godungeoning

[godungeoning]

Bringing (some) Balance To Dungeoning

The latest progress report on Dungeoning is about injecting a bit of balance into this little murder factory, and you’re not going to like it. But challenge is nigh (you will still get pretty powerful pretty quickly) and competition is on the horizon. 

For now enjoy, your ascension to legendary status, but know that the following highlights are in the build released today:

The difficulty and stats of NPCs is smoother by Questline Tier

Dungeon NPCs increase in difficulty slightly from room to room

Dungeon Bosses have more HP

Gear sells for more Gold

Regeneration is nerfed. Character HP recovery from a hit is less likely to bring them all the way back to 100%

Collectibles are harder to come by and soon will be specifically farmable in Dungeons

Gold farming from inactive Characters is less-- players will now gain more Gold form selling gear/enchants and earning it in Questing and Dungeoning more.

Potions do more

Party Move criteria has been lowered

Rarity drops increase at a slower rate and must be offset by higher Luck in order to consistently drop higher rarity items throughout Questing and Dungeoning

Moves are no longer created equal. The Warrior will develop Power Rating faster, because his Move Level require less Stamina to level up, but his power won’t rival the Wizard, who’s slower moves are offset by the massive increases to ATtack and Defense each level gives. Each Class now has a unique speed/power profile for Moves that must be discovered

The gradual slowing inertia of Move Levels now has to be overcome by greater Stamina and Mana caps

Hitting a Renown like this here Elf Wizard takes a bit more thinking and time and Dungeoning, but...

... there are a bunch of content and feature upgrades in this build to assuage the increase in difficulty. 14 new dungeons, including a ridiculous impossible one called The Abyss, a 100 Room dungeon we need you to test at the end of the first 5-dungeon chain, 15 or so new enemies (including an Elf Lord, a Hydra and even a Mimic), and the new Desert environment for Quests:

Yes, that’s a Dung Beetle. Kill it.

Behind-the-scenes, we added in something exciting for us, but invisible to you-- a data versioning system that will allow us to push characters and other creative assets as well as rules changes and balance into the game on the fly. So if you’re playing right now and you’re beat up by the balance changes, don’t fear-- take it up on the Subreddit, call foul in the Discord and know that there will be many of these passes on the way to the dreaded Tpwer. You will bring down Lord Awful. 

I just know it.  Moar soon!

_____________________________________________________________

Want to be a Beta tester? Sign up here or pop into the Discord and DM TheWizard.

For moar on Dungeoning:

Hijinks & Speculation on Discord

Updates on Twitter

Discussion on Reddit - now with Wiki

Secret Passage: 51g

[godungeoning]

Seek Renown (while Dungeoning)

Another build, moar screens, moar features. This should be a fun one to play before I NERF the sorcery out of everyone in the upcoming quest for balance (for new readers, the game of Dungeoning has yet to have any semblance of balance in it, so player testers are WAY OP).

“Renown” is a new feature and score that you will earn in the game. It will be used to:

Measure the player’s overall accomplishment in the game

Provide a means of competition among players

Gate certain features

Act as reward thresholds for gear, collectibles and story

Earn it from dungeons runs, collectible set completions and a bunch of other acts-- basically if you think an action should give you Renown, it probably does.

The 2 big visual upgrades this Build are the Home screen and the Party screen. On the Home screen, where you start the game and each character level, you’ve go a number of new things to track:

You’ve got the usual stats, but added in are your Party, Your Questing/Dungeoning progress, active Potions and your Renown, noted by this symbol:

You also have quick access to your accrued Daily Rolls (the D20), The Hunt and Notifications (the horn). Not pictured is the changing portrait border and colors that will change based on your Motivation choices in The Hunt.

For the Party screen, it’s all revamped since the placeholder:

Your Party members are adventuring and gathering Gold for you as before (rate based on their Level), but now you’ve also got

Quick access to the History screen (the book)

The Ascend button is moved to this screen for convenience (and it makes more sense to us than being on the History screen)

The Party Moves button, which shows you all the available Party Moves (where your Party does a super-powered WHAM on dungeon bosses that are susceptible to that Party Move)

The Build has a ton of additional features and fixes, and you can check all of those out in the Build Notes here. 

_____________________________________________________________

Want to be a Beta tester? Sign up here or pop into the Discord and DM TheWizard.

For moar on Dungeoning:

Hijinks & Speculation on Discord

Updates on Twitter

Discussion on Reddit - now with Wiki

Secret Passage: 14b

[godungeoning]

Questing & Dungeoning

A new build of Dungeoning goes out today.

The past several builds of the game have featured replacements to key screens that featured placeholder art. This week brings the Quest screen.

Besides getting real artwork in, the new screen features a bunch of new functionality:

Action - the active Character is shown on the screen with a neverending slew of enemies to destroy

The action proceeds as

Questline Tier w 10 Questlines

Questline w 10 Quests

Quest w 5 Encounters

Encounter

Enemy Attack (sword), HP and Defense (shield) are displayed below its name

Character Attack (sword), Defense (shield) and Base Damage (explosion) displayed next to their name and HP

Actual Damage dealt is dependent on the Character’s Attack and the enemy’s Defense 

Drops - replaces the “Last Drop” function from previous builds

Displays the last 10 drops from left to right

If a Gear or Enchant is in danger of being lost (due to full inventories), it is noted with a “!”

Click Gear and Enchants in this list to get a detail pop-up

Inventory & Enchant status - see X/Y displays for how full each of those screens is

Turns yellow at 17/20 and red at full 20/20

Click either to shortcut to that screen

Countdown - At the beginning of a new Character or change of active Character, this counts down 3,2,1 before Questing begins (also happens upon DEATH).

Stay tuned for new Quest-only environments in the next build along with the long-awaited Home screen. Oh, and about 100 moar dungeons-- I’ll cover that as the tangled skein of dungeons get created. Don’t dive the Dastardly Dungeon-- you won’t come out.

____________________________________________________________

Want to be a Beta tester? Sign up here.

For moar on Dungeoning:

Hijinks & Speculation on Discord

Updates on Twitter

Discussion on Reddit - now with Wiki

Secret Passage: 75g

[godungeoning]

The Hunt

There are farfillions of little treats hidden all over the game. There’s Odds & Ends, Flora & Fauna and Moar Magicks. And those are just 3 of the Sets of items one must find to call themselves Renowned (rather than Ensorcelled-- you don’t want that). There are many more Sets, and not all are evident in Dungeoning at first. 

These items drop in Quests, Dungeons, as rewards for Daily Rolls (D20, of course), and other, more mysterious ways. Here’s a sampling (guess which one is in the “Gore” set):

For you meta-hunters out there, there are tons of referential hat-tips in these items, from movies, to comics to tabletop RPGs to fine art and even sports. And the secrets of the magicky domination of the realm by the awful Lord Awful are strewn throughout these items in the form of Hunts. Hunts are chosen by the player in the form of a simple title (”Explore The Abandoned Citadel”) and a goal for finding certain collectible items (”10 Scepters & 1 Mysterious Tome”). The item details tell you generally where to find them and you’re off to farm the items.

Then it ramps up. These Hunts are very specifically worded to test your motivations. This is where the “why do we-- why should we-- why MUST we dungeon?” is answered. The game will keep track of your Party’s morality-- from totally upright to totally depraved, the motivations are

Honor

Justice

Glory

Adventure

Revenge

Plunder

BLOOD

Take on the “Raze The Innocent Town” Hunt and your Party will be weighted toward BLOOD (primary) and Plunder (secondary). Finish the “Overthrow the Ensorcelled Council” Hunt and you’re headed toward Justice and Glory. As you progress, you’ll do 9 more of these Hunts on the way to the Tpwer.

(”What’s the Tpwer, Wizard?” Stay tuned.) 

Another set of items to earn awaits the successful hunter, and these come into play later in the game. 

In fact, it’s not even about completing Sets or the Collection (I mean-- it is, but read on). You will find multiples of many of the items, and achieve thresholds of ownership for those items. This leads to rewards and delicious benefits. 

Here, we see that you’ve found 1 “Rope” and that at 25 Ropes, 250 and 2,500 you will get other rewards (that’s placeholder text in the screenie, gang). These can include:

Permanent Party benefits

Keys to special dungeons

Help in certain dungeons (e.g., in a “Dark” dungeon, having 25 Ropes might give the Party a benefit for that dungeon run)

Drops

So we’re questing, we’re dungeoning, we’re upgrading, now we’re hunting. What next on the way to the Tpwer? Moar soon...

____________________________________________________________

Want to be a Beta tester? Sign up here.

For moar on Dungeoning:

Hijinks & Speculation on Discord

Updates on Twitter

Discussion on Reddit

Secret Passage: 04a

[godungeoning]

Dungeoning Moves

Moves are the building blocks of power in this game.

As you accrue Stamina and Mana automagickally, you will allocate those precious resources to the Moves available for each Class. 

From left to right, each builds in Power as your Character learns and then applies them in combat. Leveling each one over time increases your attack and defense power as well as building up your Power Rating, which is a multiplier on almost everything in the game.

(Each row here is a Class’s Moves, from top to bottom: Warrior, Wizard, Rogue, Cleric, Bard)

As the game begins, adding Moves will simply make your Characters more powerful, but over time, there will be meaningful choices to make in Move selection, including which Moves matter against what enemies and the combinatorial Party Moves, which will bring down the mightiest of Dungeon Bosses. 

Moar soon!

____________________________________________________________

Want to be a Beta tester? Sign up here. 

For moar on Dungeoning:

Hijinks & Speculation on Discord

Updates on Twitter

Discussion on Reddit

Secret Passage: 13g

[godungeoning]

As a follow up to the Red guy, here’s the Gold Dragon, who isn’t nearly as evil as her primary cousins (but just as magick). 

[godungeoning]

Stabbing & Squawking & Scorching & Dungeoning

The game’s development is moving into combat and the actual dungeons that you’ll mow through (or be stopped, skewered and shamed, of course). So here’s a sampling of the pixel bad guys that you might encounter:

The Evil Soldier (with red eyes, of course, the mark of all evil soldiers):

A screeching Hawk (there will be many flyers):

And it’s a moral imperative to include an Easley-esque Red Dragon:

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For moar on Dungeoning:

Hijinks & Speculation on Discord

Updates on Twitter

Discussion on Reddit

Secret Passage: 32g

[godungeoning]

Race & Class & Dungeoning

I do love a Bard. Using music and tomfoolery to overcome hordes of evil mobs? Yes, please!

I also love the various races that we’ve become accustomed to over so many fantasy adventures. Whether it’s the short-lived but somehow still critical humans, the ageless superior elves or the short-wicked battle-hardened dwarves, getting to choose a race for my characters has always given me an interesting thrill. 

The Human in Dungeoning is pictured here, and the garb will indicate Class, of which there are 5:

Bard

Cleric

Rogue

Warrior

Wizard

You see the many typical RPG classes and, of course, there is the Bard. Much fun is made of this class (Rick & Morty & D&D had some fun with them recently), but despite that silly hat, they will be invaluable. As the diving of dungeons ensues, your choice of active character will result in a slightly-customized view of their attacks:

Rotating Warrior, Rogue & Bard:

Wizard & Cleric:

Those are all Human animations and there’s variation as you get into the Races:

Human

Elf

Dwarf

Everling

I hate Lizardmen. I don’t know why, and Skyrim fans will throw cabbages at me, but I’ve always disdained them. 

Dungeoning has Everlings. And they are not Lizardmen. 

They are Everlings:

I’ll dive deeper on the effects of both Race and Class, but in a nutshell, choose wisely:

Race will affect stats and dungeons

Class will affect moves and dungeons

The combination of these things in parties will affect dungeons

You see the pattern. It’s all about dungeons. And dungeoning. And dungeonality.

Moar soon.

____________________________________________________________

For moar on Dungeoning:

Hijinks & Speculation on Discord

Updates on Twitter

Discussion on Reddit

Secret Passage: 05b

[godungeoning]

Dungeoning In Pixels

Every prior post has indicated that the game screens aren’t using “real” art– we bought a Humble Bundle art pack and have been using that to prototype. It’s served the game well, but it’s time to get into the art nitty gritty. 

We’re diving into the actual look & feel of the game, and that had us ask ourselves what the angle was going to be. Given the RPG-love-letter-but-also-a-sendup-oh-and-also-an-idle-game nature of Dungeoning, pixel art speaks to us, so that’s where we’re headed.

We teamed up with the unbelievable @Soda_Piggy, and you can see from this sampling of collectible items that drop in the game that he’s packing tons of character and detail into every single one:

And more:

And there’s tons moar. I’ll cover why you’d want a Dragon’s Tail, some Everling Richstuff or a Sentient Trident in a coming post, but this will give you a sense for our direction. 

From here on out, Soda Piggy’s art will illustrate the gameplay, characters and fiction and there’s a bunch to share. The opening post here promised that the game would deliver a super-scientific diagnosis on why it is that you dungeon, and we just finished the symbols for those various motivations-- will your Party be selfless and upright or totally depraved?

Note to self: publish the breakdown of players’ dungeoning motivations so we can all point fingers at each other. 

Stay tuned. The coming days will have dives into the characters, gear and-- of course-- dungeons. 

____________________________________________________________

For moar on Dungeoning:

Hijinks & Speculation on Discord

Updates on Twitter

Discussion on Reddit

Secret Passage: 23b

[godungeoning]

Going Dungeoning

It’s called Dungeoning, because you go dungeoning. As you are dungeoning, you slay, progress, get stuffs and-- sometimes-- die (or faint, if you’re more into Pokemon “death”).

Here’s the protoype sequence:

I know, I know. You wanna see your characters traverse a dungeon. And you will, intrepid divers! While the basic mechanics are shown here in this prototype screen, you’ll get a taste of what things will actually look like in the next post. 

That said, here’s what’s happening:

Choose Dungeon

You have General, Event and Special Dungeons

General Dungeons are those that unlock as you’d expect-- from progression in the game

Event Dungeons are time-sensitive and only unlock for a period of time (some are for everyone, some are not)

Special Dungeons are awarded for accomplishing special feats

Go Dungeon

You’ll notice that your whole party engages in dungeon combat

The active Character is the lead and the combat uses his/her stats

The passive Characters provide a bonus to each attack based on their stats

Enemy hits can hit any Party member

If the active Character dies, the next Character takes his place until the Dungeon is run or FULL PARTY KILL

Combat is auto, as it is in Quests, BUT you can bring powerful Potions into the Dungeons to push the Party over the edge

Heal - heals the whole Party’s HP to max

Rage - the next 5 attacks from the Party do 2x damage

Flee the Dungeon - there’s a button for embracing cowardice

Loot the Dungeon

Go get them lootz - Drops happen throughout the Rooms your Party progresses through and killing the Dungeon Boss at the end results in set rewards (that are better and moar)

Say goodbye (for the most part) to these no-art screens. The art direction of Dungeoning is coming next.

____________________________________________________________

For moar on Dungeoning:

Hijinks & Speculation on Discord

Updates on Twitter

Discussion on Reddit

Secret Passage: 15a

[godungeoning]

Forging Dungeoning

Incremental games are about a lot of things, but the genre name itself implies upgrades. And Dungeoning has a ridiculous, dumb amount of it baked in.

One of the things we fooled around with a ton at the beginning of design is what feels satisfying about the upgrading of loot. I love loot– I love finding it, I love seeing what it can do for my characters and I love upgrading it.

Since Dungeoning is an idle game love letter to all things RPG, we knew it needed a Forge. But it’s an idle game… so we threw out recipes, super-complicated combinations and a bunch of mechanics requiring tons of thinking (but don’t worry, there’s a decent amount of thinking in the game still).

We happened upon our version of a Forge while trying to figure out how to inject loot rarities into the game. They drop as drops (of course they do), but obtaining the right combinations of loot to upgrade your gear was becoming slow. So we tried this:

You put whatever gear you want to up-rarify (is that a word?) onto the anvil. And no, this isn’t the art for the game– this is a Humble Bundle asset pack we bought to prototype– so don’t make fun of the anvil. Drop 4 more of anything that has the same Rarity and BOOM– you upgraded your rarity from:

Common (gray) to

Uncommon (green) to

Rare (blue) to

Epic (purple) to

Legendary (gold) to

INCONCEIVABLE (red).

These Rarities have a simple increase in effectiveness (stats) until Epic, which adds a new stat. Legendary does as well, and then you’ve got RED. We’ll get into what to expect from red later...

*

For moar on Dungeoning:

Hijinks & Speculation on Discord

Updates on Twitter

Discussion on Reddit

Secret Passage: 91b

[godungeoning]

Navigating Dungeoning

Most games– idle, incremental or otherwise– give you a nav bar or an illustrated city to navigate around. Not so with Dungeoning.

We aped Snapchat.

I’ve found that the incremental games I like to play always have something going on, and the act of checking in on how my somethings are doing is as much fun for me as the interactions. So we decided to make each interaction its own screen.

Thus–

Want to get to your Moves? Swipe up to go South and hit the Moves screen (see the post on Prep to understand what Moves do, but tl;dr they help you kill stuff better).

Quests - swipe left to go East and slay.

Inventory - swipe right to head West and gear up.

And so forth:

Not every feature is open at the beginning of the game (what the heck is that poorly-rendered Tower anyway?), so the map of screens for the game will be an expanding thing. The number of plates you have spinning gets crazy, but that’s how you succeed.

Now picture it across 5 different characters.

*

For Moar:

Hijinks & Speculation on Discord

Updates on Twitter

Discussion on Reddit

Secret Passage: 63a

[godungeoning]

Preparing to Go Dungeoning

I guess it’s really how one might go about the prep. To get after it.

Dungeoning is a breakdown of the act of dungeon diving, including preparation, so training and equipping are a big part of the player’s success.

“Moves” train like many incremental games play. Players build up both Stamina (red) and Mana (blue). Then they allocate those precious resources to an increasing array of possible Moves, determined by Class:

As each Move reaches its 10th Level, the next one becomes unlockable (via Gold), providing an increasing array of Attack and Defense power while in combat. 

On the flipside is the inventory. Dungeoneers need gear and there is a bunch of it in the game. Again, this is placeholder art from an awesome Humble Bundle, but the interactions are real:

There’s a semi-paper doll design with 10 slots for Gear:

Head

Shoulders

Chest

Hands

Main Hand

Legs

Off-Hand

Ring

Feet

Trinket

Drag from inventory to equip or level-- dropping a dupe on itself will level the item, resulting in larger stat buckets to fill. Finding a higher-rarity item will both increase the available stats as well as provide other special benefits later (watch the info pop-ups).

So-- you’re prepped. Your moves are increasing in their mightiness and your gear is on your person. Time to dungeon...

*

For Moar:

Hijinks & Speculation on Discord

Updates on Twitter

Discussion on Reddit

(Secret Passage: 42a)

[godungeoning]

Dungeoning

It’s a verb.

A verb that encompasses this funky little game we’re making.

We’ve all “dungeoned.” Whether on graph paper, with miniatures, online or in our own heads, something draws us to the dungeon.

But why?

There are 7 possible “why”s and I doubt anyone is singular in their “why”:

Honor

Justice

Glory

Adventure

Revenge

Plunder

Blood

Adventurers are driven primarily by one of these motivations and secondarily by at least one other. It’s science.

Science aside (the game is more about magick anyway), here’s a few sentences about what Dungeoning is all about from a self-aware in-game warrior:

“Dungeoning is a fantasy incremental RPG tribute to all things adventuronious. Combining meaningful idle mechanics with a layer of deep secrets and discovery, the game plays in your pocket but occupies your mind. If you’re wondering why we all dungeon, Dungeoning will give you the answer.” 

-Sir Sweatsalot, Knight of the Tryhards

The 2-man team at Gunslinger Studios has just begun development on this evil little toy. Facts:

There is no art yet (but we’re working on it, and previews are taking shape). EDIT: Now we do! Stay tuned for looks. 

The systems are rough (but we’re rocketing forward, putting in a feature every week) and

The balance is nonexistent (but it is ”coming soon”).

And you can play it very soon*.

That’s right-- we want you to start playing it as we make it**. It may grab you and it may not-- the loops and interactions are starting to become maddeningly compelling, but I am of course biased. The game isn’t even at Alpha.

But we want you to help us make it tastier. And incremental-er. And dungeon-er.

If you want to wait till we’re further along, cool-- follow the dev on Twitter, Discord or our Subreddit. But if you want to jump in and come along for the entire ride, we’d love to have you. Just see the asterisk at the bottom of this rant.

So, then, adventurers-- Dungeoning. Right?

*IF you’re among the first players that successfully complete the following: you own an iOS device, join the game’s Discord server and say the magick word “DING” in the #magickwords channel, then send me an email at <woot at gunslingerstudios.com> telling me your Discord username, the email you want the Test Flight invitation to go to and what your favorite incremental game ever is-- or if you’re an incremental newcomer, that’s fine, tell me that too. Before long, you’ll get a ridiculously early pre-launch build. If you have questions about these directions, you’re out.

**Yes, Android believers, we are closely pacing the iOS build with the Android build of this game-- it’s a step or two behind, but you will not be left out! Do the instructions in the first asterisk and you will get on The List.

(Secret Passage: 21a)