Dungeon Crafter
ROLE
Game Designer
Overview
Dungeon Crafter was a small game jam, proof-of-concept project that was developed just under a week. Aim of the game here was to create a small rogue-like experience, experimenting with crafting all the systems required to develop (procedural room generation, enemy spawning, inventory system, etc). Dungeon Crafter has players build their own dungeon, as they progress from room to room by physically placing the next room piece the player wishes.
As players clear rooms and collect treasure, room piece spawn in the form of puzzle pieces that are stored in the players inventory. Clearing a room and then interacting with one of the ethereal exits has the players prompted with a choice of which room to put down and in which orientation. Before placement, players can see what the room looks like and how many enemies and chests are in that room. The challenge in developing this became clear almost immediately: how would I over a sense of scaling difficulty as the player progressed through the dungeon if the player creates their own dungeon?
A sort of "dungeon master" system would be used that kept track of how many room pieces the player used and would be scored based on a hidden "difficulty" value. If the player tended to lean toward easier rooms and thus being put into an easier difficulty, the game AI would begin to populate chests with tougher room pieces. The further the player got, the higher the difficulty floor would increase, ensuring that players are pushed toward a higher scaling difficulty as they neared the end.
YEAR
2020
GENRE
Adventure Rogue-like
PLATFORM
PC
Engine
Unity3D