Guild of Dungeoneering

humanji

I just saw this on the PC Gamer site. It's a great little concept and a cool design. Essentially, you have to take care of a hero in a dungeon, placing down corridor tiles, treasures and monsters to lure the hero (that you don't directly control) around to help them level up.

And when you're not in the dungeon, there's some sort of guild management section to the game, but I haven't seen what that involves yet. It looks like it could be a lot of fun.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OR967iGeTbU

BeerWolf

So... similar to Dungeon Keeper?

gizmo

Also worth pointing out it's being developed by an Irish team. Colm was nice enough to pop into the Game Dev forum awhile back to share the project, been keeping an eye on it since.

humanji

BeerWolf wrote:

So... similar to Dungeon Keeper?

Not really. You're the good guy, trying to keep the hero alive as opposed to building traps to kill them. It seems like an odd mix between the card game Munchkin and Pipemania. And with bits of Advanced Heroquest in there too, now that I think of it.

Gambrinous: Colm

humanji wrote: »

Not really. You're the good guy, trying to keep the hero alive as opposed to building traps to kill them. It seems like an odd mix between the card game Munchkin and Pipemania. And with bits of Advanced Heroquest in there too, now that I think of it.

That's a really good quick description of the game actually

Question: did you really see it on PC Gamer? Where? I hadn't seen any coverage by them!

humanji

Oops, my mistake. It was RockPaperShotgun (I always open the two sites together, so got confused. )

gizmo

Released today on Steam it seems. Not going to be able to play it for awhile myself but it does look really neat.

humanji

Got to play for about an hour last night. It's very simple to play and is the type of thing that is perfect when you've 10-20 minutes to kill, rather than sitting down to plug away for hours. I've only really two problems with it. The first is that you essentially have to grind your way from the very start. Now that's not a major issue, but it can get fairly repetative (it is a game based on repetition after all). While different maps give you different goals, the mechanics of the game don't really allow for too much variation, so it's pretty much always the same actions you take regardless of the desired result. That's why I say it's perfect for short bursts (I'm not sure if they're making a version for tablets or phones, but it'd be perfect for them).

The second problem is that it's completely random. Your dungeoneers start at level 1 each time you start a dungeon and you have to fight low level monsters to gain the equipment that helps you fight the bigger monsters. But the monsters and items you're dealt are randomised, which means there's levels you simply can't win.

For example, I was in one dungeon where every monster I was dealt used magical attacks, but every item I was dealt only gave protection from physical attacks. So I'd no possibility of winning. It causes a lot of frustration. And it didn't help that it happened twice in a row. Once you grind away for a while, you can upgrade your guild to drop better loot in the dungeon, but even then I can't help but feel you're still going to be thrown in to no win situations no matter what cards are in your deck.

_taytothief

Gambrinous: Colm wrote: »

That's a really good quick description of the game actually

Question: did you really see it on PC Gamer? Where? I hadn't seen any coverage by them!

Congratulations on the release, it seems to be selling reasonably well, with about 8,000 copies sold, is that right? You've been hovering in the top sellers list since release.

Can I ask about Steamworks? Did you make a conscious decision not to include Steamworks features? Do Valve provide any sort of recommendation? To be honest, I'm consistently surprised by devs who release on Steam these days without implementing Steamworks. Although your game is clearly selling, with a market so saturated, I wonder why devs don't put every effort in as possible to increase the desirability of the game. Launching with no discount and no Steamworks is pretty brave imo, unless you have a bit of hype behind you.

bkrangle

I played this for an hour last night. I love the art style and music.
I haven't fully got to grasp with the gameplay mechanics yet (I've quite a few dungeoneers in my graveyard!) but I'm looking forward to sinking some time into it tonight.
It's great to see a small Irish developer putting out a quality product like this.

Shiminay

Dodger's been playing it all evening on her Twitch Stream, I think lots of other streamers will get in on it so that should make it quite successful

nesf

Was discussed on this week's Co-Optional Podcast: https://youtu.be/3aUARkvyASY?t=36m16s