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[ennui]

Love proving your stremf by crushing monsters? Are you unfazed by the horrors of the depths? Love beating the crap out of things to take their stuff? You've come to the right place. Welcome to Dungeonmans.

Dungeonmans is a graphical XNA-based dungeon crawler heavily influenced by the roguelike genre, with a focus on accessibility and tactical action.

You can watch the VERY SERIOUS TRAILER we put together here:



Here's where you can Download the game

Goals:
1. Make a fun roguelike game that can introduce people who might be afraid of ascii displays and difficult control schemes to the genre
2. The player always has interesting options, like combat skills, to use
3. All the hallmarks of the genre: random generation, permadeath, and challenge!
4. Serious gameplay in a not-so-serious world

Features:
- Randomly generated towns, quests, dungeons, loot, overworld and more!
- Three character classes (two functional) to choose from
- Customization at creation and via skill points as you level up
- Unique action combat skills
- Lots of dungeon denizens to crush as you journey to the depths (currently B10F)
- Tons of loot to make you stronger to crush more monsters!
- Much, much more is planned for Dungeonmans!

Right now, Dungeonmans is in an early state, and feedback is incredibly important to us.  We're still in alpha, but the game is generally stable and fun to play already.  We have a long way to go, but we want to have solid foundations!

Notable alpha 3 things
- Stamina is not functioning yet; all abilities are free to use
- XP curve needs balancing - this is a very "easy" build

What we're looking for:
- Things you liked and want to see more of
- Any bugs you encountered (especially crashes!)
- Features you'd like to see
- Any suggestions you have to make the game more fun!

 When you first start the game, you can opt-in to send us a report about your character's game when he dies (and oh, he WILL ;p).  We collect absolutely no personal information - just the name of your character and what he did during the game.  This helps us analyze what people are actually doing in the game and can help us understand how better to balance the game and make features visible and more fun.  You can also send us feedback through the site (http://www.dungeonmans.com/?q=contact), and of course, right here in this thread!

To play Dungeonmans, you'll need a Windows machine capable of running XNA-based games.  Dungeonmans just pushes sprites around, so it's not intensely graphically demanding.  When you download the game, you'll need to run the setup included first, before running the application.  If you have difficulty running the game, please let us know - we obviously want as many people as possible to be able to play the game.

Thank you very much for your time, and happy crushing!  

[Hinchy]

When I read the topic title I thought it was going to be a multiplayer Thy Dungeonman clone. Really disappointing.

Still cool though! I might just give it a try for the heck of it... not a big Roguelike guy but... you never know.

[ennui]

Still cool though! I might just give it a try for the heck of it... not a big Roguelike guy but... you never know.

I'd absolutely love for you to give it a try!  The game does have a sense of humor about itself, which I think you might enjoy, but more importantly, you would be a great source of feedback.  We really want to make a game that amplifies the fun of roguelikes but that cuts down on things that turn people off to them.

Feedback from roguelike fans will help us nail down our core design stuff - the things that make a roguelike fun.  Feedback from people who aren't huge roguelike fans can help us develop features that make the game more fun and accessible, and your suggestions can help us make the game unique in its class!

[Onza40]

Me and my friend have just started playing (hishan and theos were our first characters, ixolite his second), overall theme is excellent, love the humour and the feel of the game.
And the character gen in actually quite fun

However, have noticed a few bugs/suggestions:
- When hishan died the game crashed (unknown exact state, he wasn't paying that much attention), he was then able to load the game of his dead character, thus dying immediately upon load, which I thought might not be a feature
- When creatures spawn, it tells you their exact location in co-ordinates, if this was intended to be a feature I don't think it makes all that much sense...
- It's nice in roguelikes to be able to hit num5 to skip a turn as it were, to regain health, take a tactical maneuver etc. noticed I couldn't do this
- The inventory navigation also seems counterintuitive, as in, could up and down be set to scroll up and down item by item, and left right be set to go top and bottom
- The text box is a little intrusive at times as well, could it maybe be cut to 3 lines and flush with the bottom of the screen

Just from one playthrough (and a bit from my friend) there, if you'd like me to bug test more thoroughly, or give any more of my feedback I'd be glad to help, just get in touch (pm would be best, but I will try and remember to check this thread).
Thanks for a fun game though, and good luck with development.

[ennui]

Thank you for taking the time to play and share your thoughts!  I'd be happy to hear more and will send a PM.

- When creatures spawn, it tells you their exact location in co-ordinates, if this was intended to be a feature I don't think it makes all that much sense...

"Wandering monsters" were added soon before we released the alpha.  The monsters that appear in the dungeon when you first enter rooms are built from encounter tables.  The game rolls a number of times on the encounter table depending on how deep you are in the dungeon level, and spawns the corresponding monsters (that's why you often see larger groups the further you are from the stairs).  Wandering Monsters are randomly spawned one at a time to keep things interesting - the message you were seeing is just a debug message and won't always be there

- It's nice in roguelikes to be able to hit num5 to skip a turn as it were, to regain health, take a tactical maneuver etc. noticed I couldn't do this

The build I have at home does have this feature!

- The inventory navigation also seems counterintuitive, as in, could up and down be set to scroll up and down item by item, and left right be set to go top and bottom
- The text box is a little intrusive at times as well, could it maybe be cut to 3 lines and flush with the bottom of the screen

UI stuff is also getting a big overhaul - this feedback is very helpful, since accessibility and good UI are best friends.  In the next release, the message area is being reworked, as well as some menu and navigation stuff.  I'll post a devlog soon where people can see some of this WIP stuff and share their thoughts.

Thanks again!

[Onza40]

Sounds good, but still on the random monster spawns, I find it's better in roguelikes if the floor had a limited number of monsters, so you can "clear" the area.
If it constantly spawns them it can be a bit annoying for the player trying to retreat through a floor, only to find it once again full of monsters he's killed once.
Random spawning should all happen at dungeon entrance point, and no more should be added.
Just my opinion anyway, dunno how anyone else feels on the subject.

[ennui]

One of the things we're working with design-wise is how to keep the player progressing.  Lots of roguelikes use a hunger mechanic to keep the player on the move, but we've talked about avoiding using hunger (mostly because we want to, in the future, implement crafting that would create food that gives Dungeonmans stat buffs).  Wandering monsters are an attempt at that, but might not be the only thing that we try.  They also come from our background in D&D, where random encounters and wandering monsters were just a fact of life in dungeons in addition to planned encounters.  Anyway, there's a little bit about why they're in for now, but I definitely appreciate the feedback about them!

[Onza40]

I see where you're coming from, I DM a 4e game myself, perhaps only spawning monsters while the player isn't in the dungeon is a possibility, still realistic, but still allowing the dungeon to be scoured and cleared in one push.
You could achieve this with a counter from when the player last left the dungeon, and spawn more enemies based on a higher count (with upper limit of the original monster count to prevent awfulness).
Just an idea.
Or, something else, you could have spawn points (rat holes, lairs, spider webs etc.) which produce monsters at a steady rate but only at fixed points in the dungeon, so you know where the monsters will be coming from after clearing an area.
These could also be destroyable perhaps...
Also, my friend found some more bugs to report, I'll post details tomorrow (he's not a member of this forum), also, really fancy another play myself now

[ennui]

Wandering monster suggestions

Thanks for the suggestions!  I'll make sure the main developer sees these.  I particularly like the idea of spawners of some sort -  the player knows there will be more monsters, but has an idea of where they are and how to avoid them if he needs to.  Destroyable is great if it requires some effort and investment on the player's part - this could even be the goal of a quest!

We really appreciate the plays - just yesterday the functionality was added to allow us to parse and visualize the data from the playthroughs, and we're learning some really interesting things about how people are playing already!  The visual representations are really helping us understand where and how we need to start adjusting balance.  I'll try to get some screens of the data posted up, it's neat to see!

As an aside, both the main dev and I DM 4e games as well!  We just finished a session in his (we're at level 17), and my game is every other week (though the party is just now level 3).  Been having a blast with 4e; I've played D&D for a while, but 4e is the only edition I've been brave enough to DM.

[Onza40]

I played 3.5 for a while with a uni friend DMing the party, then started a game of my own when I moved out of halls but found 3.5 to be so much hassle with loads of unclear rules.
Moving onto 4e has made the game so much better and the game's going really smoothly now, I have a party of 5 and they're all really different players so it's always interesting seeing what they'll do next, keeps me on my toes

Oh yeah, one more thing about dungeonmans, I love the variety and names of monsters, clearly very well thought out

[Onza40]

Non-intentional double post here, this is a quote from my friend who's busy playing (while I revise...), hope it helps:

"Chests refill as you change levels, meaning if you find a chest near a set of stairs you can repeatedly open it to claim what is inside, you get a set of seemingly randomly generated items from that level of the dungeon.

I was on a "kill a boss" mission, so i went to the set level in the nearby dungeon and lkilled the offending monster. The quest screen said that the monster was "crushed". But the little symbol near the quest name did not appear and the quest given had a silver goblet, indicating that the quest was not complete, this may be an isolated incident. NOTE i used a special ability to kill the boss."

[madjackmcmad]

Hello Onza, thanks for all the feedback! I'm one of the main developers behind Dungeonmans. The named monster killing quest is bugged currently in Alpha 3, so that's something you won't be able to complete.

It's awesome to see you having such fun with the game, and your idea about monster generators isn't a bad one at all. Thanks for playing it, there will be a new build soon!

[Onza40]

Had another session the other day, built a really good fighter, got my quests, went west, entered the dungeon, and then underestimated the enemies and died quickly.
Still loved it though

It's like they say for dwarf fortress, "losing is fun".

I really do like the graphical style as well now, was a bit unusual when I started playing, but I've come to love it.

[PleasingFungus]

One of the things we're working with design-wise is how to keep the player progressing.  Lots of roguelikes use a hunger mechanic to keep the player on the move, but we've talked about avoiding using hunger (mostly because we want to, in the future, implement crafting that would create food that gives Dungeonmans stat buffs).  Wandering monsters are an attempt at that, but might not be the only thing that we try.  They also come from our background in D&D, where random encounters and wandering monsters were just a fact of life in dungeons in addition to planned encounters.  Anyway, there's a little bit about why they're in for now, but I definitely appreciate the feedback about them!

Traditional roguelikes - Angband and its many children, at the very least, and likely Moria / Rogue itself - have had 'wandering monsters' spawn in after a while, for the very same reason they do in your game. So you stand in good company with that mechanic!

(Game looks interesting. Next time I feel like playing a roguelike, I'll grab your latest build and give it a shot.)

((I liked the trailer.))

[Onza40]

Yeah, there's no issue in them spawning, just as long as they spawn out of the way somewhere, and not very frequently.
Something else you may consider would be overworld encounters, monsters that move around the overworld, but instead of fighting them on hit, you would move to a "zoomed in" area and fight a bunch of them, or specific terrain which gives random encounters every now and again.
You could move to the edge of the "zoomed in" area to run away, but you start in the middle of the screen so may have to fight if you choose the wrong direction.
This has been implemented well in ADOM and is a fun system as you're never sure if it's safe to travel back and forth, however, stay away from the pokemon/final fantasy frequent random encounters everywhere as this just tends to get annoying.

[ennui]

Something else you may consider would be overworld encounters...

Absolutely!  Overworld encounters are something we've discussed adding to the game for sure.  I don't want to go too far into detail because we haven't nailed it down and started implementing yet, but it's something that's in the big space full of Dungeonmans ideas for sure.  Right now the main dev focus is on nailing down the classes (wizardmans will be working soon!), tuning up powers and skills, taking a crack at balance based on the feedback and gameplay data we've gotten, and making the dungeon more fun overall (I just saw traps last night, and they're looking good).

ADoM is one of my favorites, but recently I've been spending a lot of time with Crawl.  Those guys have a ton of really great features, too, and recently put out a brand new release (.6).  Lots of fun!

[Onza40]

Traps and wizardmans sounds awesome, are there any other planned classes?
Also, will stat gen always be a standard list, or do you plan to add the option of a dnd 3.5 style roller?
Can't say I have any preference for either method, just wondered if you'd considered it.

[madjackmcmad]

Also, will stat gen always be a standard list, or do you plan to add the option of a dnd 3.5 style roller?

The 5 sets of stats are rolled differently each time you play. Sometimes you get 5 crappy ones, other times one or two may stand out. They're rolled by rolling 4d6 for each stat and dropping the lowest.

This idea pretty much came from Incursion, which does the same thing. I really like it-- you get choice, but you also don't get to roll dice forever and ever until you get 6 18s.

[KM]

If I attack the chickens, will they start attacking me back in great numbers? (While flying, because apparently angry chickens can fly in from anywhere...)

As for game breaking bug, a sharkhoose spawn and moved into the wall and when I killed it it's ghost now occupies the hallway and I am unable to kill it and it attacks me back and won't let me through. 

Also the game crashes everytime I try to load a game.

Also as someone pointed out earlier, the item selection screen could use some work, the text box can be intrusive at times too.

It seems to be working out to be a fun game, looking forward to seeing more.

I'm on Windows 7 by the way.

*edit* Now after I've selected my two buffs for a new character the game crashes on me, effectively disabling me from playing Dungeonmans anymore.

[ennui]

As for game breaking bug, a sharkhoose spawn and moved into the wall and when I killed it it's ghost now occupies the hallway and I am unable to kill it and it attacks me back and won't let me through. 

*edit* Now after I've selected my two buffs for a new character the game crashes on me, effectively disabling me from playing Dungeonmans anymore.

Hey, thanks for playing and reporting these issues!  The invisible monster charging bug we've seen and will have a fix for soon.

The other one we haven't seen at all, so thanks for reporting it.  Try uninstalling the game via the control panel's remove programs and reinstalling - please let us know if that at least temporarily fixes the problem for you!