My Little Dungeon by thegreystudios

[raw]
made by thegreystudios for LD23 (JAM)
My Little Dungeon is an indirect RPG. In this game you don't control the hero directly but rather build a dungeon for him to go through. Ultimately you want him to gain enough strength to enter the "Tiny World" and solve its mysteries.. Though you have to be careful, if you push him too much you'll kill your hero!

Have a quick read through the instructions but most of it should be self-explanatory. The game can be beat! You might have to try a few different strategies though.

The download is an executable JAR. In Windows just double click the file. On Mac/Linux should be able to run it with: "java -jar MyLittleDungeon.jar". Make sure you have JAVA installed! Any problems let us know. And yes, you have to restart the app if you die. Sorry :(

Web version should run in any modern web browser that supports WebGl.

Controls
********
Left Mouse: Place rooms
Right Mouse (Web: S): Switch room type
Mouse Wheel (Web: A&D): Change room size
Enter/Space: Go down one level

Rooms
*****
Stone Room: Easy enemies, low loot drop
Red Sandstone Room: Harder enemies, better loot drop
Cave: Gives your hero a break and regenerates hp + fatigue

Attributes
**********
HP: Your hero's health
Fatigue/Food: Keep this high or the hero will die
Shield/Attack: Explains itself
XP: Current xp
LVL: Current lvl
Gold: How much Gold you have left. You'll need gold to build rooms!

********

This game was developed by Stefan Bachmann, Simon Bachmann and Gavin Harrison in less than 72hrs. We hope you enjoy the game!

Ratings

Coolness 100% 1
Overall(Jam) 4.00 11
Audio(Jam) 3.79 27
Fun(Jam) 3.68 20
Graphics(Jam) 4.31 20
Humor(Jam) 2.50 107
Innovation(Jam) 4.15 4
Mood(Jam) 3.57 32
Theme(Jam) 2.77 160

Feedback

mollymus
23. Apr 2012 · 21:48 UTC
Wow. Amazing game.
mattchu
23. Apr 2012 · 21:55 UTC
Interesting idea, but it was too slow-paced, and though I didn't finish it, it felt like I could continue to place the Stone rooms and finish it pretty easily with enough patience.
racarate
23. Apr 2012 · 22:00 UTC
Beautiful visuals, I look forward to playing this during LUDUM DARE JUDGING BINGE 2012.
dr_bonzo
23. Apr 2012 · 22:28 UTC
Cool idea, nice realisation. I just got sometimes issue with the hero - he stops moving between rooms, like there would be no passage :/ and then he dies after a minute
davidllanos22
24. Apr 2012 · 00:07 UTC
Very nice game! But yeah, it's maybe a little slow!
kylerhoades
24. Apr 2012 · 03:02 UTC
That was AWESOME!
TheGamingProject
24. Apr 2012 · 03:12 UTC
Kind of off the theme, but very cool. You kind of snowball and rampage through if you start out good.
Jigxor
24. Apr 2012 · 09:26 UTC
Graphics and presentation are amazing. Gameplay was a little slow as others said, but still fun.

Great job!
bitbof
24. Apr 2012 · 11:29 UTC
Really good game. Was actually fun, how about that :D
Great job!
Danvil
24. Apr 2012 · 18:40 UTC
I like the idea of indirect control. Choices are a bit limited. Got stuck at level 3 - couldn't build any further down.
s0ulcrusher
24. Apr 2012 · 19:26 UTC
Damn, the music and style are awesome. I like that you kept Q in for collision debug :) I'm confused as to how to make a 2nd level down, none of the things I try seem to work after I make my first row.

Criticisms:
-The intro is a bit too long
-Make sure the random generation doesn't lock you in on the first turn, that happened on my first try and I had no idea what was going on
-Add tooltips to the resources at the bottom, I didn't know what some of them were
BlackDogg
24. Apr 2012 · 20:00 UTC
I absolutely love the concept, the graphics are gorgeous. But I'm not a "manual reader" and didn't have the information I needed in game (did 3 games before knowing how to go down), and then I had a bug some levels down where the character was stuck and get killed without attacking. Maybe I'm dumb but it kept me out of a real interesting time. Anyway, there is some great work here, I just missed it a bit in my experience :)
vigrid
24. Apr 2012 · 20:58 UTC
Nice music, the game is a bit too slow. Interesting concept - a reverse AD&D - be the dungeon master. Phones and tablets need more games like this!
jrasmussen24
24. Apr 2012 · 21:13 UTC
Awesome work. The game mechanic is quite fun (if just a bit slow) and would be even more fun if the types of rooms were expanded upon a bit/ balanced a little more.
Kharza
24. Apr 2012 · 23:50 UTC
Very fun!
Tifu
25. Apr 2012 · 10:30 UTC
The theme does feel rather forced in :P Regardless, it's a good little game - with some more variety in the gameplay it could be great. Maybe some pre-existing rooms containing minibosses, more variety of rooms to place, maybe some that require rarer resources you have to find and so forth...
bugninja
25. Apr 2012 · 16:58 UTC
I have to agree that the speed of the game is way to slow. If it really moved quickly, I probably wouldn't be able to stop playing :) Music was superb.
ChronoDK
26. Apr 2012 · 19:37 UTC
What an awesome idea here! You should expand on this game once the voting is over - I would love to see more. It was quite confusing to begin with figuring out what rooms to place, and I also didn't figure out why I lost suddenly - like the hero would rather starve to death than enter the door I made for him.
daredevildave
26. Apr 2012 · 21:04 UTC
Great execution, audio and art style. You could definitely build on this.

A few minor issues, intro is too slow, no restart, and mouse wheel, right-click didn't seem to work for me (Chrome, OSX)
vilya
27. Apr 2012 · 01:32 UTC
Quite an achievement in the time you had! My guy died for no reason I could tell on my playthrough. Unlike others have been saying, I liked the pacing - it suited my playing style. The game didn't really have anything much to do with the theme though now, did it...?
Shigor
27. Apr 2012 · 01:32 UTC
Good work, guys. First impression was really great (music helped a lot, visuals are nice too), idea seemed great, but the gameplay quickly devolved into placing big redstone room and watching hero slowly walking his way through the enemies and lost it's appeal.

Bit faster gameplay, a lot more choices for player (maybe giving ability to choose what character gets for level?) and this could be awesome game.

And when I think about it, I'm really hard pressed to find some connection with theme here.
mneubrand
27. Apr 2012 · 02:40 UTC
Great game! Gets a bit repetitive after some time but the concept is awesome. I really enjoyed playing it.
🎤 thegreystudios
27. Apr 2012 · 05:00 UTC
Thanks for playing guys! :) The feedback you've been giving is spot on and very helpful.

Regarding the theme: Yes can't deny that the theme is somewhat on the sidelines, however we did try and incorporate the tiny world concept at the boss level. So if you have made it all the way down..
leafo
27. Apr 2012 · 06:42 UTC
Really cool concept and lovely graphics. Thanks for the game.
Gornova
27. Apr 2012 · 09:45 UTC
great idea and great work, an area of improvement could be interface, not so intuitive
Orni
27. Apr 2012 · 15:01 UTC
this is such a great idea - wow
please continue working on this !
jack_iv
28. Apr 2012 · 19:19 UTC
Really fun. Love that you used libgdx.
Moth
29. Apr 2012 · 11:52 UTC
Beautiful music and great graphics- perhaps the best music I have heard between the entire 23rd Ludum Dare compo/jam. The presentation instantly gripped me from the start (the intro was great). Really great and complete game if a tad slow.

I was amused by the classic game reference at the end!
Drabiter
30. Apr 2012 · 02:00 UTC
Beautiful art and music!
uprightpath
30. Apr 2012 · 06:56 UTC
I got stuck just inside a door on several occasions and my man couldn't target the enemy and thus got killed!
Per
30. Apr 2012 · 10:15 UTC
I like the visuals and music a lot.
The right mouse button can't really be used in the web version, unless you turn the context menu off (which is not supported by all browsers, but most of them ;) )
Danik
30. Apr 2012 · 14:01 UTC
Loved it! Novel concept, great graphics and audio!
McFunkypants
30. Apr 2012 · 23:00 UTC
A masterpiece. Fresh, original, beautiful, fun. I'm blown away. One of the very best. KEEP WORKING ON THIS GAME and polish it (make it faster? more choices? more strategies?) and you will have a true classic.
Vilborg
01. May 2012 · 06:20 UTC
On Windows XP, game closed immediately after opening.
Thotep
02. May 2012 · 12:15 UTC
I love the concept of guiding this little guy without actually controlling him. I hope you'll expand on it! The game seems too slow to me and I got stuck a few times... But overall, great job!
MrBarnslig
03. May 2012 · 06:12 UTC
Pretty interesting idea! I wish that didn't need the enter key to move down a level, however. Also you get stuck when you run out of gold - perhaps a slow boat option that gives you a trickle of coins? The graphics and music were nice too. Great job!
domrein
03. May 2012 · 20:42 UTC
Initially I was excited by the graphics, sound and mood of the game. But the gameplay doesn't really live up to the rest. Slow paced and ultimately not much control over what you can do.
SidetrackGames
05. May 2012 · 01:24 UTC
Very cool concept, and some nice art.
derrickdool
05. May 2012 · 03:41 UTC
Really great entry. Played through multiple times. Hope to see it move beyond LD
matthias_zarzecki
06. May 2012 · 12:11 UTC
This is great! Building a dungeon and watching your "hero" go through is really satisfying. Nice work!

You do get stuck quite often, though.
CappaGames
09. May 2012 · 05:17 UTC
Awesome idea and execution. Please continue on with this idea.
Canard Sauvage
10. May 2012 · 18:57 UTC
The music and art were great, but I couldn't finish the game, as the hero gets stuck quite often and one time I could build a room on the next level. I tried 5 times :(
tcstyle
10. May 2012 · 19:44 UTC
What an awesome idea. I really like games with this "passive" concept of influence on the game world. The graphics and sounds are great even if the soundtrack doesn't totally fit the mood.
Another level of decisions to make would be great and more content/room-types obviously.
Unfortunately after delving about six floors I got stuck in a bug where the player character tried to kill a dead slime over and over again.
schattenkind.net
10. May 2012 · 20:53 UTC
Just one word. Amazing! I love it.
ilo
10. May 2012 · 22:13 UTC
Brilliant idea and execution. I quite liked the casual pace, but it would be great if you added more depth to the game.
Johnicholas
11. May 2012 · 00:07 UTC
Indirect Control; very nice.
Christina Antoinette Neofotistou
11. May 2012 · 12:32 UTC
Indirect control is fantastic, and this has so much potential. Full marks on innovation too. It's lemmings-y and awesome :)
JaJ
12. May 2012 · 12:32 UTC
Great visuals and sound, and a very original idea! I agree with the earlier comment that it feels too slow. Also, when I got to the yellow-ish skeletons, they refused to attack me and I couldn't proceed.
BenW
14. May 2012 · 00:04 UTC
Really fun
Make A Game
14. May 2012 · 00:52 UTC
Made me miss Dungeon Keeper. I wish I could skip the intro. Pretty cool concept. Give it a bit more control over the monsters and loot and you have a great game here.
Make A Game
14. May 2012 · 00:56 UTC
Oh wow, never mind that, for some reason I wasn't getting the different types of enemies from the bigger rooms.
🎤 thegreystudios
14. May 2012 · 05:59 UTC
Thank you everyone for playing and giving feedback. Much appreciated :) <3