The Adventure Begins

January 30th marked my first regular work day as voluntarily unemployed. Or (perhaps more exciting) as an "independent game developer." Being unemployed now gives me the freedom to make up my own job titles.

First project announcement!

Ok, so that mockup promo banner thingy turned out to be less impressive then I imagined. Anyway, yes, it will be a Roguelike or perhaps more closely categorized as a Dungeon Crawler with an emphasis on a "hack and slash" style of play. This is basically going to be the game I've been wanting to make for quite a few years now. I'm a huge fan of hack and slash dungeon crawlers (e.g. Diablo). I also firmly believe as a game developer that you stand the best chance of success by making a game that you are passionate about and a type of game that you would really want to play.

Dungeon crawlers could probably be considered a bit of a niche genre and so maybe a bit risky, especially when you want to make money off that type of game. Regardless, I think there is an audience for this type of game, and I'm very excited about tapping into it by making something that will bring a higher level of quality, moreso to mobile platforms where I think most of the existing dungeon crawler games are a bit lacking. There are some exceptions of course, but in general after playing what's available, I'm left wanting more. Much more. I aim to fill that gap.

My main inspiration comes from an old game: The Dungeon Revealed. One big thing that I want to do differently (and what will probably make this less of a "roguelike" in the strictest sense and more of a "hack and slash") is to have the game use real-time combat. I think this has more potential for an exciting game then turn-based crawlers.

The above mockup of a promo banner is actually a screenshot of a level I mocked up in the current engine/framework I've been working on the past several months. I just spent 5 minutes in Gimp putting a bit of text on it. The artwork is from Oryx's LOFI Sprite set, with the animated character sprites from Geeze's collection here. I'm using them temporarily for now. I like the feel of this set overall. Matches what I had originally envisioned more or less, but I'm not sure if I will take it upon myself to draw up a completely new set or not (been a long while since I pixeled anything).

Also, the title "Death is Inevitable" is a working title. It kind of makes me chuckle a little bit, but I still need to mull over the idea of using it as a final title.

I'll have some posts this week that will discuss the engine details as it is currently. Something I should have really been writing about as I was working on it, but better late then never.