A Family of Gravediggers https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1811497031/a-family-of-grave-diggershttp://www.mindoki.com/Seeking
$6,652 and just started:
I'm doing this kickstarter to raise funds for good Graphics and Music in this Modernized, fully moddable Roguelike!
A Family of Grave Diggers is my try to take the Roguelike genre, which is incredibly fun and addictive, from the hardcore complicated almost inaccessible gameplay and gamedesign to a hardcore accessible gameplay and gamedesign.
Simple to pick up, even after a break, but not that simple to beat.
Beating a game should be Hard, hard but not annoying or tiresome. It should request skill, it should require boldness, it should require perseverance. That's my goal.
Thanks for reading all the way here! I'm going to detail how I'm actually are trying to finalize those goals, stretch goals etcetera, below. So if you are interested feel free to continue, otherwise I hope you have an idea of what I'm working toward, and honestly, I think that I'm kind of right on track (the game is fully playable) and returns I have got absolutely point in that direction.
So hold your hat, here it comes!
Modernizing comes in several ways and this has been my leitmotivs:
1) Ease of use is the first key word here, use the mouse or keyboard, as you like. No tutorial and a minimum of help texts, how / what you do should be obvious.
Example: just slide an item from the back pack slot out of it to drop it. Walk over stuff to pick it up, move towards a monster or NPC to interact.
Of course there will be extras like: CTRL makes you move diagonally so you can play on a laptop without lacking a numpad but that won't be a necessity (long story short, there is no food clock so it doesn't matter if you don't optimize your paths. Told you those old Rougelikes were hardcore!).
2) Second keyword is easy to read. This is a bit work in progress as I add more and more things which sometimes clutter up the interface or makes changing the existing GUI pertinent. I also have to remove or condense things, move it from visible to for example a mouse-over.
Example: Check out percentages and risks just by looking at the screen.
3) Schrödinger map generation for adaptive gameplay, a dungeon floor doesn't need to be pre-generated any more! This means that you (the gamedesigner) can build the randomly generated parts on the fly, taking into account what just happened.
Example: Say the player have that golden key since forever, he might actually stumble on that golden door fifteen levels below or even in another dungeon! Easy to program too, I mean most things are doable but I aim for simplicity so we easily can create nice complexity!
4) Really make every run as unique as possible.
What's unique with the first 10 levels in any Roguelike? Most runs are perfectly similar. My answer is to have several dungeons (and other maps / map parts / areas / towers) with varying difficulty from hard to impossible and then add some rare persistent upgrades making it possible not only to choose different equipments each run but also moving towards new and exciting levels (towers, dungeons, etcetera) now and then!
One example is the shop keepers who you can, rescue and then beef up with new items that you can send back from the dungeon and then start off with in every new run.
On a side note, of course I'll make the dungeons themselves filled with rare encounters and quirky stuff not coming up often to make them as fresh as possible for each run, like the classic Roguelikes do. What I'm doing is an extra built on top of all that.
5) Completely moddable. It should be easy too.
For example, I have modded a tower defence into the game in around an afternoon (not counting graphics). This will open the door for lots of new content to share and use, hopefully even I will be surprised when I play my own creation one day!
Very much a long simmering project, here's to hoping it can cross the finish line in ample style.