Pokemon Mystery Dungeon

There are four Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games, one (Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Red Rescue Team) for the Gameboy Advance, and three (Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Blue Rescue Team, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Darkness, and Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time) for the Nintendo DS. The Rescue Team games are very similar to each other, as are the Explorers games.

These are commercial graphical games without keyboard input, and have plots, but otherwise are roguelike. Most of the game is played in Mystery Dungeons, which are randomly laid out, with a few rooms per level and long corridors, much like the Rogue dungeon. The Mystery Dungeons have a fixed number of levels, and vary in difficulty, as well as in type of Pokemon encountered and loot found.

Each game has an overall plot, in which the world is doomed, and the player character must undertake a series of missions to save it. Alternatively, the player can select missions from an in-game bulletin board, and go to the proper dungeon to execute them, rather like random quests. If the player really wants to avoid the plot, the player can just go through dungeons as he or she pleases, although this gives fewer advancement opportunities.

The player needs to manage inventory, combat skills (called "moves"), and non-player teammates that will be acquired along the way. The player character and teammates will go up in levels, increasing character statistics and gaining more powerful skills. There are also intelligence-based skills, intelligence being raised by eating Gummis. The characters will also find increasingly powerful items by going to more dangerous dungeons, and the player character will pick up possible teammates in the dungeons.