Guild of Dungeoneering, now under construction..

Published on 19th October 2013 by Colm | Post a comment

Guild of Dungeoneering: "Recruit adventurers to explore dungeons for the glory of your Guild. Build the dungeon room by room, fill it with monsters, traps and treasure .. and hope your dungeoneers have what it takes to return victorious!"

Dungeoneering, a perfectly cromulent word.

[A dungeon crawler where you don't get to control the adventurer. Instead you lay out the dungeon one room at a time (including treasure & monsters) and he proceeds according to his AI. You want him to explore, level up, find treasures and ultimately survive - but you don't get to directly control him.]

This is a game I'm creating this month for the Ludum Dare October Challenge. I'm taking a 1GAM game I made called Dungeon Delver and making it fun and replayable, and hopefully by the end of the month I have something good enough to sell a copy of.

Something I Prepared Earlier

The idea for Guild of Dungeoneering is to build upon what I created for 1GAM in April – a game called Dungeon Delver. From that starting point my main plan is to add an AI-controlled hero to the game who would actually move around the dungeon you are laying out. I also want to add monsters and loot that you place in the dungeon – the idea being that you can cause the AI-controlled hero to move where you want him to move with canny placement of rooms, monsters & treasure.

Dungeon Delver, the unfortunately Not-Fun dungeon exploration experience

I also want to implement some basic RPG tropes – so equippable loot like weapons & armour, the ability to level up your hero and the like. Finally I want to add a more longterm strategic layer to the game which would be the Guild part. In between dungeon visits you would manage your Guild, recruiting new adventurers and the like.

Marketing

I recently wrote a marketing guide for your game which I have been following religiously with Guild of Dungeoneering. So right at the beginning of the month I sat down and wrote my elevator pitch, which you can see at the top of this post. I shared that on reddit, twitter, google+ and some gamedev forums for early feedback. At the end of every day's worth of development (about once a week for me) I shared my progress on reddit, twitter, google+ and those same forums. I have also created a Tigsource devlog thread for the game where I have been posting regular updates, joining the devlogs for Minecraft and Fez among others! I have even created a Facebook page for the game (go on, like it!) – a first for me.

I still need to build the presskit() page for the game on my site, and (importantly) decide how & where I am going to sell it. More on that as I get to it.

First Playable Version

Last weekend I was able to get the game to a state where it is actually playable. There are a lot of rough edges but you can get the general idea I'm going for already, which is great! You can play it here in your browser (it's Flash).

Cards! Dungeons! Monsters! All hacked together!!

I would love feedback on this. Is it fun? What part is best? What one thing would you change? If more of the below TODO list was in the game – would you consider buying it?

Still Plenty TODO

Here's my current TODO list for the game. I'll be working through this for the next couple of weeks…

~~Hero character & movement~~
~~Remove tile-choice mechanic, replace with a random set of things you MUST place at the start of each turn. Example: a goblin, a +1 dagger, a new room.~~
~~Monster, item sprites~~
~~Hero moves to one room next to him only (of his choice), after you place things.~~
Bug with '?' explorable spaces that have multiple entry points (only uses first-seen entry point)
Bug with possible room/corridor tiles coming up that you can't fit anywhere
Actual Hero AI – with some sort of messaging of intentions (eg 'trying to get loot' vs 'trying to escape alive')
Actual RPG elements (eg levels, equipment, etc)
Speech bubbles for heroes (& monsters) to show their intent & add a little humour (eg 'Snakes. Why'd it have to be snakes?')
Some sort of battle system (automated)
Replace placeholder art
A strategic layer for in between dungeon exploration sessions (ie the Guild). Here you can recruit adventurers and choose which dungeon to tackle next.

Subscribe!

If you want to keep hearing about Guild of Dungeoneering I'd recommend following me on Twitter, liking the game on Facebook, or subscribing to the Tigsource devlog thread. Thanks!

Posted in: 1GAM, Game Development, Guild of Dungeoneering |