Free Release: The Discarded Giant's Boot

 I made another one-page-dungeon: The Discarded Giant's Boot.

It's a the adventure I played on a long car ride with my son, as written down in this post. It was meant to be played with Arnold K.'s Copper GLOG but can probably be easily adapted an dumped into any sufficiently weird/magical play world. Wherever a twenty-kilometer-tall giant may have existed somewhere in the very distant past.

Have fun!

Re-Release: Midnight at Halcyon's Coven

 I'm re-releasing my one-page-dungeon Midnight at Halcyon's Coven again, this time in order for it to be on my itch-site. It's part of my pledge to release something on there every month of 2023 – but I'll only make it something new every other month because let's face it: I'm not that productive. Anyhow, if you like paranormal investigation, go and check it out!

Free Release: Nano Dungeon

After Christmas celebrations were over I had a tiny box and decided to craft a roguelike dungeoncrawler into it. It turned out so well that I decided to make a print-and-play-version of it:

Nano Dungeon is a board game for one or two players. It's been play-tested with friends, family members and children aged 3 to 42 so I can say with confidence that it is both easy to learn and fun to play. Give it a shot – it's pay-what-you-like starting at the ultra-cometitive pricing of 0 Dollars/Euros/Baht/RMB/Yen/Tugrik/Pesos/Whatever. Have fun!

Free Release: The Swine Pit

 More than a year in the making, it's finally here: My very first roguelike made in Twine:

The Swine Pit

Play it in your browser - it's a Twine game after all. But it's very unlike any other thing I've ever seen made with Twine. Possibly, because it was a mad folly to create a roguelike with that platform, but it's the one I can code in so that's that.

Descent into a horrible dungeon full of swine-like monstrosities posessed by the demons of hell. Experience the harrowing story of one out of seven different character classes, who all have different abilities that make their playing experience radically different. Cast spells as the apprentice or the scholar, brew potions as the alchaemist, craft your own weapons and cook food as the huntsman, or survive by your brawn alone as the squire or the tribal. Or die horribly as the sacrifice.

Free Release: Dungeon Urchins

 So, i made another game, print-and-play this time. It looks like this:

Dungeon Urchins pits the players as a group of street-children against a traditional dungeon. These kids are, of course, not your soft upper-class pampered babies but hardened survivalists and fast friends who know to depend on one another. It was made quick-and-dirty for a game jam over on itch.io and I wanted to make something about characters who'd normally be in the background of a fantasy setting. My son helped me playtest and the game gets his approval – he even helped me with the logo. Anyhow, go download it – it's pay-what-you-like (thus effectively free – I've had games with that price up for seven years now and no one ever paid me a cent. But I don't mind: I don't have the nerves to set up a payment system for payouts anyways).

DUNGEON URCHINS

Free Release: Zombie Mansion

 A new fully-fledged release by your truly: I've been slaving away what little spare time I have next to two kids and my day-job in order to delve deep into the bowels of what Twine can do. I present to you:

This is my idea of what a text-adventure-version of Resident Evil is like. I made my own story with my own main character for it but the beats are there: A mansion full of zombies. Combat that always puts you at risk of injury. A handgun, a shotgun, a close-combat-weapon and the almighty magnum for weaponry. Inventory-juggling. Finding secret items and keys. Lots of optional content.

If you play, do so mindfully: It's unlikely, you'll make it on the first attempt. There are several routes one might go and they are centered around what weapon you get second. There is also a speedrun you could try, killing only a few zombies. It is risky though. I recommend, methodically killing nearly alls zombies. You do not have to fight the bosses though. Avoid if possible. Draw a map. Study movement patterns of said bosses. Be smart. And

Have fun!

Free Release: Cup Quest

Made another Twine-Game that is large enough to be called a full release. Cup Quest takes place in a maze (that isn't randomly generated for a change – although the original map was made rolling dice). It's suitable for even the youngest players if they can read. I suggest you draw a map of the maze if you want to have any chance of beating the game.

Play Cup Quest in your browser.

Free Release: The Dare

It's been a while but I made another game. This one is a Twine-game so it's text-only but don't let that fool you: You will have a scary ghost-story, elements of survival-horror and some riddles that differ every time you play this thing. I'll write more about my learnings when it comes to using Twine in another blog post – perhaps even make a bit of a tutorial. Being a gamepunk, I like the accessibility of the tool but dislike the somewhat confusing repository of information and documentation online (which the release of Twine 2 has only made worse). Anyhow, enjoy The Dare!

Free Release: Midnight at Halcyon's Coven 2016

After the One Page Dungeon Contest 2016 is over it's time to revisit my first foray into that competition: Midnight at Halcyon's Coven was a mess so I decided to re-make it. Using all I have learned about making One Page Dungeons, I cleaned it up. Let me elaborate.

The original had three specific problems: Problem 1 was way too much work I put into the 3D-rendering of the bunker and its furniture. Hours upon hours went into coffee-mugs and desk lamps that would be invisible in the finished product. That work however, has been done and this is not a problem for the reader - so nothing's to be done about that.

Problem 2 is that ugly frame. It was supposed to make the whole page look more professionally lay-outed but it makes large swaths of text harder to read. While the new version looks a bit less stylish without it as I have not found a good replacement, having no frame is better than that one.

Problem 3 is the most glaring one: Way, way too much text. I left nothing to the imagination of whoever is running this adventure and that was very foolish. The large amount of text gives unnecessary details and forces the font to a tiny size that's a terrible chore to read. I cut it back to the bare necessity. So, I hereby proudly present to you:

Midnight at Halcyon's Coven 2016

Free Release: One Page Dungeon Contest 2016

Three years after my first entry into that prestigious contest on pen & paper adventure design, this is my second attempt to leave my mark:

The Lair of the Voidbeast - a Non-Euklidean Dungeon

It's inspired by this and the follow up. Folded into a cube that you might wanna hide behind a screen it could potentially flabbergast and bamboozle players who like to draw maps while exploring. Next up: A remake of my first One Page Dungeon, after having learned a bit more on design and legibility...

Free Release: Low Res Dungeoneer

So, Niels and I did it again. After Choose Your Own CaveVenture we collaborated on another game project. It was another game-jam as well, the #LowRezJam2016. Only rule was that the resulting game should not exceed 64 by 64 pixels.

We did what we do best: A roguelike. I whipped up a quick design doc outlining everything and then made the Pixel Art. Niels, as usual, did the coding. See for yourselves, it's playable in your browser if you have a functioning Unity Web Player and there is a downloadable Windows-Version if you don't:

Here you go!

Bacon Game Jam: GunMaker 4: Gold Edition

So, hi blog, long time no see... I've been part of a team of guys participating in the Bacon Game Jam over the weekend. The result of our work is GunMaker 4: Gold Edition, a title that I am proud to announce is totally overselling the finished product. But finish we did and the result can also be a fun tool to create weapons for any cyberpunk-RPG. I even released the graphics as CC3.0 so you can do pretty much whatever with them, as long as you mention me. Check it out and come back to read about my experience with this particular game jam after the jump.

When you only have 48 hours, cloning graphics is your best friend...

New Release: Choose your own CaveVenture 1.1

Just a quick heads-up: Choose your own CaveVenture has gotten a new release, version 1.1. It features rest-until-healed as a function, configurable keys, as well as monster-status messages. Also, Linux-version.

Go get it.

There will be more later. The game is only about halfway-done. Stay tuned.

Release: Choose your own CaveVenture

It is done! Choose your own CaveVenture, our first actual PC game, is now available on itch.io!

It's free, so if you're on a Windows-machine, go try out this crossbreed of choose-your-own-adventure and roguelike. Unlike many of the more complicated roguelikes, CyoCV plays using an interface that anyone who reads English can understand and play: Text tells you what the situation is, then you get options what to do. Pick an option, hit the key it says on the screen, enter and the game tells you what happens.

The title-screen ASCII-art - all the graphics in the game.

The Baumannshöhle, my inspiration for the game's cave. Picture is public domain via Wikipedia.

Go, check it out, leave any feedback in the comments on this post.

Thanks!

Free Release! One Page Dungeon! 100th Post! 1 Year Blogiversary!

Well well well, it's been one year with this blog now, coinciding with my 100th post. Putting out something that's been in the works for quite a while this is a good point to get back a bit to role-playing, which has come a little short during the current Kerbal-streak I'm on.

So here (a bit more info after the jump) it is, intended to be entered into this years One Page Dungeon Contest: Midnight at Halcyons Coven:

Game Release: Office Fleets

Another weekend, another free game from me to everyone else! MadZab Gaming presents: Office Fleets!


What is Office Fleets? It's a tabletop-strategy game played entirely with office-supplies. Typical games take only a couple of minutes so you can do them at work, in your coffee-break. Paper-clips become star destroyers and a coin can be used as a die. A pen is a good ruler for this game.


Set up epic space-battles on your working-desk. Defeat your co-workers' fleets in events that will shatter civilizations! Download the three pages of instructions:

Here.

Game Release: Sudongeon

Here it goes: First release of a free game on this blog. So, here we go: MadZab Gaming proudly presents Sudongeon!

What is Sudongeon? Well it's a little pen&paper-RPG experiment. A solo-dungeon-crawl that uses a Sudoku for generating a randomized little dungeon. Hence the name. You know. Sudongeon. Soduku. Dungeon. Yeah, not all that clever.

I wrote this game sometime last year after reading an article on some other blog (linked in the game file) about using a Sudoku for generating a dungeon for a game of DnD and I thought I should make this a full game. So, download it, try it out if you like, modify it to make it your own little thing, whatever! It's a small PDF-file and it probably needs some more work and refining. Let me know if you have any feedback about it.

Download link:

Sudongeon 0.4