ALL OVER THE PLACE
In my last post I discussed an Action/RPG/Platformer/Diabloesque/JRPG game that I had started working on, and showed a short prototype video. As if the genre of this game wasn’t already all over the place enough, I’ve since dropped the project (for now at least), and started work on something else.
The main reason for this was simply the lack of assets available to me for the game I wanted to make. I wanted to have fully modular armor for my character, but I simply couldn’t find the assets that I needed, even paid assets, and I can’t afford to hire an artist to create the level of sophistication for the armor that I wanted. This aspect of the game was really important to me, and without it, it just wouldn’t have felt complete. However, I happened upon a large number of highly reusable, customizable, affordable and high quality assets during my search which inspired me to go a slightly different route. Thanks to the prepaid Visa cards I got for Christmas, I was even able to buy a decent number of them ;).
Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been a huge fan of First Person Dungeon Crawlers. The first that comes to mind is SSI’s 1991 game Eye of The Beholder which was awesome (somehow I thought that flipping through a book to find the copyright protection phrase actually added to the fun). Even writing this I get nostalgic thinking about similar games like Catacomb 3D, Arcana, Ultima Underworld, and of course, Daggerfall. This is a genre I’m always returning to. Even with AAA titles like Skyrim and Far Cry sitting on my computer, I’ll find myself putting them down in favor of playing old Dungeon Crawlers that I’d never heard of (like Anvil of Dawn).
In the last few years, I’ve been delighted whenever I’ve found a new title in the same vein as these classics, and to see how well they’ve been received.
Legend Of Grimrock did an amazing job of remaining true to these old classics while providing the added bonus of beautiful modern graphics, and has done incredibly well in terms of reception and sales.
Star Crawlers (even though it’s still in Early Access) manages to hang on to the meat of the genre while spicing it up with Sci-Fi flavors and innovative new features.
The Quest HD , a lesser known 2016 re-release of an older game is a full fledged first person dungeon crawler in beautiful 2D with open world environments and a great story. I might even argue that it outclasses many of the above titles in many ways. Really worth a look if you’re into this kind of thing.
I digress.
The point is: I really love these kinds of games. I don’t know if it’s something about the atmosphere, the storytelling, looting and killing or just the nostalgia of it all, but I think they stand out as my favorite genre.
So I’ve decided to make one!