Mystery Dungeon (Japanese: 不思議のダンジョン, Hepburn: Fushigi no Dungeon) is a series of roguelike video games. Most of the titles were developed by Chunsoft; other titles were developed by different companies with permission from Chunsoft to use the trademark. Koichi Nakamura, founder of Chunsoft and co-creator of the Dragon Quest series, conceived the Mystery Dungeon series as Chunsoft's first original work, basing the design on the game Rogue.[1] Most Mystery Dungeon games center on exploring a dungeon with randomly generated layouts and fighting other characters in those dungeons in a turn-based manner; every time the player performs an action, such as attacking or walking, the opponents also take action.[2]
The first game, Torneko's Great Adventure (1993), stars a shopkeeper character from Dragon Quest IV, and the majority of the games in the franchise similarly feature characters from preexisting series. The games of the Mystery Dungeon series can be largely divided into five groups. One is the Shiren the Wanderer series, which is the only subset to be based on original characters rather than those of other franchises. The other four groups are those related to the Dragon Quest series; those related to the Chocobo series, itself a spin-off of the Final Fantasy series; those related to the Pokémon franchise; and individual spin-off games of other franchises. Of those spinoffs, the Etrian Odyssey series has had a pair of games, while all other spinoffs have been a single game.
The latest Mystery Dungeon game is Shiren the Wanderer: The Mystery Dungeon of Serpentcoil Island in 2024. Prior to that, the franchise had been dormant, with the last game as Etrian Mystery Dungeon 2 in 2017. The Mystery Dungeon games have had varying levels of success. The Pokémon games have had the biggest impact, with the first game in the subseries selling millions of copies.[2] Chocobo's Mystery Dungeon also sold over one million copies.[3]