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!

Then buy one dollar's worth of cocaine and PARTY

I have recently been finishing a lot of smaller games thanks to game jams and One Game a Month. This is a great feeling and absolutely every wannabe game developer should start by finishing something. However there is another side to becoming a successful independent game developer, namely marketing your game so more than two people hear about it and polishing your game so that those you reach are willing to throw you some cash.

Join me as I outline my plan to polish, market & release a simple game within a month.

Give Yourself a Boost

First of all don't try and make a complete game from scratch all in one month. It is much safer to pick a gamejam game or playable demo you have previously put together and start from there. If you are anything like me you will have had loads of good ideas to make your previous games even better that you just didn't have time to implement last time you were working on them.

Built in 12 hours for a gamejam… this could be polished into something I call RIDICULOUS FISHING! Oh wait..

Share Early, Share Often

Clearly you are going to have no marketing budget to speak of, and a 1-month deadline to build the entire game AND sell it is going to be tight. So you need to make the most of your time. It is incredibly important not to get stuck in head-down development of your game all month long. You will not be able to just drop your game onto your marketplace of choice on the last day of the month and announce it with a single tweet. Well, maybe if you are @notch. Instead make it your mission to share everything you do. Start spreading the word from the beginning. Hit up every social network you have after every day's work you do. At a minimum you want to be sharing on Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, Google+ and whichever online forums you already use.

Have a Game Plan

Spend your first day choosing which game you want to extend & polish. Which of your existing projects was the most fun to play? Which one got shared the most on social networks? Which one could you see yourself buying with just a little more polish? Which one is the most interesting & exciting to explain to a stranger?

Futility RPG. Hilarious to plan & create. Not so fun to play.

Now sketch out some ideas that you think will improve on what you had built before. The key here is to make it good enough that someone is willing to pay for it in some way – even just $1. At this point I'll refer you to this superb guide from 1GAM super champ @McFunkypants. Read that and embrace it. It's a great way to stay focused on what will be important in the month ahead.

A Name and Your First Marketing

At this point you shouldn't actually do any coding yet! Instead it is time to pick a name for your game. Names are important, but don't stress about it too much. What you really want is to pick it early and stick with it. You are going to use this constantly, everywhere, every time you share what you are working on. And you are going to be sharing constantly.

Once you have your shortlist of possible features and a name it is time to write your elevator pitch. This means being able to explain your entire finished game in a single paragraph or less. You want to be able to read this to a friend or stranger and have them be excited about the game.

Romance. Strategy. A* Pathfinding. SECURE THE MOVIE RIGHTS PEOPLE

Doing this early on is going to be extremely helpful. Plus, if all you can say is that it's going to be a game about clicking a cow every 6 hours then maybe you can go back to the last step and look into some more exciting features. Or maybe not!

Moo. That'll be $20 please.

And now share your elevator pitch. Tweet about it. Post it up on the 1GAM and Ludum Dare subreddits. Don't forget to include your game name! It's exciting and motivational to get people to comment on it at this early stage (hopefully with excitement!) – that's your target. Also reinforcement. By the time you release this baby the drooling masses your lovely customers won't even know why they want it so bad.

Min Viable Product

Time to get coding! You should aim to get a MVP version of your feature list in about your first two weeks of the month. This means aggressive cutting. Start by prioritising your features and work on the 'must-haves' first. Since you started with a working game you should continue to keep it in this state. At the end of every day if at all possible your game should be playable. Things can be incomplete, slightly buggy or downright missing, but the whole game should never be in such a mess that it won't even compile. And every day it will get better & better. At the end of every day share something. You should be hitting up #screenshotsaturday on Twitter, updating a devlog on Tigsource, and everywhere else you hit up earlier.

Playable yes. Polished… perhaps not!

Now is also a great time to start asking your friends, family & fellow gamedevs to playtest early versions of your game. Ask for feedback like 'Is this fun yet?' and 'Would you buy this yet?'.

Identify Your Marketplace

Take some time out from building (and sharing! SHARE IT) your game and identify the marketplace you will release on. I would suggest picking just one to be on by the end of the month. You can always add more later on. Check out the excellent Resources & Opportunities page for some ideas. If your game is for mobile the marketplace is pretty easy, or you can go for sponsorship for a flash or html5 game, or even a paypal button on your website to sell direct. Hey, even your granny can set up a paypal button these days so no excuses!

Grandma keeps sharing her gamedev progress and it's better than mine *SOB*

Build A One Page Landing Site

Another thing to take a day out of coding to do is to build a page on your website dedicated to your game. You can use presskit() to make this process painless but it is very important. Your page should include your game's name, the elevator pitch you created earlier, some screenshots (complete work in progress ones are completely fine at this stage), your email address and links to your Twitter account etc. You can also include any feedback you received during your earlier sharing. Any random tweets or reddit responses will do here! You can always go for hilarity, plus you can replace them later with Actual Press Quotes ..

The first comment my Futility RPG game got from /r/DND

Now you have a destination for your game. Any time anyone has questions or expresses interest in your game, or you are sharing anything as you work, include this link. Massive bonus points if you can set up a pre-ordering system or even an 'email-me-when-its-done' widget on this page.

Polish, Polish, Polish

The later stages of development (say the last week) should be 100% dedicated to polish. That means ironing out bugs, improving your interface, building a proper main menu and tutorial, etc etc. You want your game to have the very best chance of winning over a prospect who happens to glance at a screenshot after reading the first few words of your elevator pitch. Because that's all the attention you will get before they move onto that hilarious cat video. Thanks, Internet!

Polish that right up!

Now that your game is really starting to be feature complete and starting to look a little better too, it would be a great idea to make a video trailer. This isn't something I've done yet – so anyone with some good advice here would be welcome! It does make for a fantastic asset to sell your game with however. Put it into your destination page (right up top), and share that bad boy.

Release Day

Time to get your game up on your marketplace and into the hands of your brainwashed eager fans. Allow at least a day for any integration issues, and definitely make sure you have an account on the service ready weeks in advance if you aren't selling direct. Also do things like update your screenshots on your destination page with the latest build, and add a link to your marketplace there. When it is possible for someone to buy it is time to Announce Your Game. Hit up every social space you've been sharing on for a massive push. Contact some actual journalists. Tell your mom! Surely she's good for a dollar (insert your mom joke here). 

Your ideal customer

And finally and importantly it is time to give yourself a massive pat on the back, Champ. You did it!

One is the loneliest number..

This time I didn't have any other fellow 1GAM-Dublin jammers, so I proceeded alone. Tucked myself into my man cave for a long Sunday with our theme for the month ('GIVE UP') and got stuck in.

The Idea

Thinking about 'GIVE UP' and a brilliant on-theme idea someone else in 1GAM Dublin was working on (a Sisyphus / QWOP mashup) led to my own idea. I would make a game pretending to be an oldschool DnD style RPG game, except the twist would be that the character creation process just goes ON and ON til eventually you 'give up' … and the game reveals your score (and the fact that there really is no actual game after character creation..)

Always share your ideas!

The idea was when you started character creation things seemed pretty normal as you chose your race, rolled for stats, picked a name and so on. However more and more petty details would be asked of you such as your background, your personality, your childhood pet, and so on in endless detail. At all times there would be a button available to let you skip to the end of character creation, with the idea being that you would eventually get frustrated and go for it!

I was even thinking of showing a slowly raising '% complete' bar that when you finally filled to 100% would then reveal that you were only finished Section A, and then reset to 0% of Section B, for maximum frustration!

First Prototype

Since what I was building was essentially a really, really long form I decided to build it out in HTML & Javascript (yes this is also sort-of HTML5..). I quickly set up a basic title screen with some simple CSS3 animations to both make it more gamelike and, cruelly, to slow progress down as things slowly animated in one by one.

The only way to win is not to play

I used the Twitter Bootstrap framework to get stuff like nice buttons and predictable cross-browser defaults & CSS resets, then applied some basic font & colour choices on top of it. By the end a very grueling first day I had a character creation framework where the game would automatically load in new sections as you completed them, and let you proceed to the next section once you made a choice (and usually, a sub-choice). However I had only written the first question (race and sub-race) and had none of the things necessary to make this work as a concept (such as the % completion updating itself, or a game-over screen). Still, with all the animations in I could see this was going to be at least 'OK'.

Mechanical Dwarfs always oil their beards.

Fleshing It Out

I managed to spend another few nights before the August 1GAM Dublin meetup, adding different types of question such as a classic Strength/Dexterity/Wisdom section where you rolled 3D6s til you were happy with your stats, plus a game over screen if you got sick of it, and a nicely animated '% Complete' bar. At this point I thought what I needed was to write a Metric Shit Ton of content for it, in the form of convoluted and ever more pointless character questions. But first it was time to show it off at the 1GAM Dublin meetup!

'Smelling Things', just as real an illness as Nevernudity

Here I got a fantastic suggestion from fellow 1GAM'er John Kelly (also the one working on the Sysiphus/QWOP game..) – namely to occasionally throw up an error in the form and roll back to an earlier section. BLAM. This idea changed everything! Instead of writing a ludicrous amount of content I could ramp up the frustration factor in a much funnier way! The next day I implemented rollbacks, threw in just a few more questions and I was ready to release!

The Necromancers are incredibly vain

Have A Play

You can try Futility RPG in your browser right now. Yes, it is possible to win without skipping. No, the rollbacks aren't pre-decided. Yes, this is all a bit much for a joke game!

Play Now!

Check Out The Source

The full source for Futility RPG is available right here, so feel free to have a look and use it in your own projects.

Some Hilarious Feedback

I decided to share the game to the Dungeons & Dragons subreddit since I imagined it would resonate with DnD fans. Quite a lot of people tried it out, with most (rightly!) wondering what was the point of the game. The very first comment I got was just the funniest thing I've read in some time..

Step away from the keyboard, sir.

I also liked this guy, who played right through without ever hitting the joke (the frustrating rollbacks!)

This game isn't frustrating at all!

Make games. Not 1GAM logos.

A couple others from the 1GAM-Dublin google group joined in on the day and we got to work. Our theme for the month by the way was 'KAWAII!!!!'.

The Idea

I'd had an idea mulling around in the back of my head for a while that matched our theme for the month quite well. My idea was to take the Japanese virtual pet / Tamagotchi game and change it up a bit by making it so that no matter how well you looked after your little fella, he eventually grew depressed and finally suicidal. Here was my initial design doc:

Aww cute. Wait.. get off that window ledge!

First Prototype

After about 6 hours of tinkering I had a basic bit of gameplay going where your egg hatched into a little amorphous blob of a baby (art is very faithful to the original watch toys here!!), who then wobbled left and right pooping occasionally.

Shake your head from side to side to get the animated version

I also had a simple message delivery system which I could use to send you helpful messages ('Please look after your pet'), or eventually start hinting that your pet really isn't that happy.. and that it might be your fault. And of course it wouldn't be a tamagotchi-style game if things couldn't go pearshaped pretty quickly.

It's ALL YOUR FAULT

A Bit Of Polish

This was about all I managed at the end of my 'one day gamejam', and I was pretty happy with my progress, but it was far from something I could really call a game. So I spent about another day split across a few evenings adding a few more bits and generally polishing up the experience. One very important thing that worked well was getting you to name your pet right after it hatched.

Porky? No wonder he's depressed!

Once you name him you are much more emotionally vested in his success and will hopefully feel more at fault when eventually and unavoidably you let him die. YOU MONSTER.

Have A Play

You can try SUPER HAPPY PET in your browser right now. Let me know what you think!

Have a play!

Check Out The Source

The full source for SUPER HAPPY PET is available right here, so feel free to have a look and use it in your own projects. Thanks for having a look!

Why are we all sitting in a row anyway?

As a mechanic it is both easy to grasp and strategically deep – as you become more familiar with the game you are drafting for you start to not only draft to get cards you want, but also to pick cards that you don't want your neighbours getting once you pass on your remaining cards. It's no wonder that such fantastic games as Ascension, Dominion and 7 Wonders all use drafting as a base. Read on to find out how I fared!

An Industrial Theme

Our 1GAM splinter group One Game A Month Dublin runs its own monthly themes and for May ours was INDUSTRY. This gave me a fantastic focus for my card drafting game, and I quickly came up with the idea for a game set during the Industrial Revolution of about 1800 (ish). You would be an industrialist of the era building up your production & trade empire. Here you can see some early investigation into the possible industries and technological advancements of the time:

Some interesting facets of the Industrial Revolution..

My initial thoughts were to make a game where you alternate between drafting to get cards and playing the cards to expand your empire. I could have cards that represented some of the ideas pictured above, with the overall goal being to get the best trade empire by the end of the game. I started thinking along the lines of having both basic resource cards and more complex ones that were more powerful but needed prerequisites to be able to play them – so that early in the game you would be torn between choosing the basics to get you started or choosing the super cards that you wanted to be able to play later on.

A Paper Prototype

With a rich theme in hand and ideas for cards a-plenty it was time to build the first playable prototype. This by the way is the absolute best thing about building a physical game – it is just so easy to prototype. All you need is pen & paper plus some card sleeves (€6 got me 100 sleeves from a local comic book shop). This part is far faster than coding up a computer game prototype!

The pen (and card protector sleeve) is mightier than the .. um..

Very soon I had a playable game! I had cards that produced basic materials (initially cotton, coal or iron), cards that doubled your output, cards that doubled your sale price for materials, and cards that messed with your opponent's play. Even at this incredibly early stage I was able to play the game and get a sense of how it was coming together – and already there was the makings of a fun game!

Making It Shiny

My next step was to draw up some card designs in photoshop. Once again the theme of the industrial revolution made this easy – everything from my colour scheme, fonts, patterns (from wallpaper!) could be inspired by historical counterparts. In a single evening I had a workable template for all my cards:

Shiny!

Here you can see the three types of card you could draft and build: Holdings (which produce materials), Events (which have a one off effect and are then discarded), and Technologies (which give you alone some sort of permanent upgrade). As I worked through the nice-looking prototype stage I was also reworking the rules of the paper prototype, which was an easy side effect of having to type up each card as I created it. At this point I also added a fourth material type (Wheat) to round out the production side of the game. I also settled on a name for the game: Captains of Industry.

Card Sleeves. Seriously just get some!

Now I could print and cut up a nicer looking prototype – reusing those all important card sleeves – and I was ready to get some people playing the game. At this point I'd say I had spent about 4 evenings total on this (far less effort than my previous month's flash game Dungeon Delver for example).

This is starting to look professional!

Playtest Until It Becomes Fun

Another massive advantage of building a physical game is that most of the key rules simply exist in your head. Tweaking things that only exist in your head is really, really easy. Every time I was able to get 2-4 players together to play out the game I was able to tweak rules to make things simpler or better, often between games! The power of not having to code rule changes is extreme. This is why even computer game designers often make a paper prototype first! And when I wanted to change the cards themselves, I could do it with some self adhesive labels and a pen. Nice.

Captains of Industry at dubLUDO

I brought the prototype of Captains of Industry to the monthly 1GAM Dublin meetup, and then to a similar event called dubLUDO which is all about showcasing your in-development game. I even forced coworkers and family to try it out! And every time I was watching like a hawk for ways to make it simpler to grasp, or richer in depth, and incorporating them into the prototype.

Print It Professionally

Now it was time to get a proper professionally printed set of cards. I went back to my design templates and reworked them with all the rule & card tweaks I had incorporated into the sleeved prototype. When this was done I then uploaded my card art to a print-on-demand service called The Game Crafter and ordered myself a couple of copies of the game.

A new card for managing play

Once these arrive I will be looking into doing a proper print run of the game. Get in touch or leave a comment if you are interested in getting your own copy of Captains of Industry!

Edit: The profesionally printed cards arrived.. looking good!

SHINY

Make Gamedev Challenges. Not Excuses.

Not only that – but I've helped set up a meetup group for fellow 1GAM enthusiasts in Dublin, Ireland. We are going to meet at the end of every month to playtest each others creations and generally swap war stories. Our very first meetup was last night and was a great success! If you want to join us sign up to the 1GAM-Dublin google group. But what about my game for April? Read on!

The Theme

To mix it up a bit 1GAM Dublin will be picking themes slightly differently to the main 1GAM group – for April we kept it simple by reusing the main site's March theme which was 'Rogue'. After a bit of brainstorming the game I decided to make was 'Dungeon Delver' – A game where you explore a dungeon by laying out new room tiles one at a time. A bit like a 1 player version of the boardgame DungeonQuest. Here was my initial design doc:

My design doc 'sketches' are becoming legendary in gamedev circles

As you can see this was pretty basic. I purposely kept the design as simple as possible as I knew from past experience how hard it is to finish something in a short timeframe. My initial target was to try and build something that would be possible to get working in a single weekend – I could always spend the extra time on polish & extending it once I had a playable prototype.

My first day of work got me clickable random dungeon tiles:

Not very exciting - yet

The next step was to give you a target to aim for in the dungeon – I added a treasure room:

Cha-Ching!

Plus – a little bit of player choice. Every time you clicked one of the yellow explorable spaces you had to pick between two different possible tiles:

Hm. Not much of a choice here.

And soon after that a little more spice.. some rooms contain treasure or monster encounters!

So bags of gold or being savaged by a monster? Let's see..

At this point April was drawing to a close so despite having more ideas I wanted to implement I decided to spend my last evening on a round of polish, adding much a cleaner overall look + sound effects to the game.

Play The Game!

Go ahead and give it a go right here. Comments and feedback welcome!

The purple really sets it off, doesn't it.