Shiren is the simple story of a man following his friend’s dying wish to find the Land of the Sun at the top of Table Mountain in feudal Japan. It’s a rougelike - that is, the dungeon is randomly generated every time you visit it, and you start at level 1 with little or no equipment every time you play. The game has a few subplots you can advance by continually playing through, which is nice, and all of them will have some bonus to you as a player at their successful conclusion, be it a helper to follow you around or a new item becoming available in the dungeon.

Once you complete the main (Impasse Valley) dungeon, as well as a few of the subplots, you’ll unlock a food-themed dungeon and a trap-themed dungeon for extra gameplay. Once these are completed and all of Fei’s puzzles are finished, you’ll unlock the ultimate challenge, a 100-floor dungeon (which, I might add, none of my testers were able to complete.)

Good luck, and remember, just because the random number generator hates you, it doesn’t mean that the game’s completely impossible!

Here is what Gideon Zhi himself had to say about this patch:

“Shiren the Wanderer is the result of a number of years of work, and a number of hurdles that needed to be overcome. Among these are a nasty system of enscribable scrolls which needed to be reworked in English, a variable width AND height font, 24×24 text, and a slew of other, smaller issues. Suffice it to say that this release is quite pretty and, while not without a few minor flaws, is very much a playable and enjoyable game.”

Be sure to apply the patch to ROM version 1.0 without header! The ROM of Version 1.1 will crash on the journal screen with the patch applied.

• Fushigi no Dungeon 2 - Fuurai no Shiren (J) (V1.0).smc
• CRC32: AF5703EE
• MD5: 8C8FC738EAE4EB714B43889767DAF094
• SHA-1: E043F3096F0BD883644287344F18050EE43D69E9
• SHA-256: 37FE99A0DA8C2CA2296C35E6A08E48B9195074B2AA1955C1EED715D12196001B