Weekly Roundup 54 - 12/03/2021 - Getting back into the RPG Project (Patreon)

Hi everyone,

This week I've got some prototyping and mock-up progress to show on working on the RPG project. So lets get into it!

1: What's New

So this week has been the first week since January where I was able to get back into working on the 2nd Project.

For those reading who are new to the Patreon or want a quick recap: I've been prototyping the next game that comes after Ticklish Tessa. It's been an on and off process for the last few months.

Previous prototyping efforts focused on encounter logic / presentation, and some work on navigating an isometric dungeon room style design:

Along with art-driven encounters with prisoners and enemies:

The time I've has away from the project gave me the space to assess the fun factor of these prototypes. 

I think the art-driven encounter prototyping shows a lot of promise and a lot of that work is going to live on. 

I think the isometric dungeon prototype sections once fully implemented would come off as boring as most interaction was mouse-click and UI focused.

As it stood: You didn't navigate the dungeon as much as you navigated UI: Not fun.

So this week I started sketching out the next iteration of the dungeon exploration experience:

This next iteration is taking ques from games that focused on rectangle grid based dungeon movement such as Crypt of the Necrodancer and Zelda.

This method of navigation will work much better with keyboards and controllers.

The dungeon UI as well has been cleaned up focus on the player character and reduce UI real-estate on the screen. In particular having them represented at the bottom middle of the screen. character status will be reflected in this animating UI. A little bit of classic doom inspiration there.

The concept of stamina and willpower has survived from the previous prototype as well! Your character burns through stamina before losing their "Health" - which is called willpower.

While movement and interactions intend to be much more immediate and tactile to the player. Encountering prisoners and enemies is still intending to be an art driven experience, even if the more puzzler style as seen before evolves into something more arcade-like:

The prior prototypes also had the player changing the view screen from dungeon view to a different UI. This revised design consolidates these encounters into never leaving the dungeon screen while still giving us some very fun interactive art and gameplay. 

The goal of all this is to create a second-to-second gameplay loop where its engaging to explore the dungeon and combat it's hazards over the course of 5-15 minute chunks. The time it takes to explore a dungeon floor, rescue all prisoners and survive all hazards.

Dungeon Lore Thoughts:

I've been thinking of some lore about this game. More so about how the prisoners ended up captive in the dungeon.

An idea I've been liking the more I think about it is that all the prisoners in the dungeon are adventurers and heroes that entered the dungeon at their own peril and have subsequently  fallen.

The cult and the entities that exist in the dungeon thrive off this captive pleasure. As such any average person can't enter the dungeon and get captured. But heroes who consent to the perils are welcomed in, captured, and subjected to kinky manifestations of deeper desires. Their trapped lust powering the dungeon.

You're on a mission to rescue these fallen heroes and put a stop to this pleasure cult.

2: What's Next

The next thing to do is build. I Need to create the art assets to turn these monochrome mock-ups into an explorable environment that exists in unity. 

So for next week the focus is on making some environmental art and getting it into Unity!

It was a slow start to the week getting back into the groove of thinking about game development, but 1-week back in I feel like I've got a solid direction to prototype out something fun!

Cheers!

- Caroo