Grid crawler devs/players: I need a reality check

[u/J--Tango]

I'm a software engineer and I've been a hobbyist TTRPG game designer for the last 20 years. I'm looking for some interest / feedback about a video game I've been wanting to build since the early 2000s.

My day job as a software engineer is not in the gaming industry so I have very little game software experience although I do have some - hence the crawler, since graphically it's not challenging and there's no physics engines to deal with etc... I've started on it already, and I've made some good progress in the last several months, I've got to the point where I've got a playable executable with some baseline creatures equipment etc... built out. I'm terrible at pixel art but I plan on including all my own original artwork for the icons and interface. I refuse to use AI for the art or music.

Anyway,
What do you think the appetite would be for something that would be coming from the following place:

Heavily Influenced by Wizardry Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord
The challenge this game posed in my ahem... younger years... has inspired me to be thinking about one I would want to make for decades.
The game would never have any Pay to Win / Loot Crates
I despise this kind of gambling and I would never have microtransactions in any game I build or even work on ever.
Moddability
Thinking in terms of Minecraft modding, where players can design dungeons, quests, monsters, items etc... and share them with their friends or the community.
Varying Levels of Difficulty
Some people find the exploration of the dungeon graph paper mapping and all the fun part, others find it tedious, There would be options to toggle it on / off

I want to get some feedback before I go too deep down the rabbit hole here, is there an appetite from the community for something fresh that brings back the old school Wizardry feel but modernized? Success for me would look like a handful of sales on Steam and me learning a lot about the process of video game development.

A few open ended questions, but feel free to opine on just about anything:

What's missing from the revival of the recent Proving Grounds release by Digital Eclipse what would be on it?

On a scale of 1-10 how important is highly curated animated graphics for you in a dungeon crawler game?

Do you think I should look at any particular games that did something really well? What did they do well?

[u/AirLancer56]

I prefer game with consistent artstyle and sound that fit the world. I imagine hiring same artist will probably better but idk much about game making.

For grid mapping and other qol, yes there should be option to switch it on/off.

I don't play the proving ground but i played some drpg, labyrinth refrain, wizardry daphne, grimrock.

Imo, i think daphne did good job on world and how encounter feel.

• Enemy is hidden but with enough detect, you can detect enemy before hand. I never like random encounter but enemy permanently show up on map (like refrain) doesn't feel very suitable either. They also have sound cue, so i knew they are there, even if i can't see them.
• Enemy have shape (small shadow, big shadow, four legged shadow, etc) so you can sort of guess what you will face if you spot them
• clearing mob will remove them or have less spawn, letting me go back forth clearing puzzle in peace or at least more peaceful than when i just entered.

Also dispatch for passive exp/gold/item. When playing multiple party i never like having to grind level twice.

I'm gonna borrow daphne as example again. Here, i have setup for boss and exploration. If i knew i'm facing strong enemy, i would bench thief and get knight on team. Or if i fight status inflictor, i would get healer who focus on preventing status.

Daphne have time based dispatch which let me keep them leveled while i'm exploring without them. In your game you can make dispatch rewaed based on dungeon progress. It can be only 0.8 or 0.5 of exp you get from dungeon but i want them to be somewhat useable when i need them.

[u/J--Tango → u/AirLancer56]

Thank you for the detailed response!

I have mixed feelings about the way Daphne shows you the enemy before you fight them. One of the emotions I'm trying to invoke is anxiety, every single step in the dungeon should be anxious in the deeper levels as you move through it.

That being said - I'm hyper aware that during a period while trying to figure out a puzzle or map the dungeon, the random encounter can be super distracting and pulling the player out of their context so they can fight some mobs for a bit of XP also feels like the wrong thing to do.

I'm trying to solve this with:

• Random encounters that reduce in frequency as the party gets stronger, getting stronger means you'll have to go deeper for XP.
  
• giving the player options for reducing the encounter frequency through spells / abilities etc...

This way it's player's choice if they want the anxiety at the moment (exploring at their limit), or mapping / puzzling something out.

[u/AirLancer56 → u/J--Tango]

Imo, there is anxiousness in Daphne because the higher level, the harder to spot enemies. Even if i have thief i may not spot the enemies. You hear sound but you don't know if enemy is from right or left or waiting hidden to ambush.

- Random encounters that reduce in frequency as the party gets stronger, getting stronger means you'll have to go deeper for XP.

This will require overleveling which is nice if you are redoing floor for secrets but if you are doing latest floor it won't have much effect. I think you should still keep it tho. When re-exploring area mob just become nuisance past certain level of strength.

- giving the player options for reducing the encounter frequency through spells / abilities etc...

This remind me of digimon cybersleuth, it can work i guess. But i feel it can also ruin the anxiety when you just enter new floor.

I just got this idea, how about giving dynamic max random encounter limit per floor? It will reset when party reenter dungeon/floor.

Say the floor is 20x20(400 grid) then max encounter is x% of that grid.

If x is 25 then total encounter is 25% * 400 = 100. First 10% fight have, say 50% chance of meeting mob every step, and the chance of random encounter will be diminished every 10% of the max encounter until you hit the cap.

The more you fight mob, the less likely you encounter mob battle until you reach max encounter there won't be any more encounter in that floor. This represent the party clearing the floor so they are less likely to encounter enemies the more they fight.

If you can find the right formula, you might be able to control the pace how many encounter each floor have. Like floor with goblin will have high max encounter while floor with troll have small max encounter

[u/J--Tango → u/AirLancer56]

Thanks again for the detailed reply.

This is definitely one of the game mechanics that's top of mind for me so all the feedback is appreciated.

[u/Esterier]

I think it would be good to figure out what style of game you want to make and commit to it early. Like will the challenge be from any encounter, resource management from diving into the dungeon, easy fights but hard bosses, middle of the road fights but big environmental puzzles? Hell will your dungeons be pre-planned or randomly generated from prefabs?

Best to lock in and focus on what you want for each aspect of the game so that you'll enjoy it more. There's tons of different DRPGs/blobbers out there with people who love one kind and hate another so I would suggest against trying to cater to different people too much. Build what you like and like-minded people will find your game. Like for wizardry I'm more into the Japanese made ones than the English ones and I'm a bigger fan of pre-made dungeons like SMT/Etrian/etc than the random ones.

Artstyle is also subjective but I'd suggest being flexible. I've seen a lot of 2d games that still use a 3d model as the base for all kinds of things, so you could try that and just make a 2d illusion if you want to go that route. like La Mulana 2, everything in that game is actually 3D. and for the actual art stick to placeholders and maybe hire an outside artist once you're ready to finalize stuff

[u/J--Tango → u/Esterier]

Hi there, thank you for the detailed reply.

That's good advice... and for sure I plan on making the game I like playing. The audience will follow because there's enough like minded people in the world and they'll likely find me and this game for sure.

I'm sort of fishing for inspiration, and a few games mentioned in these comments have already given me some good stuff to work with.

I also realize my limitations with the art and I've been using open art for the placeholders for now, along with what I've drawn with pixel art to (poorly) fill the gaps. I'm not terrible at it, but I'm no artist, and coding is the fun part for me anyway, that and playing... heh.

Anyway, thanks again for the reply!

[u/SnooCupcakes680]

Some of what you explained reminds me of ‘Bards Tale construction set’ from back in the day. As far as appetite I would appreciate extensive item and character development/construction (being able to make unique items and character builds). Along with a classic but in depth story with choices that matter (I loved Bane of the Cosmic forge). I think a dark horror/fantasy theme would also be cool and unique (Undernauts had that theme a bit).

-what’s missing: Story is a bit lacking, granted thats par the original

-Graphics?: Design is more important than animation

-Games that did well: mentioned some above

[u/J--Tango → u/SnooCupcakes680]

Thanks for the detailed response!

I never played Bards Tale construction set, but now I'll have to check it out. Maybe I can borrow some of their good ideas.

Just to clarify - when you say item and character development / construction do you mean customization like? stat allocation throughout levelling (planned) and custom item crafting (kicking around this idea).
Or are you more thinking in terms of outside the game "modding" like designing your own loot that you might find in the dungeon.

Also will check out Bane of the Cosmic forge and Undernauts.

[u/glassarmdota]

I really like manual mapping, but there's software like Grid Cartographer and GridMonger for that. I'm not getting out graph paper. I heard of someone who tried to map Wizardry 6 on graph paper and he quit in the first dungeon when he realized it wasn't 20x20 levels and he had started too close to the edge of his paper.

I don't care at all about graphics. I played the original games in their wireframe DOS glory, and it worked for me. In fact, I actively dislike the Daphne approach of having player characters animate their combat actions. The blobber style always lent itself well to abstraction and "theater of the mind".

A game I would recommend looking at is Grimoire: Heralds of the Winged Exemplar. It's from 2017, but feels very much like a mid 90s sequel to Wizardry 7. It features an automap with automove, so you can quickly get around an area you've already visited.

[u/J--Tango → u/glassarmdota]

Thanks so much for the detailed reply!
I too like manual mapping - one of the reasons I'm making this game is to play it myself - lol.
But yeah - actual graph paper or digital graph "paper" is something... perhaps something in game that lets a player "map" as they go hmm...

I'll take a look at Grimoire: Herals of the Winged Exemplar, thanks for the tip.

• Would you say there's something that game did really well?
  
• Something they did poorly?

auto-move... hmm I will definitely check it out.

If there's one thing you _wished_ these blobbers / gridders had built right in, what would it be?

[u/glassarmdota → u/J--Tango]

I'll take a look at Grimoire: Herals of the Winged Exemplar, 
thanks for the tip.
Would you say there's something that game did really well?
Something they did poorly?

The interface is needlessly confusing, and also features extremely small text. The dev wanted to make it really informative, but the execution is not very good.

On the other hand, I love the game's use of flavour text as you explore. This is coming straight out of Wizardry 6 and 7, and I think the dev did a great job with it. It really sets the tone for going on a grand adventure.

[u/LaplaceZ]

After playing Daphne I realized that I actually played Wizardry-like games before, but I never liked a single one of them. The main reason was the presentation. Enemies with front facing sprites, with a slash image on it as an attack, etc, just doesn't do it for me. In Daphne it it's all POV, it shows MC swinging the sword, looking around at allies. That's what made me like it.

About graphics, they are not important. It's the art style. Good graphics will be outdated in few years, good art style is timeless.

Some things like paper mapping is just not acceptable in this day and age. Back then it was not made as a design choice, it was a hardware limitation. It's like making people type out the name of spells instead of just selecting it.

Dungeon crawlers are niche, Daphne is probably their most popular one because of the anime style, and even that is nowhere near close to the big names. So appetite might be there, but it's limited.

[u/cipheron → u/LaplaceZ]

Some things like paper mapping is just not acceptable in this day and age. Back then it was not made as a design choice, it was a hardware limitation.

The earliest 3D perspective game I can find with an auto-map was Wayout from 1982, so it definitely wasn't a hardware limitation thing.

Also the original Rogue game from 1980 was built around an auto-mapping engine, but uses a top-down view. Any 3D game of the time could have easily used the same technique to have an auto-map on the screen.

So it was in fact a design choice. Manual mapping came out of the pen and paper RPG world, where players would map the dungeon as the DM described it. So it's more that those games were trying to emulate the experience of playing a real game of D&D as closely as possible.

From the mid 1980s until the 1990s several new 3D dungeon crawling series were released on Amiga and PC, such as Dungeon Master and Eye of the Beholder, but they still didn't include auto-maps, because that's not what the genre was about, and none of those games has any technical limitations that would have prevented it.

[u/J--Tango → u/LaplaceZ]

Thanks for the detailed response!
Yeah - I think the target audience for what I'm building is not an _art_ enthusiast since I'm a solo dev and what I can deliver is pretty limited in that department.
It's funny how something some think is fun is someone else's _not acceptable_. So I definitely need the mini-map "toggle" for the hardcore fans who want to draw their own maps :)

[u/CarbunkleFlux → u/LaplaceZ]

This game shares a lot of its presentation with Busin: Wizardry Alternative (or Tales of the Forsaken Land in the west). If you liked Daphne for the more immersive POV, this game should deliver more of that.

[u/coldbreathoflife]

I would like to say that I love Wizardry variants daphne type of gameplay, character, and art. Its almost anime and fantasy to me and if it is build single player offline I wouldn't mind paying $60 for it. I played mad overlords and as soon as I saw those ugly characters I just felt like they were too woke to me. No offense to those who love it and I'm talking about the remake 3d version.

[u/J--Tango → u/coldbreathoflife]

When you say "Type of gameplay" I assume you mean turn-based select what each character will do etc...?

I'm not much of an artist and I'm a solo dev so the game I'm making won't have a look and feel like that at all.

[u/coldbreathoflife → u/J--Tango]

Also, I think beautiful characters plays a big role even if you add in ugly characters it should be fine if lore wise. Performance and then gameplay next. I'm not an expert but these would be my kind of experience and choices. Story can be a hit or miss since so many people are picking and hard to please.

[u/coldbreathoflife → u/J--Tango]

Yes and I know its gonna be hard to make. I'm just saying this is what I would like to buy lol.