power-ups to enhance your hero in different ways. Remember – you only have a limited number of power-up slots, so let go of an existing item to make room for a new one if needed. Ricocheting bullets or extra health? Tough choice. Liem’s advise is: don’t choose power-ups willy-nilly. Rather, pick the ones that best complement your gear and weapon. For example, with area-of-effect weapons that tend to deal lower damage to multiple enemies, it’s better to get power-ups that increase your base damage.

Ready to face the dangers and dilemmas of the dungeon? Create your own champion and start your crawl.