Gambrinous Blog » Game Development http://blog.gambrinous.com Wed, 27 Aug 2025 23:08:44 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.6.1 The List of Indie-Friendly Publishers, 2017 Edition http://blog.gambrinous.com/2017/10/25/the-list-of-indie-friendly-publishers-2017-edition/ http://blog.gambrinous.com/2017/10/25/the-list-of-indie-friendly-publishers-2017-edition/#comments Wed, 25 Oct 2017 09:23:39 +0000 admin http://blog.gambrinous.com/?p=1231 I put together a list of indie-friendly publishers back in 2014 as I was pitching them on Guild of Dungeoneering.  I'm now once again shopping for a publisher for our second game so I've put together a new and updated list! I hope it helps anyone else looking.

My goal like last time is to find a publisher that can help promote & market our game (and front the money to do so), and on top of that this time I'm also looking for someone who will co-fund development. This is for a PC & console game, so mobile-only publishers have not been included. There's also a couple here that would be money-only rather than a regular publishing arrangement, like the Indie Fund and Jonathan Blow's offer.

Thanks to the everyone who helped me put this list together. If you have any suggestions to add to this list feel free to mail or tweet me!

]]> http://blog.gambrinous.com/2017/10/25/the-list-of-indie-friendly-publishers-2017-edition/feed/ 0 Guild of Dungeoneering is OUT NOW http://blog.gambrinous.com/2015/07/14/guild-of-dungeoneering-is-out-now/ http://blog.gambrinous.com/2015/07/14/guild-of-dungeoneering-is-out-now/#comments Tue, 14 Jul 2015 15:32:40 +0000 Colm http://blog.gambrinous.com/?p=1119 That's right! Get your dungeoneer on RIGHT NOW via Steam, GOG or Humble. There's also a press release here.

We also have a wonderful new trailer for you to enjoy. And yes, that song IS in the soundtrack included in the Deluxe Edition.

It's been an incredible two year journey putting the game together and I'm very proud of what we've built. I sincerely hope you all enjoy it!

\o/

Thank you everyone for all your support!

What's Next?

We're going to keep working on Guild of Dungeoneering. We have plans for new features, some DLC, ports, lots of things. I'll be sharing a roadmap of our goals very soon.

A note on the Mac version

We ran into a problem at the very last minute with our Mac build so unfortunately we've had to delay it. We're working on it right now and will have it up as soon as we possibly can. More info here.

]]> http://blog.gambrinous.com/2015/07/14/guild-of-dungeoneering-is-out-now/feed/ 0 Creating the Scribble Effect in Guild of Dungeoneering http://blog.gambrinous.com/2015/01/06/creating-the-scribble-effect-in-guild-of-dungeoneering/ http://blog.gambrinous.com/2015/01/06/creating-the-scribble-effect-in-guild-of-dungeoneering/#comments Tue, 06 Jan 2015 15:21:12 +0000 Owen http://blog.gambrinous.com/?p=982 One of the big draws of Guild of Dungeoneering is the distinctive art style created by Fred;  it really evokes that feeling of playing a paper and pencil style RPG, where you are sketching out your own dungeon maps. However we felt we weren’t doing that art justice in the transitions between picking a room card and it appearing on the page. Rooms simply faded in to a static image. We also weren’t really happy with the way the game was highlighting possible placement positions for new rooms, showing just question marks in valid locations when in the middle of the placement sequence, which was confusing for some players.

the finished Scribble Effect

the finished Scribble Effect in action

So when I joined the team one of my tasks was to try and implement solutions to these issues, eventually coming up with what I call the Scribble Effect.

The Scribble Effect

We knew we wanted to somehow mimic the rooms being drawn, by pencil, on to the screen. So I figured the best way, or at least the best way I knew of, would be to use image blending effects. Guild of Dungeoneering is slated to first release on Steam for PC & Mac, however the game is entirely built in Flash (in pure Actionscript to be more precise) primarily using the Flixel engine. So I would be able to use Flash’s built-in bitmap functions and blend modes to get the result I was aiming towards. I had used similar techniques in the past when creating dynamic fog-of-war systems, so I was confident enough in going for this approach.

a single room tile

a single room tile

Looking at a single room tile, we can see it is made up of two main parts: the room itself, and its surrounding hatching. That hatching is made up of a ten by ten grid of alternating horizontal and vertical strokes, which is also aligned with the grid of the graph paper below. I decided to use this grid as the basis of the effect. At the games current fixed resolution each room tile is 150 by 150 pixels, making each small square of hatching 15 pixels square. These small squares were to be the basic building blocks.

Scribblin'

Scribblin'

I created a very simple spritesheet consisting of four frames, with each frame being 15 by 15 pixels, with simple semi-transparent black scribble strokes. This would be used as a mask to progressively build up the effect on each grid square. When applied over 4 steps they would layer on top of each other and slowly reveal the actual image pixels.

I wanted the effect to grow out from the existing tiles. So when starting the effect I check to see where the neighbouring tiles are, if any, then pick a starting location based on the highest density. If starting from a corner, the effect will then spread diagonally out from that point. If starting from a side it will move across to the far side whilst also spreading perpendicularly in both directions from the middle of that side.

Setting everything up

The other main piece of setup is creating the various temporary display objects required to pull off the effect. The effect takes place on the final Tile object itself that is placed in the world; when the sequence is finished it will just hold the static room sprite, but will start out blank and contain a couple of temporary images and mask display objects as variables to enable the effect.

The first mask we use is a Flash Shape object with its default blank Graphics object. In Flash a Graphics objects is a simple canvas for drawing vector graphics (lines and shapes), but as well as allowing you to do solid and gradient colour fills you can also do a bitmap fill. With a bitmap fill, when you draw a shape the filled in contents will come from a portion of a supplied image. This can be useful when you want to do quick and cheap frame/spritesheet based drawing/blitting. As the effect will progress the scribble spritesheet will be drawn to the Shape, adding the appropriate frame in the appropriate position for the grid square currently being executed.  With a fifth step added on the end to completely fill in the square this results in the mask filling up to become entirely opaque black.

Slow motion masking sequence

Slow motion masking sequence

This build-up sequence is queued up during the initial effect set up. Throughout the game we make extensive use of the TweenLite library from GreenSock for normal transformation tween animations but also for timing using its delayed function call features, and here we make extensive use of the delayedCall() function to enable the scribble effect. We loop through each of the one hundred squares and set up its initial delayed call to the masking function, with the appropriate delay for its position – the pattern of delays depends on from which point to grow out from. Then within the masking function, when called following each delay, the next delayed call step in the sequence is queued up for that position. For a basic effect that’s five hundred delayed calls.

public function startMaskEffect(phase:int = 1, delay:Number = 0):void {
  [...]
  switch(hi_index) {
    case 7: //bottom centre
      for (j = 9; j >= 0; j--) {
        d = delay + delay_per_step * (9-j);
        for (i = 0; i < 5; i++) {	
          d += randomDelay(delay_per_step);
          maskTweens.push(TweenLite.delayedCall(d, updateAlphaMaskHalf, [ 4 - i, j, delay_per_step, 
                          0, phase, steps, randomRotation()] )); //spread left
          maskTweens.push(TweenLite.delayedCall(d, updateAlphaMaskHalf, [ 5 + i, j, delay_per_step, 
                          0, phase, steps, randomRotation()] )); //spread right
          if (phase == 2) { //hatching pass, check to start borders
            if (border_north && i == 0 && j == 0) {
              border_north.startMaskEffect(d, delay_per_step, false, true);
            }
            if (border_south && i == 0 && j == 9) {
              border_south.startMaskEffect(d, delay_per_step, false, true);
            }
            if (i == 4 && j == 9) {
              if (border_east) {
                border_east.startMaskEffect(d, delay_per_step, true);
              }
              if (border_west) {
                border_west.startMaskEffect(d, delay_per_step, true);
              }
            }
          }
        }
      }					
      break;
    [...]
  }
}

It is within these built up black areas of this first mask that we want the actual tile to be displayed, so this mask isn’t quite what we need. What we really need is the inverse so that we can erase the remaining areas from the full room image, another temporary object contained within the Tile. In the beginning everything is erased from the room each frame, then less and less needs to be removed until the sequence is complete and nothing is erased leaving just the full room tile image. This inverting, erasing and then copying of the modified contents of the room image to the Tile objects framePixels (and then resetting of the room image to its original state) is done in the Tile’s draw() function, called once per game frame when Flixel is ready to copy the Tile’s framePixels to the Flixel Camera blitting backbuffer.

This second inverted mask is a Flash Bitmap object. This is so that we can use the draw() function from its bitmapData Object, which allows the use of BlendModes. The inverted mask is first instantiated during the effect set up and filled entirely with a solid colour (doesn’t matter what colour, as long as there is no transparency). Then each frame, in the Tiles draw() function, we take the current state of the first mask and draw it on to the invert mask, making sure to use the BlendMode.ERASE blend mode. This effectively makes the first mask a special one-time eraser brush to be used on the second mask.

roomMaskInvert.bitmapData.draw(roomMask, null, null, BlendMode.ERASE);
the inverted mask

the inverted mask

The inverted mask is now ready to be applied to the temporary full room image in the same way. The room image is a FlxSprite, Flixel's implementation of a Sprite – which contains a couple of Flash’s bitmapData objects, one of which being framePixels. Similar to how the original mask was drawn on to the invert mask with an erase blend mode, the invert mask is now drawn on to the room sprites framePixels, also with an erase blend mode. This removes the parts of the room that have yet to be ‘drawn’ by our pencil scribbling sequence. The result is what we now want to be displayed to the screen. This requires just one more draw call to apply the modified room pixels on to the Tile framePixels itself, which in turn will get picked up by Flixel and copied to its camera. The temporary room sprite is then forced to redraw its frame, thereby restoring its original state as stored on the other bitmapData in the FlxSprite, ready to be used on the next frame.

Splitting the scribble into two passes

To remove the hard edges from each tile, borders are added where there are no neighbouring tiles, which lends to the hand drawn aesthetic. These borders perform their own versions of the scribble, being triggered and synchronized by the parent Tile.

one-pass scribble

one-pass scribble

Originally each tiles room and surrounding hatching was incorporated into a single flat spritesheet.

tiles with and without background hatching

tiles with and without background hatching

By separating them out we can then run the effect on both independently, with differences in direction giving a more dynamic result. Rooms would grow out from existing adjacent doorways, while the hatching would grow out from the highest density of neighbouring tiles as before.

two-pass scribble

two-pass scribble

Using the effect elsewhere

Breaking out the room portion of the tile also led to the solution for the highlighting issue.

In the game, when you select a room card, all of the valid placement locations are highlighted. In the past we indicated these highlights with a question mark surrounded by hatching to communicate ‘hey, you can put this room here!!’. But while observing new players during play testing it was noticed that this was not clear to all players.

 

what does the question mark even mean!?

what does the question mark even mean!?

With the rooms now broken out on their own, and since highlights are just a special type of Tile, we can use them to draw just the room as a highlight using the scribble effect (at partial transparency) in all of the valid placement locations, which gives a much better impressions of where rooms can be placed. When a room is dropped on a valid spot the highlight is then drawn over with the full effect. For all the other highlights not used, a simple erase effect is done with a simple mask spritesheet (in a single pass since we’re just removing what’s already there).

 

draw in valid spots first, then do the full scribble when placed

highlight valid spots first, then do the full scribble when placed

There is no limit on the number of highlighting positions there can be in a dungeon, which could mean potentially a lot of scribble effects attempting to run at once, impacting performance. So we do a little bit of extra optimisation by caching in each direction. The first highlight to attempt to scribble out from a particular side (it’ll only be in the four cardinal directions) will assign itself as the master effect, then any subsequent highlights that attempt to go the same way will just assign the master’s framePixels to themselves, meaning no additional computation needed.

All scribbled in

So there you have it, that’s how we achieve our dynamic tile drawing effects. I must say I quite like it myself, but as I found when writing this post there’s always room for little improvements.

If you have any comments, questions or suggestions we’d love to hear them.


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		Now Hiring: Game Designer!
		http://blog.gambrinous.com/2014/12/15/now-hiring-game-designer/
		http://blog.gambrinous.com/2014/12/15/now-hiring-game-designer/#comments
		Mon, 15 Dec 2014 14:46:45 +0000
		Colm
				
		

		http://blog.gambrinous.com/?p=972
		
				Note: this position has now been filled!


Hi folks!


I'm looking for a talented game designer to join the team here at Gambrinous. The ideal person would


    

  • love creating engaging, elegant systems that are a joy to play, learn and master
    • 

  • have a deep interest in board games and card games and what makes them tick
    • 

  • be keen to apply board & card game mechanics to a digital game
    • 

  • have a portfolio of previous games or prototypes they have built
    • 

  • enjoy working in a small team where everyone's effort makes a big difference
    • 

  • get to focus on gameplay rather than monetisation (we don't do F2P)
    • 



Doodley!
You too could be a Dungeoneer!


That person will be joining a team of four working on Guild of Dungeoneering, which is due to come out on Steam and tablets in mid 2015. More info on Guild of Dungeoneering can be found right over here.


We don't know what we'll work on after that but you can bet it will be something boardgamey and full of juicy game design challenges. We are based in Dublin, Ireland but I'm also willing to talk about working remotely with the right person.


Interested? Great! Drop me a mail (colm@gambrinous.com) and tell me about yourself. I'd also love to see some of your previous work and get an idea of your salary expectations.


Cheers,

Colm Larkin

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		The List of Indie-Friendly Publishers
		http://blog.gambrinous.com/2014/09/02/the-list-of-indie-friendly-publishers/
		http://blog.gambrinous.com/2014/09/02/the-list-of-indie-friendly-publishers/#comments
		Tue, 02 Sep 2014 13:56:10 +0000
		Colm
				
		
		

		http://blog.gambrinous.com/?p=943
		
				That's not an oxymoron! While the whole point of being 'indie' is to be independent (primarily of a publisher!) there are many other ways a publisher can help you while letting you remain independent. Traditionally game publishers would pay an upfront fee that paid for a studio to develop their game, but in return own all of the IP and almost all of the revenue from a game (and sequels!!).


Nowadays with digital distribution one of the main reasons to need a traditional publisher is gone but there are other things they can help with like PR, advertising and marketing budgets around launch, getting you onto marketplaces like Steam, etc. Sometimes this could be more of a partnership than a publishing deal.


I've just started talks with a few indie-friendly publishers for Guild of Dungeoneering so I thought I would share my list for others considering this approach. Some of these are full-on publishers with a focus on indie games, some are actual indie developers who also publish other dev's games, and some are marketing specialists.



I'm focused primarily on PC, as is most of the above list, but if you are looking for help with a mobile game I'd recommend looking through this twitter list as quite a few of the list are mobile-focused.


Thanks to the Indie Game Developers facebook group, @kristruitt, @LukeD and /r/gamedev for helping me put this list together. If you have any suggestions to add to this list feel free to leave a comment!

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		Getting Your Game Greenlit In 2014
		http://blog.gambrinous.com/2014/06/11/getting-your-game-greenlit-in-2014/
		http://blog.gambrinous.com/2014/06/11/getting-your-game-greenlit-in-2014/#comments
		Wed, 11 Jun 2014 15:34:03 +0000
		Colm
				
		

		http://blog.gambrinous.com/?p=919
		
				Making a game for PC or Mac? You'll probably want access to Steam's 75 million subscribers and their often joked-about spending problem. After all it turns out most people are buying games on Steam that they never even install! Now there's a market you want to tap into!


The infamous Steam summer sale
Time to buy some games you won't play!


Steam's almost-monopoly causes some real problems, with gamers often refusing to buy games from you directly, saying "I'd buy it if it was on Steam". A couple of years ago it was basically impossible as an indie dev to get onto Steam. Even with the launch of Greenlight, their crowdsourced vetting service, it was extremely difficult as recently as last September. Fortunately in January Valve started ramping up the number of games they were Greenlighting and right now they are accepting a batch of 75 games every two weeks. Lets ignore for now what this rash of games is going to do for your game's release (hint: find an audience outside Steam) and instead address the question 'How hard is it to get through Greenlight in 2014?'.




Case study: Guild of Dungeoneering


Since last October I've been building a game called Guild of Dungeoneering which is a kind of reverse-roguelike with a pen-on-graph-paper aesthetic. On April 9th I submitted it to Steam Greenlight and it was Greenlit in the batch of May 14th some 35 days later. Oh and my first day as a fulltime indie dev was April 14th so I got to spend plenty of time refreshing that stats page (all day long, every day!). Here's what I learned.


Coming to Steam (and elsewhere!)
Coming to Steam (and elsewhere!)


Submitting


Submitting your game to Greenlight is dead easy. Just sign up for a new account for your business, throw GabeN your $100 (hilariously it counts as a game in your steam library, so you could even gift this to someone), lash up some screens & a video and BOOM your game can be unleashed on the salivating masses.


Quick aside: when is the right time in development to hit up Greenlight? As an indie dev you should be sharing your game embarrassingly early, but for Greenlight I think it's best to have things just a tiny bit more polished. Specifically I think you need a nice video trailer, some nice looking screenshots, and some gameplay (either in video or demo form). But you do not need to have a finished game! In fact you should be on there long before you have finished your game.


Second quick aside: don't bother with the Greenlight Concepts section. Just go straight to Greenlight nowadays.


A rush of votes to the head


As soon as your game is live on Greenlight you will get a pile of views without you having to do anything at all. This is because it's added to everyone's Greenlight queue to vote on (a bit like a gamedev hotornot). This means for $100 you'll get several thousand interested gamers to look at your video (sometimes for several seconds!). If you think of it in pure advertising terms that's actually incredibly cheap & incredibly targeted. Nice! This will however disappear into a trickle of traffic after a few days or at most a week.


The important line is the green one for 'yes votes'
The important line is the green one for 'yes votes'


Aside: you can post announcements on your Greenlight item which are supposedly shown to people who pick 'ask me later'. Barely anyone uses this so don't use them to reach people like you might with Kickstarter updates: of 16,973 votes cast for Guild of Dungeoneering a tiny number of 629 people picked 'ask me later'. That said the announcements are prominent on your Greenlight page so throw in at least one to show you are alive for future visitors.


Time to promote


To get anywhere you are going to have to get your fanbase to vote on your game. Luckily you've been building up that fanbase from the beginning, right? I timed the start of our Greenlight campaign with the release of our lovely trailer, which I hoped would get picked up all over the internet in a sensation of traffic and cause the game to be greenlit in like one day. Ha! That would never happen. Oh wait it did happen exactly that way to the guys behind CRAWL!


CRAWL, featuring the best indie trailer ever.
CRAWL, featuring the best indie trailer ever.


You can't rely on that happening to you, so assume you'll have to do the legwork like I did. I built up a presslist of over 60 specific games writers who wrote about games like my one, and then mailed them customised one-to-one mails pitching my game, the trailer, and that it was now on Greenlight. This took a full day. I followed up with everyone who hadn't written something about three weeks later, gently offering a new build + the fact we were almost through Greenlight. I also wrote my first ever Press Release and handed it over to the lovely gamespress.com for release. Finally I was all over my usual forums & social networks asking friends and strangers to vote & share.


This got me quite a lot of press articles, though mostly from smaller sites, but does it lead to that precious resource of Yes Votes?


Basically no one votes on Greenlight (or in elections)


You work hard for traffic & attention to your game. Then you divert a lot of it to your Greenlight page to get some extra votes, and basically no one bothers to vote. There's a few reasons for this, but the main one is how people use Steam vs how they read about games news. Your Steam client logs in automatically for you on your games PC. However you read news on your mobile phone, on your laptop or your work PC, or even if you happen to be on your gaming PC you will see this link and it will open up in your browser. Oh wait, you aren't logged into Steam on your browser are you? Nope. Just in the Steam client itself. Will I try and login.. oh wait now I need to jump through some security hoops.. NOPE I'm out. By my estimate (backed up by what others saw) something like 0.1% of visits from outside the Steam client lead to votes.


Aside: you could try a steam:// link that opens up directly in the Steam client. However I would be worried about people who click it on one of the many places where they don't have steam installed, getting a weird prompt instead of the Greenlight page.


In fact I found it easier to sell $10 pre-orders of Guild of Dungeoneering than to get yes votes, at times. This one-paragraph mention on the BoingBoing tech blog led to over 80 people buying the game via my site in one day, but less than that went on to the prominently linked Greenlight page that day.


Still it all helps, as without the extra attention you could be on Greenlight forever.


Lots of people vote no, but that's OK


Don't be worried about this. The question they are answering is "Would you buy this game if it were available in Steam?". A no vote means they wouldn't buy it, not that they hate you and want you to fail. Even the best games don't get bought by everyone; there are genres of games I will never buy and ones I love for example. Here's our breakdown of votes showing 50% yes – compared to 39% yes for an average top-50 game.


Click for bigger!
Click for bigger!


So how many Yes Votes do I need, anyway?


Valve uses more than just the number of yes votes you've accrued to select who they Greenlight, though exactly what criteria they use is a slight mystery, but getting into the Top 100 games on Greenlight certainly helps and should be your main goal. They even show you your 'percentage of the way to the Top 100' on your stats page. When I was running my campaign in April/May the line to make it into the top 100 was about 6,000 yes votes. Interestingly in January just before Valve started accepting so many more games it was about double that, so I expect that number will continue falling.


If you look at the graph above you'll see that after about 3 weeks my yes vote tally had tailed off to about 60/day at about 5,000 votes. At that rate I was looking at about another month before I would be in the Top 100 zone and likely to be greenlit. So I decided to take part in a giveaway via a large Steam group (Who's Gaming Now?!) giving away 100 copies of the game to their members who took part (and asking them nicely to vote, if they wanted to). This led to about 1.5-2K more votes over the following 10 days, bumping me right up in the rankings (briefly sitting at the #5 spot at one point), before the game got accepted by Valve.


Whee!
Whee!




Good luck!


Best of luck with your own game & getting onto Steam. You can do it! Got any questions about the process? Drop me a mail (colm@gambrinous.com) or leave a comment and I'll see if I can help. Also check out this AMA I did on Reddit which has a lot of info from me (and other devs) about the process.

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		Some Announcements: Trailer, Greenlight & Fulltime Indie
		http://blog.gambrinous.com/2014/04/16/some-announcements-trailer-greenlight-fulltime-indie/
		http://blog.gambrinous.com/2014/04/16/some-announcements-trailer-greenlight-fulltime-indie/#comments
		Wed, 16 Apr 2014 09:18:08 +0000
		Colm
				
		
		
		

		http://blog.gambrinous.com/?p=899
		
				The last week has been an important one for me. I've given up my job and become a fulltime indie game developer, I've released the first trailer for Guild of Dungeoneering and launched the game on Steam Greenlight.


Independent of being paid, that is!
Independent of being paid, that is!


Indie can be hard to define and is definitely a bit too overloaded these days, but it explains quite well what I'm trying to do. I'll be mostly working by myself making games. I like to compare myself to a writer who has decided to give up the day job and focus entirely on finishing that first novel.


A wild TRAILER appeared!


So this has been in the works for a couple of months. Fred (who is doing all the art for Guild of Dungeoneering) came up with the script, the jokes, did all the animation, picked the music and even did the voiceover for it!! Talented fellow! Have a look yourself:




We released this last Wednesday at the same time as a big press blitz I coordinated which has led to quite a few people writing about us, which is fantastic! I'll write up a longer post about the experience later on.


For Your Consideration


We also launched on Steam Greenlight at the same time, to try and maximise any press exposure we got for the trailer and convert as much of it as possible into Greenlight votes and attention.




Have YOU voted yet?




So far this is going well, though not quite the rocketship to the top I was hoping for. As of this writing we are 42% of the way to the top 100 with 2,910 yes votes. Sadly a massive proportion of visits to the page has been from within Greenlight itself, so despite getting some big numbers to the main game page in the last few days they haven't quite translated into Greenlight traffic. That said, I'm sure anyone who's looking at the game page and clicks through to greenlight is pretty likely to throw down a yes vote.


I do have some more ideas to get extra traffic onto greenlight so more on that when it's ready. I'll also write up a much longer post on the whole experience once we're through. Oh and if you've voted for the game - Thanks! It's really appreciated!

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		Guild of Dungeoneering – now available for pre-order!
		http://blog.gambrinous.com/2013/10/31/guild-of-dungeoneering-now-available-for-pre-order/
		http://blog.gambrinous.com/2013/10/31/guild-of-dungeoneering-now-available-for-pre-order/#comments
		Thu, 31 Oct 2013 00:25:07 +0000
		Colm
				
		
		

		http://blog.gambrinous.com/?p=845
		
				dungeoneering_banner


"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!"


[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.]


 


Playable Alpha & pre-orders now available here:


http://gambrinous.com/games/dungeoneering/


 




Screenshots:


title_screen_text
Title Screen, in ominous blood red tones. And pink text!


dread_level
This is quite representative of what you do in this game.


dungeoneering_03
Animated gifs! Still rocking.


 


Obviously there is still a lot to do before this can be really released. Have a look at the Tigsource devlog thread or the Facebook page to see what's coming next. Thanks!

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		Guild of Dungeoneering, now under construction..
		http://blog.gambrinous.com/2013/10/19/guild-of-dungeoneering-now-under-construction/
		http://blog.gambrinous.com/2013/10/19/guild-of-dungeoneering-now-under-construction/#comments
		Sat, 19 Oct 2013 18:18:38 +0000
		Colm
				
		
		

		http://blog.gambrinous.com/?p=828
		
				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.
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
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!!
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!

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		Marketing Your Game In A Rush
		http://blog.gambrinous.com/2013/10/03/marketing-your-game-in-a-rush/
		http://blog.gambrinous.com/2013/10/03/marketing-your-game-in-a-rush/#comments
		Wed, 02 Oct 2013 23:41:31 +0000
		Colm
				
		
		

		http://blog.gambrinous.com/?p=804
		
				This month I am combining my One Game A Month addiction with something new and exciting: the October Challenge. It is a simple challenge: 'Finish a game — Take it to market — Earn $1'.


Then buy one dollar's worth of cocaine and PARTY
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
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.
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
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. 
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!
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*
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 ..




feedback1
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!
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
Your ideal customer


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

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