What is a “DRPG”?

For example, the Metacritic review for Labyrinth of Refrain calls it a “DRPG”. I have found other video games tagged as “DRPG” in blogs, but with no explanation of the term. They all seem to be Japanese RPGs but I thought the initialism for them was JRPG. Are DRPGs some subset of JRPGs?

Other searches turn up definitions for pen-and-paper RPGs or other wrong context definitions.


It appears to be a somewhat unofficial term to describe a first-person turn-based dungeon-crawling RPG, based on the discussions and games posted on the DRPG subreddit. I haven’t found an explicit expansion of the term ‘DRPG’, but Dungeon-crawling RPG seems like a safe bet.

Some examples would be the Etrian Odyssey series and their spinoffs (like Persona Q), Mary Skelter: Nightmares, and, of course, the game in question, Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk.