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TIGSource ForumsDeveloperDesignWhy do you like/dislike dungeon games? What do you want in a dungeon crawler
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Tosty
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« on: November 13, 2014, 07:36:44 PM »

Hey everyone,

I am making a game with similar styles like "Bit Dungeon" and "The Binding of Isaac" where you clear monsters on one "grid" to move to the next and make your way to the level's boss. I'm looking to find out the features that people do or don't like about these types of games and implement them to mine.

The game will be in 2D and made with a limited budget which is why I am trying to implement the best features to give the user the best experience. What makes you guys want to complete those types of games and what gives you motivation to keep playing?

Does clearing enemies in a square map over and over become boring? Or does it not matter if there is a good reward at the end (ie find boss/good loot/gold/etc).

What are your thoughts... Also, any name suggestions for new 2D pixel style dungeon game?
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baconman
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« Reply #1 on: November 13, 2014, 11:46:46 PM »

What I like about those:

Huge variety of power ups, power downs, power alterations; and that slight tip of luck in the shuffled items (think TBoI pills, for example). I like looking out for stuff like the secret rooms, tinted rocks, etc.; how it's balanced with available consumables (sometimes you have to make a tough choice, or don't get a chance at all, other times it's retardedly generous). A lot of thought and attention has to go into balancing that kind of aspect.

What I don't like about those, and TBoI especially, is ALWAYS being forced to clear a room (or bomb out) to open the doors. A few rooms per floor like that would be fine (and bosses, of course), but not. Every. Damned. One of them. The price you pay for skipping fights is the potential loss of the room's reward, which is totally fair without forcing the conflict. Damage sponge enemies suck, too - don't make them hard to fight, make them fun and interesting to fight.

The thing that hurts it the most though, is simple tedium. You want floors and rooms to have different objectives to break up the monotony. I approach this by having three kinds of rooms and making them flow differently - navigation challenges, trap avoidance/abuse, and combat. There's also a lot to be said to the Brogue approach - you generate a prize item first, in it's locked room. The key is associated with an environment puzzle, and then the puzzle generates it's solution somewhere in the level.
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baconman
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« Reply #2 on: November 14, 2014, 12:01:35 AM »

Also, while most all of them focus on atmospheric soundtracks - nothing WRONG with that per se - but I think it might be nice to see one with just a good, catchy, listenable soundtrack that isn't afraid to stray away from bleak darkness and fantasy stereotypes, and just be fun for the sake of fun.
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Tosty
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« Reply #3 on: November 14, 2014, 07:25:42 AM »

Very good input baconman, I like your ideas. I was thinking of making it so that the user cannot change equipment during a level. Once the user has started a level, they either need to leave or complete it to go back to the equipment menu and change their items.

What kind of style of drops do you prefer in dungeon games. Where the gold/item goes straight into the inventory after a chest is opened/monster killed. Or is it better the item/gold "drops" on the map and the user needs to pick it up? I played bit dungeon a little and I found it extremely annoying needing to run around the map to pick up all the coins after they dropped.

How many choices of "styles" of weapons/armor do you think is sufficient. Is it enough to have maybe 10 weapons/armor/helm (each) to choose from, or would you prefer a MASSIVE database of items where the user has 100s of options?

Also, what about gems and in-game purchases (developer needs to make $$ too)... I want the user to be able to spend some gems/crystals on something special. The gems will be hard to come by.

As of right now I'm thinking gems can be used for crafting, need other ideas it might be usefull for also. And in game-purchases... How can this type of game be monetized a little? Maybe buying some more advanced items?
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baconman
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« Reply #4 on: November 16, 2014, 06:52:35 PM »

I like the pick up the scatter option, but certainly limit how far the scatter goes, no more than a tile or so. Turn based games make this problematic, because it costs you turns, but if it's a twitchy real-time game, it gives a sense of scale to the contents of a chest that you don't get with abstract digits. One alternative is having your coins-count tally up instead of jump to the new value (this works in Zelda 1 to good effect; like a +100 rupee continuing to count up two screens later). Either way is valid, just don't one-shot the effect.

Styles of weapons? There's really only two, maybe three: Melee attacks and projectile attacks, give or take passive-effect/orbital ones. And you don't need a lot of each type, but you'll want to classify them as you build your world. If a certain kind can cut bushes, or break rocks, you'll want to illustrate that differently. Power levels (or special effects?) can be simple recolors of that. Projectiles are a bit dicier, because there are so many effects you can add to those. Spread shots, burst shots, sine waves or loop-de-loops; but in the end that still comes down to being shots.

Defense gear just depends on how you want to illustrate/calculate the value of them. TBoI's "defense gear" is just spirit/armor hearts, and heart containers themselves. Magicite actually calculates Max HP depending on the gear you're wearing. Lots of Rogues just use different classes of armor (factored by a Strength stat) to +/- damage per hit you take. So that depends on your preferred HP management scheme. What is your inclination there?

I was toying with the idea of combining some basic Zelda/Gauntlet/Dark Souls kind of dungeoneering with Bejeweled framework (not totally 100% how I'd implement that and keep it fun and interesting); and thinking of devising some Blitz-style pre-game boosts (+1 speed, damage, HP, timer?)... but that's still down the road a little ways. Also, if it really is THAT similar to Bejeweled framework, how to make GOOD dungeons out of THAT? ~.~ I know Desktop Dungeons has a certain flavor about it, as does Famaze; but the first has this sense of monotony and "too much math" about it, and the second a little too luck-dependent (but that IS the nature of the beast, no?)...

Usually, the best kind of in-game purchase thing is something that CAN be unlocked via gameplay; and then used a little here and there but either not persistently, or just allowing unlockables to have a purchase-to-enable option. Or pop out a freeware/low-cost core game and enable purchases of add-on content.
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valrus
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« Reply #5 on: November 18, 2014, 12:49:38 AM »

Broadly, the thing I don't like about some dungeon-crawlers (and other minimalist RPGs) is that they make design decisions that limit what interesting choices are available to me.

  • For example, like Baconman says, the requirement to "clear" the stage to progress.  There's a decision there (do I want to kill this monster or stun it or confuse it or avoid it or tame it) that I don't get to make at all.  In the end it's decided for me.
  • For lots of upgrades, there's not really an interesting choice involved, it's more of an "Well, of course I want a +8 armor helmet if my current helmet is +6 armor".
  • There's often not much choice w.r.t. exploration either.  Dungeon mazes are often just "traverse every possibility"; my choice essentially comes down to "left-hand wall follow" or "right-hand wall follow"?

I understand that the point is often in the challenge -- a good player learns how to take each chance that comes to them and adjusts their play style to win with that combination of chances.  But that's not particularly interesting to *me*.  (That's a benefit that, at best, I'll appreciate after something else has drawn me in.)

Of course, dungeon crawler probably isn't the right genre for me anyway.  But nonetheless, my advice would be to prioritize content that gives your player meaningful choices to make.  Not choices where there's a correct answer, like whether +6 or +8 is better, but choices with genuinely different effects, items with tradeoffs (like "Double your HP but halve your defense" or "Regenerate health but damaging enemies also damages you" or "Get fewer coins but have a larger inventory"), enemies and obstacles with more than one way to get past them, etc.
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valrus
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« Reply #6 on: November 18, 2014, 01:25:51 AM »

I was toying with the idea of combining some basic Zelda/Gauntlet/Dark Souls kind of dungeoneering with Bejeweled framework (not totally 100% how I'd implement that and keep it fun and interesting); and thinking of devising some Blitz-style pre-game boosts (+1 speed, damage, HP, timer?)... but that's still down the road a little ways. Also, if it really is THAT similar to Bejeweled framework, how to make GOOD dungeons out of THAT? ~.~ I know Desktop Dungeons has a certain flavor about it, as does Famaze; but the first has this sense of monotony and "too much math" about it, and the second a little too luck-dependent (but that IS the nature of the beast, no?)...

I had been toying with something similar, just as a thought exercise.  In case some part of it is valuable to you, here's the idea it evolved into:

You have a combination of a dungeon crawler and a SameGame-style game, where the dungeon consists of irregular regions of various kinds of tiles, passable and impassable, like rock, ice, water, thick vines, etc., such that contiguous regions of the same tile act as units.  You've also got items or spells that will remove or neutralize them (fire burns vines and melts ice, etc.).  The gameplay is to neutralize regions of the dungeon with your tools, in doing so getting access to more such tools.  (And meanwhile having side effects: maybe rescuing people, trapping baddies, things like that.)  But there aren't quiiiite enough of the tools to achieve your goals, so the better combos you can set up the further you can get.  (Probably there has to be gravity or something like that; if things don't move when other things disappear then I'm not sure how combos would be possible.)
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starsrift
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« Reply #7 on: November 18, 2014, 02:01:11 AM »

My response is perhaps not the sort you're looking for, as I'm not the sort that enjoys 'dungeon' games, but I want more fluff.
Any game that advertises itself as "rogue-like" and "hardcore" with the implication that death and restarting is common, tells me as a player that the designer actually has little care whether or not the player succeeds, and virtually no reward for doing so.

If the game doesn't really care whether or not I win, why should I care or not if I lose - or play at all?

I've been playing Dungeon of the Endless a little bit, which is like my first foray into rogue-like since dropping hundreds of hours into Larn in the 90's and a handful of playthroughs of FTL. I like that there are "stories" between characters for you to discover in DotE, though I'm disappointed that they don't have any mechanical effect once you discover them.

In summation, I'd either like a more bespoke, directed experienced - or a more detailed procedural one.

I certainly don't mind playing a procedural story if it actually feels unique, not randomized. I'm not quite sure how to explain that. If the story I experience is one that only could've occured with the choices (or very similar ones) that I made, and it leads to a very special conclusion, I'm pretty happy with it. I got something like 4 endings for Cronotrigger before I decided I didn't care about endings (as many of them are just mild Parade differences).
Give me a reason to play, and I'll play. Tell me you don't give a fuck, and neither do I.
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Tosty
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« Reply #8 on: November 18, 2014, 08:33:09 PM »

Thank you all for the great comments, this is really good. It seems like I haven already implemented a lot of these "features" in my game... There will need to be modifications done to some features that will take some time, but in the end I am looking to keep adding small quality features that will make the game better for the end user. If anyone else has some other ideas feel free to respond and keep the interest going!
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