Genre: Roguelike RPG
- Project started on: November 3rd 2017
- Project ended on: November 12th 2017
- Approximate time spent on project: 35 hours
Boardungeon is a GameJam that I created for PROCJAM 2017, a gamejam where you need to create some kind of procedural 'thing'. Two years ago, I had created Area 15:51:51, a platformer exploration game where you would go floors of a building, the inspiration taken from the free art pack I had decided to use. This time, I went with @devilsgarage's art pack that reminded me of a board game of some sort. I wanted to make a board game RPG where you would explore a procedurally generated dungeon.
I'm not sure if 100% of my ideas came through perfectly, but I'm happy with the result, it's a game that I enjoy playing, there's a lot of content and things to discover, and getting the ending of the game takes a bit of effort, but also of luck. You effectively need to beat the game with 3 of the 4 classes before you can see the ending. I think that the procedural generation of the levels - and of the music - fit well with the spirit of the gamejam. I'm also happy of how 'complete' a game it is for something made in only a full work week. The only thing that I could've improved on is the evil red dice; It's the seed of all other in-game randomness, but it could have been hidden without any big changes. Oh well.
Screenshots
About the game
There are four classes in Boardungeon; The warrior can charge, gaining extra dice to move, tolerates alcohol better and gets more use out of the sword and shield. The magician can magically create more floors around itself and gets more use out of the wizard hat and potions. The thief gets more gold, can lockpick locked doors and has a spell to create money out of thin air. They get healed when they collect riches and they get more use of the Golden Cup and Divine Map artifacts. The priest can heal itself, takes reduced damage from traps, regenerates constantly when wielding the heart container and has an improved radius of effect for the magic hammer. They also get bonus movement dice when they discover new rooms.
Besides coins, player will find potions (of stamina, mana and health), gems, wizard hats, swords, shields, golden chalices, keys, heart containers and divine maps. These items have various effects based on certain conditions. The potion of mana for instance will recover mana if the player is missing some of it, but will drain their mana to give them an extra movement dice if they are at maximum. To unlock more items, players will need to find enough gold. Using the thief helps for this.
There are a couple of room templates, from kitchens with food, banks that contain money, zoos with enemies, trapped rooms with a spike floor puzzle, bars with beer, magical prisons with their mysterious pillars, casino rooms, armories with various items, warp rooms and finally the exit, where three characters must be left if the player wants to win.
Finally, the various hazards that await the player range from negative effects that occur after each movement turn, spiked floors that trigger at specific intervals, dart-throwing traps, falling boulders, monsters and cracking floors that send you to your death.