i have genuinely always been a vocal hater of dungeon crawlers, but i like the feel of yours. the movement is super fast and even the battles go by in seconds, this makes it flow really nicely the one thing that bothered me is that when i'm at low health and try to rest, i get easily ambushed by enemies that catch my party by surprise. random encounters in general can be kind of annoying, maybe it would be better to have enemies actually graphically present in the overworld, so that you can hunt them down, avoid them or even plan your rests properly when there are no enemies nearby.
The resting was originally intended as a last resort but I didn’t end up adding any other way to heal.
I also specifically avoided visible enemies in the dungeon to save on scope, as well as that being exactly how it works in The Bard’s Tale which I treat as the standard for blobbers.
This is basically the opposite of another submission, I actually like how fast everything feels, I think I have played similar games in the past while browsing some obscure CDs...
But also feels a bit too fast, I can't easily comprehend the amount of information between each button press, and I would consider to have some effects to show between turns: - who has been attacked - what skill has been used - how much damage has been provoked to who ideally the option would be a toggle so people that prefer responsiveness would disable them
I found hilarious to be attacked by 11 GIANT RATS and reminded me that image of "ten thousand bees" asking you to come outside.
I do intend to make this fast resolution an option and for the default to show when new rounds start and to resolve actions one at a time while scrolling up the log like how it works in The Bard’s Tale. I do agree it’s a bit too quick if you don’t know what exactly you’re looking for. What’s in there now is still mostly just what I threw together during the week of the jam.
Pretty cool, yet bare bones. Took me a bit to figure out what actions do and that there is a rest button (had it fullscreen on a 4k monitor). Level aesthetics are great even if its just the same walls everywhere. UI art is top notch. I like the exit -> confirm button. I think the combat log needs a bit of polish, because its hard to tell from a glance who recevies/deals damage. Had to really scan for my party member names and the enemies to make sense of it. At first i thought enemies dont fight back lol
Heh yeah I put in some effort to organize properly on standard and ultrawide aspects but not for High DPI.
I have some small plans still for the log for next demo day if not sooner. I’ll add a way to scroll it properly and add some particles and sound effects to slow combat down and show each action in turn. What probably doesn’t help is that I skip messages of enemy attacks that either miss or get absorbed by armor, so it makes it look like enemies aren’t attacking every turn even though they are. I might just put in an option to turn those on.
I love the dungeon and the walls with how they wrap. Music is excellent. Graphics in general are really cool and I like the mechanics. The only thing I wish there was a minimap since it's a big dungeon. This is super chill and fun, amazing game.
I am thinking of adding an automap as a difficulty option. I do want to encourage people using graph paper, but especially the 1.0 version has maps that are way too big for that.
lots of chain lightning and spamming rest in between fights. not sure what the actual gameplay loop was like, but pretty cool. these dungeons are way too big for me to be using graph paper man
Pretty cool. The art and music are really excellent. Wish there was a little bit more flavor text for each of the encounters. I liked how quickly combat resolved.
That’s not a bad idea, I want to have some random features or theming for the chambers and it would be cool to have some flavor text pop up when you enter them as well.
Yeah I like how it turned out. I want to add some scrolling to the log that will give the battles some more juice by staggering out particles and flashes and stuff but I’ll have an option to keep it instant like it is now.
Wandering around a drab dungeon getting jumpscared by rats every other step. The OG dungeon-crawler experience. Nice and functional skeleton, considering everything. Found no bugs whatsoever. Great mood.
Was a little confused by being able to set resting actions without some resting interface, but worked out. Not gonna list all the things you can put into this game, you likely have a list already yourself. Looking forward to seeing more.
Thanks, yeah I consider this a big success. I have a whole slew of little ideas that would make for neat little blobbers like this one. I’m a bit miffed that so many people had the hole-in-the-floor bug because I spent much of the last day trying to prevent those but there’s apparently still an edge case that causes them.
Yeah I got plenty of ideas though the game won’t get much bigger in scope, I’m just going to polish out what’s already there and add a few things I intended to do but didn’t have time for. I’m definitely going to use this as a template for other small games though.
Ach, I never added a button for it in-game but you can toggle borderless fullscreen with Alt+Enter. The window should also be resizable.
This was made in under 168 hours while working full time so I left a lot of polish, juice, and balancing on the cutting room floor. I’ll get to responding to feedback tomorrow, I’ve got a busy day today.
I was allowed to plan ahead for the jam so I used the week before to find plenty of assets I could use and it paid off great.
To some extent the player is intended to figure out stuff for themselves. But I do want to add tooltips for all the different buttons and actions, as well as an intro that explains that you’re looking for this big stone sarcophagus. The map is waaay too big right now though and it makes it really hard to find, especially without an automap.
Pretty nice lo-fi dungeon crawler, a little too same-y and a little too random but still interesting. I found a ladder, I found a hole in the floor, I don't know what to do with either of them. Since there's no inventory or map it's easy to get lost and be confused to no end. I pushed through most of the monsters and found a decent rhythm of fighting/fleeing/healing, but seemingly normal encounter with 4 thieves killed my mage, so run is ruined!
My first run was with 3 fighters and a thief. I find it kinda weird you can't pick your team and you have to go with what's given, most people will restart until they get the team of their choice. My second run was with one fighter, one mage and two thieves and that's when I scouted the most. It's that ladder/hole combo.
I find that leveling system a little lacking too, namely it's pretty hard to level your team, and you can pretty fast run into dream eater even with level 1 team.
The biggest gripe is lack of actual feedback. It's computer program at its core and a little too little from a gameplay perspective. You click "fight" and all actions happen instantly and you don't know who got hit, when, why. A small red splash at the char pic is enough, same goes for enemies. Instead I'm just looking at the total number of enemies and quickly check if their pics isn't getting darker. Descriptions should differentiate between enemies attacking us and us attacking them. Text should be red, not only bold.
Ghouls hunt in packs. Why there's usually 10+ of them? Fuck 'em sideways!
I liked how some enemies aren't attacking even after one or two rounds have passed. Even if you have 9 rats it doesn't mean all of them will attack like they're in a battalion, right?
Overall, a decent, yet a little confusing and raw experience. If you're willing to work on it some more, adding stuff to break, different textures and overall visual effects would help here greatly.
Yeah I wanted to add a reviving item alongside some other consumables but ran out of time for the jam.
I plan to keep the random stats but if I wanted to add some limited customization in a new game screen, at least letting you pick classes. The hole is a bug unfortunately, you’re looking for a big stone casket.
I have a rebalance in mind for next demo day. There’s three encounter lists with the second one kicking in based on distance from the entrance ladder. I’m just going to remove that middle list and keep the third one kicking in once you’ve found the objective because you then have to backtrack.
I want to add some juice to the fighting, but didn’t have time during the jam.
Unless they’re surprised every enemy does attack every round, but the log doesn’t show when the enemies miss, only when you do. Also Warriors and Thieves have some damage reduction and if damage is reduced to zero it also doesn’t get reported.
I don’t have particularly big plans for this game in particular, it was more like a proof-of-concept. But want to do a revised version for next demo day.
Played a little bit just messing around, couldn't really find the exit it's easy to get lost idk if I missed a map or anything.
I think it would be interesting to more party management for stuff like changing party composition, items and level ups but then when it comes to battles and resting it's tedious. Instead of only cycling through actions some hotkeys to select specific actions would make party management less of a chore: D and 1 switches to defence for the first guy, A+1 is attack and so on.
Haven't played many games like this so I can't really comment on balance but I think maybe I'd like it more if it were focused around map encounters rather than random encounters. Like defeating enemies to reach "safe spots" you can rest at or loot points/secrets that gives you stuff for your character.
Once it crashed after meeting a group of 20 enemies. Looking forward to see where you take this.
No you didn’t miss much, I decided not to add an automap because I regretted playing with one when I tried The Bard’s Tale Trilogy with it turned on. The goal is hard to find just because I got really carried away when I saw how well the random generator worked and made the maps way too huge. For next demo day I’ll be making it much, much smaller.
I did intend to add items, spells, and safe places to retreat to so you don’t just end up resting all the time but ran out of time to do it during the jam.
I was going to add some popup menus for setting actions instead of the cycling, that was just a stopgap. I also wanted a way to select which party member has “focus” for certain encounter ideas and stuff like lockpicking so your hotkey suggestion is a natural extension of that.
A crash during an encounter doesn’t sound very good, I’ve yet to have a crash on my end but I’ll keep an eye out for it.
I’ll make an update for DD68 but this game is more like a proof-of-concept and a template I can reuse for a whole bunch of smaller game ideas that would work as blobbers.
There's too much micro management for my tastes, like I have to tell each individual party member if they should be recovering hp or sp or standing guard. It leads to too much clicking for not enough juice.
I'd prefer more abstraction for less micro management: Maybe just designate one unit as the "lookout" and rest will heal the others, hp and sp at the same time.
The visuals and vibes were very nice. It felt like I was in those old windows screen savers, but it was cursed.
^Maybe lean into that? That could be a cool setting for a game.
The micromanagement is a pain point but it’s also messed up by not having spells, items, or a town to retreat to. You basically have to just use Rest for recovering everything which is supposed to be a trade-off as it passes time which means more chances for random encounters. Juice is also greatly lacking, I do want the log to roll out with particles and SFX like how The Bard’s Tale Trilogy works.
I don’t know about that idea, creepypasta stuff like haunted screensavers doesn’t appeal to me, somebody else can do that. I do have a lot of ideas for small games that suit this format though.
Comments
i have genuinely always been a vocal hater of dungeon crawlers, but i like the feel of yours. the movement is super fast and even the battles go by in seconds, this makes it flow really nicely
the one thing that bothered me is that when i'm at low health and try to rest, i get easily ambushed by enemies that catch my party by surprise.
random encounters in general can be kind of annoying, maybe it would be better to have enemies actually graphically present in the overworld, so that you can hunt them down, avoid them or even plan your rests properly when there are no enemies nearby.
The resting was originally intended as a last resort but I didn’t end up adding any other way to heal.
I also specifically avoided visible enemies in the dungeon to save on scope, as well as that being exactly how it works in The Bard’s Tale which I treat as the standard for blobbers.
This is basically the opposite of another submission, I actually like how fast everything feels, I think I have played similar games in the past while browsing some obscure CDs...
But also feels a bit too fast, I can't easily comprehend the amount of information between each button press, and I would consider to have some effects to show between turns:
- who has been attacked
- what skill has been used
- how much damage has been provoked to who
ideally the option would be a toggle so people that prefer responsiveness would disable them
I found hilarious to be attacked by 11 GIANT RATS and reminded me that image of "ten thousand bees" asking you to come outside.
I do intend to make this fast resolution an option and for the default to show when new rounds start and to resolve actions one at a time while scrolling up the log like how it works in The Bard’s Tale. I do agree it’s a bit too quick if you don’t know what exactly you’re looking for. What’s in there now is still mostly just what I threw together during the week of the jam.
Pretty cool, yet bare bones. Took me a bit to figure out what actions do and that there is a rest button (had it fullscreen on a 4k monitor). Level aesthetics are great even if its just the same walls everywhere. UI art is top notch. I like the exit -> confirm button.
I think the combat log needs a bit of polish, because its hard to tell from a glance who recevies/deals damage. Had to really scan for my party member names and the enemies to make sense of it. At first i thought enemies dont fight back lol
Heh yeah I put in some effort to organize properly on standard and ultrawide aspects but not for High DPI.
I have some small plans still for the log for next demo day if not sooner. I’ll add a way to scroll it properly and add some particles and sound effects to slow combat down and show each action in turn. What probably doesn’t help is that I skip messages of enemy attacks that either miss or get absorbed by armor, so it makes it look like enemies aren’t attacking every turn even though they are. I might just put in an option to turn those on.
Gameplay isn't my jam, but the art direction is good and I like how you keep all the information in one screen at once.
I love the dungeon and the walls with how they wrap. Music is excellent. Graphics in general are really cool and I like the mechanics. The only thing I wish there was a minimap since it's a big dungeon. This is super chill and fun, amazing game.
I am thinking of adding an automap as a difficulty option. I do want to encourage people using graph paper, but especially the 1.0 version has maps that are way too big for that.
lots of chain lightning and spamming rest in between fights. not sure what the actual gameplay loop was like, but pretty cool. these dungeons are way too big for me to be using graph paper man
That’s pretty much it, I just also want to add some loot and other stuff you can find.
Graph paper is kind of the intent, but I got really carried away when I got the random generator working and made the maps way, way too big, lol.
that’s chill. it was super atmospheric, i like the music and art you chose. after a while I did start to feel like I was lost down there
Pretty cool. The art and music are really excellent. Wish there was a little bit more flavor text for each of the encounters. I liked how quickly combat resolved.
That’s not a bad idea, I want to have some random features or theming for the chambers and it would be cool to have some flavor text pop up when you enter them as well.
Yeah I like how it turned out. I want to add some scrolling to the log that will give the battles some more juice by staggering out particles and flashes and stuff but I’ll have an option to keep it instant like it is now.
Wandering around a drab dungeon getting jumpscared by rats every other step. The OG dungeon-crawler experience. Nice and functional skeleton, considering everything. Found no bugs whatsoever. Great mood.
Was a little confused by being able to set resting actions without some resting interface, but worked out. Not gonna list all the things you can put into this game, you likely have a list already yourself. Looking forward to seeing more.
Thanks, yeah I consider this a big success. I have a whole slew of little ideas that would make for neat little blobbers like this one. I’m a bit miffed that so many people had the hole-in-the-floor bug because I spent much of the last day trying to prevent those but there’s apparently still an edge case that causes them.
Yeah I got plenty of ideas though the game won’t get much bigger in scope, I’m just going to polish out what’s already there and add a few things I intended to do but didn’t have time for. I’m definitely going to use this as a template for other small games though.
Ach, I never added a button for it in-game but you can toggle borderless fullscreen with Alt+Enter. The window should also be resizable.
This was made in under 168 hours while working full time so I left a lot of polish, juice, and balancing on the cutting room floor. I’ll get to responding to feedback tomorrow, I’ve got a busy day today.
The atmosphere is excellent! The use of art and audio too. Very impressive for a week of work.
I don't have much experience with dungeon crawlers, I could be missing something, but I would like to have more clarity about the choices I can make.
Why should I go in a certain direction? Why not rest all the time? When should I run from a fight? etc.
Maybe some tooltips or otherwise more details about the enemies and the action would be good.
I was allowed to plan ahead for the jam so I used the week before to find plenty of assets I could use and it paid off great.
To some extent the player is intended to figure out stuff for themselves. But I do want to add tooltips for all the different buttons and actions, as well as an intro that explains that you’re looking for this big stone sarcophagus. The map is waaay too big right now though and it makes it really hard to find, especially without an automap.
Pretty nice lo-fi dungeon crawler, a little too same-y and a little too random but still interesting. I found a ladder, I found a hole in the floor, I don't know what to do with either of them. Since there's no inventory or map it's easy to get lost and be confused to no end. I pushed through most of the monsters and found a decent rhythm of fighting/fleeing/healing, but seemingly normal encounter with 4 thieves killed my mage, so run is ruined!
My first run was with 3 fighters and a thief. I find it kinda weird you can't pick your team and you have to go with what's given, most people will restart until they get the team of their choice. My second run was with one fighter, one mage and two thieves and that's when I scouted the most. It's that ladder/hole combo.
I find that leveling system a little lacking too, namely it's pretty hard to level your team, and you can pretty fast run into dream eater even with level 1 team.
The biggest gripe is lack of actual feedback. It's computer program at its core and a little too little from a gameplay perspective. You click "fight" and all actions happen instantly and you don't know who got hit, when, why. A small red splash at the char pic is enough, same goes for enemies. Instead I'm just looking at the total number of enemies and quickly check if their pics isn't getting darker. Descriptions should differentiate between enemies attacking us and us attacking them. Text should be red, not only bold.
Ghouls hunt in packs. Why there's usually 10+ of them? Fuck 'em sideways!
I liked how some enemies aren't attacking even after one or two rounds have passed. Even if you have 9 rats it doesn't mean all of them will attack like they're in a battalion, right?
Overall, a decent, yet a little confusing and raw experience. If you're willing to work on it some more, adding stuff to break, different textures and overall visual effects would help here greatly.
Yeah I wanted to add a reviving item alongside some other consumables but ran out of time for the jam.
I plan to keep the random stats but if I wanted to add some limited customization in a new game screen, at least letting you pick classes. The hole is a bug unfortunately, you’re looking for a big stone casket.
I have a rebalance in mind for next demo day. There’s three encounter lists with the second one kicking in based on distance from the entrance ladder. I’m just going to remove that middle list and keep the third one kicking in once you’ve found the objective because you then have to backtrack.
I want to add some juice to the fighting, but didn’t have time during the jam.
Unless they’re surprised every enemy does attack every round, but the log doesn’t show when the enemies miss, only when you do. Also Warriors and Thieves have some damage reduction and if damage is reduced to zero it also doesn’t get reported.
I don’t have particularly big plans for this game in particular, it was more like a proof-of-concept. But want to do a revised version for next demo day.
Played a little bit just messing around, couldn't really find the exit it's easy to get lost idk if I missed a map or anything.
I think it would be interesting to more party management for stuff like changing party composition, items and level ups but then when it comes to battles and resting it's tedious.
Instead of only cycling through actions some hotkeys to select specific actions would make party management less of a chore: D and 1 switches to defence for the first guy, A+1 is attack and so on.
Haven't played many games like this so I can't really comment on balance but I think maybe I'd like it more if it were focused around map encounters rather than random encounters. Like defeating enemies to reach "safe spots" you can rest at or loot points/secrets that gives you stuff for your character.
Once it crashed after meeting a group of 20 enemies.
Looking forward to see where you take this.
No you didn’t miss much, I decided not to add an automap because I regretted playing with one when I tried The Bard’s Tale Trilogy with it turned on. The goal is hard to find just because I got really carried away when I saw how well the random generator worked and made the maps way too huge. For next demo day I’ll be making it much, much smaller.
I did intend to add items, spells, and safe places to retreat to so you don’t just end up resting all the time but ran out of time to do it during the jam.
I was going to add some popup menus for setting actions instead of the cycling, that was just a stopgap. I also wanted a way to select which party member has “focus” for certain encounter ideas and stuff like lockpicking so your hotkey suggestion is a natural extension of that.
A crash during an encounter doesn’t sound very good, I’ve yet to have a crash on my end but I’ll keep an eye out for it.
I’ll make an update for DD68 but this game is more like a proof-of-concept and a template I can reuse for a whole bunch of smaller game ideas that would work as blobbers.
Found this guy and died.
There's too much micro management for my tastes, like I have to tell each individual party member if they should be recovering hp or sp or standing guard. It leads to too much clicking for not enough juice.
I'd prefer more abstraction for less micro management: Maybe just designate one unit as the "lookout" and rest will heal the others, hp and sp at the same time.
The visuals and vibes were very nice. It felt like I was in those old windows screen savers, but it was cursed.
^Maybe lean into that? That could be a cool setting for a game.
The micromanagement is a pain point but it’s also messed up by not having spells, items, or a town to retreat to. You basically have to just use Rest for recovering everything which is supposed to be a trade-off as it passes time which means more chances for random encounters. Juice is also greatly lacking, I do want the log to roll out with particles and SFX like how The Bard’s Tale Trilogy works.
I don’t know about that idea, creepypasta stuff like haunted screensavers doesn’t appeal to me, somebody else can do that. I do have a lot of ideas for small games that suit this format though.