Niels and I have been working on our latest video game. We've successfully collaborated before: I still love Choose Your Own CaveVenture and Low Res Dungeoneer was nice considering the short time we had during that game jam. What we're currently working on still doesn't have a title (CyoCV didn't have one until rather late either). When I first made up the mechanics, I jokingly called it Martest Dungeon, because it is my own take on Darkest Dungeon's excellent design and theme. I do hope, the joke-title doesn't stick though. Red Hook Studios might have something bad or lawyery to say about that.
Anyway, some thoughts on the design. First of all, I like the feel of Darkest Dungeon a lot, specifically the cast of vaguely historic badasses. When I read that some fan at some event asked the devs, what time the game was set in, I thought "What a fool! It's The Past, obviously!" You have a crusader, a dude with a flintlock pistol, a musketeer and a beak-masked plague doctor all fighting alongside. And it works. So I made up my own cast of vaguely historic badasses (although I did copy the plague doctor – you don't get around their iconic masks when going this route).
As my dungeon project started it conceptual life as a solo card game, characters are more simple than those in Darkest Dungeon. Every one of them has a maximum of three *things* about them. As combat is done by the party as a whole (same for groups of monsters), some characters have one of their things being that they add one point to the overall attack value. Roll a D6 on or under that attack value and the enemy party receives a point of damage. Base damage for the heroes is 1.
The party always acts as one: You get a pool of attack points and you distribute damage to whoever you want. You can generally only use one special skill in an action (although there is a character who changes that). Yet, characters interact in interesting ways, a well-composed party will be able to do tremendous effects both offensively as well as defensively.
Every hero only has 1 HP - lose that and they are wounded. That means they are still part of the group but cannot use any of their attributes. They can, however, be healed in several ways, some of them coming from other party members, some from rooms of the dungeon. Also you can heal a wounded character in the village after you return. Some characters have mana points to fuel special abilities, some have special abilities to refill those for other characters.
In Darkest Dungeon there are a lot of ressources to balance while exploring the dungeon: Health, stress, money, light, firewood, food, experience and some less essential ones as well. Thinking about a card game I simplyfied things for my game: There is health, mana and monster tokens (effectively money). Exploration is linear, there are no branches but you can go back if need be. There is no escaping the dungeon once you entered: You need to make it out on the other end of nine rooms/encounters. There you can decide to go home or go deeper. Do the latter and you get another nine rooms
We currently have a working prototype with some features active, others have yet to be implemented. I do have the problem of graphic assets to solve. If anyone is interested in drawing tons of gothic badasses and creepy locations: Feel free to contact me.
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