Guild Of Dungeoneering
Version: Alpha Update 0.6.15
Gambrinous
http://gambrinous.com/games/dungeoneering/
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=246445759
In my search for new indie games to talk about, there are times when I bang my head against my desk at just how terrible a certain game is. Either they are badly coded or with some stupid mechanic which rubs me the wrong way. This week however I came across a little corker. Before I knew it, I had spent an hour watching a little guy wander around a dungeon. I contacted the developer Colm Larkin, who agreed to talk to Laser Lemming about his latest game.
LL: So what is Guild Of Dungeoneering?
Colm: Guild of Dungeoneering is a game I am making that I usually describe as a dungeon crawler where you don’t get to control the hero. Recently someone suggested ‘reverse rogue-like’ which I like too. Basically you start with a one room dungeon with your hero (the Dungeoneer) at the entrance and your job is to play cards from your hand which can correspond to new rooms & corridors, treasure or equipment, and of course monsters! You expand and populate the dungeon, and then your hapless hero stumbles his way through it.. you want him to win but it doesn’t always work out that way!
LL: What was your inspiration behind the game?
Colm: I think my main inspiration was the old board game DungeonQuest which I used to play with my siblings as a teenager in the 90s. In that you would step into a new blank space in the dungeon and then pick a random face-down tile to represent the room you walked into. Sometimes it would be what you wanted, other times it would be an awkward right-turn that would lead into a dead end or have a portcullis that blocked your way back. Last April I started taking part in the 1GAM community and built a tile-laying game in my first month that used this idea of randomness while trying to move towards a goal. I came back to the idea about 6 months later and decided to add a hero and RPG elements to it, and for some reason I thought it would be interesting if the hero was AI-controlled. That’s when it became Guild of Dungeoneering, and I’ve been working on it solidly since then.
LL: Guild Of Dungeoneering feels a little bit like the card game Munchkin, as you begin as just a generic adventurer and slowly build up gear through cards. I could see aspects of Munchkin translating well in GOD such as race cards and class cards. Do you have any plans to enhance the player character in a similar way?
Colm: Munchkin comes up frequently as a comparison, I think because of the similarly goofy and self-referential sense of humour. In fact there’s a game called Munchkin Quest that takes the munchkin card game and adds randomised room tiles very much like what I’m building! Initially I was thinking of letting you level up your dungeoneer mid-dungeon, as you wiped out minions, but now I think I’ll keep that side of it to the metagame to keep dungeon runs simpler. The idea is that the dungeon exploration is the repeatable part of the game, and in between runs you are managing your Guild. So you can hire new heroes here, or expand your guild to give you some sort of in-dungeon bonus (better equipment, or some special cards for your decks) before picking a new dungeon to tackle. For example you might build a Shrine to the Goddess of Luck in your guild, which adds a helpful ‘Lucky Escape’ card to all future dungeon runs. New classes & races will also be unlocked on the Guild side of the game – to be used in the Dungeoneering side, if that makes sense!
LL: I know you have recently left your job to work on Guild Of Dungeoneering full time. How daunting was that for you?
Colm: It’s daunting alright, but it’s also very exciting! Between October 2013 and April 2014 I was working on this essentially in my free time, to the tune of about 1 day per week outside my software engineering day job. I will now have about 5x that amount of time to dedicate to creating the game while also getting back a day per week to spend with my family.. win/win! Of course things will be tight financially, but fortunately I have been able to tap into an innovative game funding model I call ‘WifeFunding’ where we live off my wife’s job for now :P
LL: Guild Of Dungeoneering currently just keeps going until you finally give up or die. What plans do you have for an endgame?
Colm: The Alpha version you can play today is being updated regularly as I add new features to the game. I’m adding some closure to the experience this week by making the boss monster (EMBRO the fire lord) eventually get angry enough with you invading his dungeon that he appears on the board himself. He’ll then chase you down and force a final confrontation. In time I’m going to transition this alpha into the freely playable demo for the full game and it will be similarly scoped (a single romp through a dungeon). The full version of the game will entail all the fun of the Guild side of things such as hiring new heroes (with classes & special abilities), expanding your guild to unlock new cards for your decks, and picking dungeons to explore. As for the endgame to THAT side of it.. I have some ideas but nothing concrete just yet. I hope to make something replayable and not overly long (per attempt) – much like in FTL.
LL: Why should people pre-order Guild Of Dungeoneering?
Colm: My driving force when designing Guild of Dungeoneering is to make something I would love to play. If you enjoy the concept so far and like the sound of where I’m going to bring it, then by all means get on board! As I wrap up the alpha in the coming weeks I’ll be moving towards an early-access style beta period where only pre-orderees get to play the latest build, so there’s that too. But most of all think of the amazing good karma you’re bound to receive for helping out a struggling indie dev!
——————————————————————
Worth Purchasing? Guild Of Dungeoneering is yet to enter the ‘early access’ phase that we usually look at, but there is a ‘demo’ build available on Colm’s website which is very playable and I found myself recommending it to my friends that liked Munchkin. As mentioned in the interview, there is little purpose apart from getting loot and killing monsters, but on my many playthroughs it was still very enjoyable. I lost track of the amount of times, I would get distracted and just poke the adventurer just to see what little quip he would come up with. With the coming updates promising more towards a goal and endgame, then at its current price it could be a steal.
Next Game Update: Having just taken this on full time, he estimated that there should be an update or two a week with the next version available tomorrow… hopefully
