Void Dungeon [WIP]

Ratel

I entered the 7drl and actually finished it this year! The idea for me this year was to keep it as simple as possible so the only controller you have is left and right mouse clicks, left moves the charecter and right brings up the menu. This was done for the main reason of pronting it to mobile devices.

You can only kill enemies by destroying the tiles underneath them, while you try to make it to the stairway that eventauly leads down to the deepest level of the dungeon where the staff of creation awaits.

Here is a vid and screenshot (the art is borrowed, I still suck at pixel art)



Here is the link to download and play it yourself:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/t06k9ntw04xgoms/Void Dungeon.zip?dl=0

Nandrew

Sadly, this ran slowly on my end, so my feedback mainly concerns itself with the video!

Terrain-as-resource here is super cool. This really looks like something to home in on if you decide to keep working. There's some changes you can consider if you're looking at mobile: such as smaller rooms and bigger tiles. Using that approach can make your game very well-readable on smaller screens, and it increases the importance of every tile you add or take away (difficult/interesting decisions will abound in smaller chambers, where removing even one tile dangerously narrows your options!)

You have the opportunity to really enhance this aspect of the project and build more systems around it, you've already got a unique game and it could evolve into something deep and different for a broad range of players.

Ratel

@Nandrew Thank you very much for the reply, I was starting to get very down with no one replying to the post. I'm still busy working on it, this was the result of four days of work so it feels rushed to me.
How did it run slowly, was it the game itself or did the character not move fast enough for you?

Nandrew

I think late March / early April is a tricky time of year to get attention here :P

It may just be the character. Comparing to your video, everything else runs the same pace but the character takes +-1.5 seconds to move from tile to tile.

Ratel

A star now working for enemies and player on to the next step. O and some gifs to check out.

pieter

@LittleBear I think the reason you haven't seen that many responses is because people are waiting for a bit more gameplay before they get stuck in. Currently you have a mechanic (a cool one), but no gameplay to take advantage of it. You move from start to finish without the game world interacting with you at all.

I'm with @Nandrew on the terrain-as-resource mechanic though, it's really interesting and has a lot op potential for clever gameplay. I am exited to see what you come up with :)

I also experienced the same issues of character movement speed. They were moving at about a quarter of the speed of that in your video. Also, they didn't always move in a straight line, sometimes they would zigzag from side to side as they moved in a direction. This usually seemed to happen when I was rapidly clicking in one direction.

Good luck, looking forward to the next build.

Ratel

@pieter The wierd enemy movement is as a result of the previous movement script, now with the a star it works perfectly :D. I'm still a noob when it comes to actual game mechanics and design, how do you mean the game world doesn't interact with you? I ask cuase I have been told this before.
Thanks for checking out the game!

pieter

This is pretty much anything that the player can interact with, or that can interact with the player.

So an enemy walking towards the player and attacking him, tiles that have spikes on them, or disappear after a few seconds/turns once the player steps on them. Blocks that push the player or portals that teleport them.

Also the player attacking enemies or casting spells, creating and destroying blocks. Opening chests, talking to NPC's, picking up keys, potions and items.

Things that make you feel as though you're affecting the world you are in, instead of just watching it.