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It seems like there is a built in assumption that dungeon crawling means you have to kill monsters. I feel like there is some really interesting design space if you don't make that assumption
A game called Snacktorio where you automate food for these black goo demons could help add a level of progression. They make you need to make a certain amount of food per minute for around 5 minutes then you complete that quest. This would make the player need to explore and get automation setup and keep it so they can get to the next area of the dungeon with harder enemies and bosses
I think it be funnier to expand upon it by putting the main character in some sort of first tragedy like dwarf fortress having their cart broken down, but instead this dude just lost his left shoe from a mud dweller goblin or something, and has to find resources to craft and refine himself a nice fitting left shoe, then this can couple with his innate skill or not of speaking or taming or hunting the surrounding wilds and monsters, putting them to work forced or tricking them with some reward in return, with the dude's left shoe still missing, his left sock begins to wither and the unevenness of walking leave him with three choices, sit his ass down so his workers can work to create him a new left shoe, continue going only bare left foot and potentially damage himself for the long run, can no longer travel far and will eventually die in the little empire he will create, or ditch the other shoe and go fully damaging each foot but at least stable in walking enough to travel to only one of many far dungeons (close by "dungeons" can be for resources and bringing in more sla... Well compensated workers)
For automation to dungeons, the player can have like a set of basic programming stacks to begin with (idea like pixel starship) (masked as repeatedly teaching or conditioning as if a dog to sit or roll etc.) having a group up to 6 different mobs with varying attributes that play off each other or harms each other without the players direct input, but for the sake of the game, we are allowed to watch how the dungeon run went if they survived or at least one ran away and get whatever they are trained to collect or randomly collect if they could remember it
About the "ressource nodes / ressources dropped by monster" : I think it would be a fun compromise if monsters, instead of dropping loots, became ressources nodes themselves one slain. A golem could become a extraction point for the stone or metal it was made of, a slime could become a goo extraction point. I think it works better than have the monsters drop large amount of the same ressource because it basically the same but it disallow the player from just spending 20 minute after each monster killed to grab all the ressource (which is not fun), and it gives a pretty significant reward for the combat. Maybe it would work better if the enemies were on the "rare but dangerous" side of things, but even if you planned on putting hordes of enemies, you could still have each extraction point giving out only a small output so the player still have to kill a lot of monster.
I think this genre combination will inevitably makes it look like Cult of the Lamb, with its "city building / dungeon crawling" genre. It could be interesting for us to delve into the game design secrets that made the game interesting so we could conscientiously choose what whe want to do similarly and what we want to do differently
I would do dugeon crawling woth automation at your base slowly expanding your base over the dungeon also bonus points if you implement random dungeon generation every time you return to base. Think shifting maze you lock down with your buildings
Excited to see the progress of this one! And also to see the Steam game you're working on when you share more about that. Your schedule seems very solid. Great idea keeping everything so organized. I think it will be a lot of fun seeing what you come up with from everyone's ideas and suggestions while you're working on the game.
Thanks for the call out 😅 The choice to focus on a single controlled character with automation helping their progression is surely a viable one. Some elements of this are used in FPS tower defences like Sanctum and Dungeon Defenders. I also believe that Dungeon of Endless works in a way where you clear rooms to gain more resources and expand your base of operations. And as Cult of the Lamb proved resource and base management go well with top-down action roguelike. Cheers on your upcoming Steam game! Will certainly hop onto Discord server on the weekend.
It is 3 months late, and I haven't seen the recent videos, but I thought about one way to make it more dynamic, kind of. You play as a dungeoneer as you said, but the "factory" is stored inside your backpack. If you go full on Sci-fi, you could make your body the factory, but that's a tangent. A mini portable factory that produces better materials and equipments from the dungeon's resources. You could go into fungi stuff if you want to keep it fantasy, little people, like an inch high people, drones, nano stuff for scifi... That way you don't change anything about how you usually traverse dungeons. Even resources flying over to you makes more sense. You can make it so that the factory is actually a source for energy for your character, etc. It sounds way out of scope, but it's a regular dungeon crawler with an inventory that is a canvas for a factory automation side hustle.
Thanks for your great idea! It is indeed 3 months late. You might be surprised, but this idea was proposed by 2 other people on the discord server! But we went for another very cool idea 😊
Dungeon Crawler + Automation sounds pretty cool. im sure you and this community will make something special with that theme
It seems like there is a built in assumption that dungeon crawling means you have to kill monsters. I feel like there is some really interesting design space if you don't make that assumption
A game called Snacktorio where you automate food for these black goo demons could help add a level of progression. They make you need to make a certain amount of food per minute for around 5 minutes then you complete that quest. This would make the player need to explore and get automation setup and keep it so they can get to the next area of the dungeon with harder enemies and bosses
I think it be funnier to expand upon it by putting the main character in some sort of first tragedy like dwarf fortress having their cart broken down, but instead this dude just lost his left shoe from a mud dweller goblin or something, and has to find resources to craft and refine himself a nice fitting left shoe, then this can couple with his innate skill or not of speaking or taming or hunting the surrounding wilds and monsters, putting them to work forced or tricking them with some reward in return, with the dude's left shoe still missing, his left sock begins to wither and the unevenness of walking leave him with three choices, sit his ass down so his workers can work to create him a new left shoe, continue going only bare left foot and potentially damage himself for the long run, can no longer travel far and will eventually die in the little empire he will create, or ditch the other shoe and go fully damaging each foot but at least stable in walking enough to travel to only one of many far dungeons (close by "dungeons" can be for resources and bringing in more sla... Well compensated workers)
For automation to dungeons, the player can have like a set of basic programming stacks to begin with (idea like pixel starship) (masked as repeatedly teaching or conditioning as if a dog to sit or roll etc.) having a group up to 6 different mobs with varying attributes that play off each other or harms each other without the players direct input, but for the sake of the game, we are allowed to watch how the dungeon run went if they survived or at least one ran away and get whatever they are trained to collect or randomly collect if they could remember it
About the "ressource nodes / ressources dropped by monster" : I think it would be a fun compromise if monsters, instead of dropping loots, became ressources nodes themselves one slain. A golem could become a extraction point for the stone or metal it was made of, a slime could become a goo extraction point. I think it works better than have the monsters drop large amount of the same ressource because it basically the same but it disallow the player from just spending 20 minute after each monster killed to grab all the ressource (which is not fun), and it gives a pretty significant reward for the combat. Maybe it would work better if the enemies were on the "rare but dangerous" side of things, but even if you planned on putting hordes of enemies, you could still have each extraction point giving out only a small output so the player still have to kill a lot of monster.
I think this genre combination will inevitably makes it look like Cult of the Lamb, with its "city building / dungeon crawling" genre. It could be interesting for us to delve into the game design secrets that made the game interesting so we could conscientiously choose what whe want to do similarly and what we want to do differently
I would do dugeon crawling woth automation at your base slowly expanding your base over the dungeon also bonus points if you implement random dungeon generation every time you return to base. Think shifting maze you lock down with your buildings
Excited to see the progress of this one! And also to see the Steam game you're working on when you share more about that. Your schedule seems very solid. Great idea keeping everything so organized. I think it will be a lot of fun seeing what you come up with from everyone's ideas and suggestions while you're working on the game.
it went from dungeon crawler and automation to slavery and monsters baby farming 😭
That's just one of the many potential paths 😂
Thanks for the call out 😅 The choice to focus on a single controlled character with automation helping their progression is surely a viable one. Some elements of this are used in FPS tower defences like Sanctum and Dungeon Defenders. I also believe that Dungeon of Endless works in a way where you clear rooms to gain more resources and expand your base of operations. And as Cult of the Lamb proved resource and base management go well with top-down action roguelike.
Cheers on your upcoming Steam game! Will certainly hop onto Discord server on the weekend.
It is 3 months late, and I haven't seen the recent videos, but I thought about one way to make it more dynamic, kind of. You play as a dungeoneer as you said, but the "factory" is stored inside your backpack. If you go full on Sci-fi, you could make your body the factory, but that's a tangent.
A mini portable factory that produces better materials and equipments from the dungeon's resources. You could go into fungi stuff if you want to keep it fantasy, little people, like an inch high people, drones, nano stuff for scifi...
That way you don't change anything about how you usually traverse dungeons. Even resources flying over to you makes more sense. You can make it so that the factory is actually a source for energy for your character, etc.
It sounds way out of scope, but it's a regular dungeon crawler with an inventory that is a canvas for a factory automation side hustle.
Thanks for your great idea! It is indeed 3 months late. You might be surprised, but this idea was proposed by 2 other people on the discord server! But we went for another very cool idea 😊
@@UnPawsGames Aha! Ideas are a dime a million as they say. I'm now caught up and you did the right thing. It takes a lot to scope down realistically
Interesting 🤔
the discord link expired, would it be alright to ask for a new link?
Thanks for warning me! I just updated it 👌
Any idea when Shepard For Hire is coming to android?
Hi ! It's still being validated by the play store.. I don't know what takes them so long.