nice man

How do I play it? The link seems to bring me to the information document rather than the download.

@lexyvil Sorry, this is actually a non-digital game. The link to the google docs is the game itself.

@ratstail91 Oh haha, I see. This is my fault, I should have read into it more. That's actually interesting, as I didn't know people could publish non-digital games on here~

Interesting to see some physical games. Good job!

I missed my bi-weekly Dungeons & Dungeons game because of Ludum Dare, so I thank you for giving me an excuse to roll some dice! Rules clarification: When it says "at any time, you may spend 1d6 sanity points", does really mean at *any* time (e.g. after rolling 3d6 on a strength challenge but before resolving who wins)?

I'd recommend changing the PvE tests to be "both roll 3d6 and add to their stat, higher wins", it's statistically the same as subtracting (I think), and seems less complicated to do the math (don't end up with negative numbers), though I realize most of the other things are all "roll lower" = "better", so maybe that's not great for consistency.

The underground river, which I kept rolling, seems overpowered ;). It's a little unclear as to whether not not an agility test is required to climb the 30 meters, as the section about agility just mentions climbing 10 meters - unless I'm supposed to make 3 agility tests for that one?

I made it up to 150 meters before I had to move on to other things, was fun though!

The manual needs more hand-painted artwork.

Made it to 50 meters by the power of pigman friendship and underground rivers, before going mad trying to fix my leg that keeps getting chewed on by moles.

I like that there's alternate ways to make progress based on which stat you favor for restoring with sanity. Strength helps you win more fights that would otherwise make you lose progress. Intelligence helps you win friends to help you climb faster. Agility helps you make slower but consistent progress.

The game feels like it drags on after a while, though. A lot of encounters don't really do anything after some point, for example the golem and the gnomes after I've already gotten treasure. And you rarely ever have a one-on-one fight, since you're most likely to encounter pigmen (1d6 or 3d6) and moles (1d6). My first combat was against 16 pigmen, which I lost at the 5th. And I rarely won combat against such massive numbers, the only times I succeeded were against a single mole, a pair of them, and a lucky break against 6 pigmen.

I would recommend reducing the length of the game somehow, and the size of the encounters. You can always make a fight tougher by increasing a creature's strength. Maybe also make persuasion against high intelligence creatures worth doing by increasing the reward to 20 meters or so?

@jimbly Thank you very much! I hadn't considered using sanity points before resolving a check, but as written, that's perfectly fine! For the underground river, you only make one agility check to climb the whole 30 meters. It's intended as a shortcut.

@cbdevilla Thanks! It can drag on, but ultimately, what I want the game to do is to induce the "sinking feeling" from the title, as your stats run away from you. I'm impressed that you made it to 50 meters. You can always adjust the difficulty by changing how deep you begin at; that's the beauty of PnP games. Increasing the helping hand to 20 meters might be something I try eventually. Did you try getting help from the gnomes and the treasure golem?

@ratstail91 The mechanic of losing stat points when you fail a test (and sometimes during random events) is enough to convey the sinking feeling, in my opinion. The problem is just that after a long enough time and a ton of dice rolls, the mood devolves from that into plain fatigue. I was almost tempted to give up midway, but I wanted to give the game as fair a review as I could.

(Actually, now that I think about it, a big chunk of the second half of my run was spent not making any further agility tests to climb because it had gotten too low to be reliable, which became a monotonous string of mostly ignoring everything that aren't pigmen, moles, or underground rivers.)

This is just my personal playstyle, but I'm not usually a big risk-taker, so I never attempted to get help from the gnomes. They're a 50/50 chance at best since your stats never go higher than 12, and failing means I lose intelligence for any further attempts. Safer to leave them be and get help from pigmen instead. As for the treasure golem, you don't have it marked as "Can Talk", so I didn't think you could get help from it.

@cbdevilla Sorry, I forgot the golem couldn't talk, my bad. I think I might've started the player off at too deep a level.

I like the idea and creativity. Awesome job.

- no-bad encounters -> average loss of 8 agility points if all tests are made against full agility, so spending san makes it potentially possible to make it out in that case (just a math note)


- making the combat challenges take less die roles would be useful and simpler math..
- I didn't really feel like there was much player agency (which is the big thing with choose your own adventure/RPG type games)... there was the choice of when to spend SAN and occasionally a few other choices... but they weren't every very interesting choices. almost always one of them was clearly mathematically superior.

@adroitconceptions Thanks for your feedback! Yes, player agency is definitely one area where this game falls short.

Great game! Very cool and interesting! :D