Get ready to shelve those 20 sided dice for a while, dungeon masters! Charge your DS or PSP and get ready for a brand new dungeon crawling adventure, Dungeon Master: Warriors of the Ancient Arts.

Here’s the most simple way to introduce you to the story behind DM:WotAA – A wizard opens a gateway to an evil plane, and that ends up being a bad idea. You’ll need to go do your best to clear the 8 dungeons beyond this mysterious gate. Expect quests from NPCs, escort missions, and more various tasks that all feel right at home in a top-down RPG like this.

During my playtime, I couldn’t help but feel like this game will be comparable to an updated handheld Gauntlet. You can play with a party of up to three players on either system, but the multiplayer is local-only (no 802.x wi-fi support here). The multiplayer game isn’t the same as the single player campaign, though. You’ll only be doing crawls and fighting hordes of monsters when you play with friends, as the story is reserved for single-player only.

The story will vary slightly depending on which character you design. There are three races to choose from – the Izark, the Ist, and the Olff (and my spell-check just exploded...). You’ll also be able to choose the gender of your character, and then choose from 6 “jobs” which function as the class system. You can choose to be a fighter, bishop, shaman, hunter, monk, or mage depending on your gameplay style. Obviously, each class has different strengths and weaknesses, and some will be better healers than fighters, etc. The beauty part of this system is that you can change your job mid-game and explore different aspects of the gameplay in a single playthrough. In the preview build we saw, the character customization wasn’t implemented, so we played as a pre-designed Olff character. The multiplayer seemed very solid with only a very brief moment of lag in the entire playtime.

Controls were very solid and functioned well making attacking, healing, using magic and more very easily accessible while in some hectic fights. The dungeons we saw had some spider-like enemies, some skeleton dogs, and giant snails. We made it to a boss battle during our brief time, and that’s where we used one of the coolest features of the game. Holding the right trigger button allows you to execute a team attack that requires timing-specific button presses from all members of the squad.

While we didn’t get a chance to test the single player game, the MP looks to be a lot of fun, especially for groups who are fans of the genre. Look for more information on this title to emerge from the dark depths early 2008.