Dungeon Village

Dungeon Village is a town SIM RPG from Kairosoft: you build up your town, and earn money off adventurers coming through. You then use that money to buy them better equipment and send them on quests, and they get happier, and your town gets better, and more adventurers come.

While you don’t specifically control the adventurers while they fight, because you get to arm them and help improve their stats and choose what missions they take, you do feel that you are part of the RPG-aspect, not just some remote town-building tycoon. You also get one adventurer whose name and gender you can pick, and who lives in your village from the get-go, however you don’t seem to have any greater control over them than they other random adventurers showing up.

Dungeon Village is quite a deep game: there are a lot of aspects to levelling, including brewing special items in your village’s cauldron. You will get many hours gameplay for your money. There is a Lite version which allows you to play for two years of gameplay for free. However it doesn’t seem as though you can transfer your Lite town to the Full version if you do go on to buy it, but it won’t take long to build a new town back up again.