« Double Fine's Schafer: Expressive Games Come From Individual Vision | Main | From Gardener To Game-Maker: Charlie Knight On Reaching Scoregasm » Sunday, February 13, 2011 Road To The IGF: The Quick-Burst Roguelike Fun Of Desktop Dungeons 
Roguelikes are famous -- or infamous, depending on who you ask -- for their somewhat impenetrable design and epic, life-engulfing quests that can take months to complete. But there's no reason they have to be that way, as IGF entry Desktop Dungeons proves quite adeptly.
Born from the South African trio of developers at the pithily named Quarter Circle Forward + Design (QCF), Desktop Dungeons condenses the procedurally generated, perma-death infused questing roguelikes are known for into a streamlined package, so that each quest takes an average of only 10 minutes to complete.
The game is up for two 2011 IGF Awards, including the Seumas McNally Grand Prize. We talked to QCF's Danny Day Rodain Joubert about the game's inspiration, creation and future plans for monetization.
What background do you have making games?
Danny Day: There aren't really industry veterans here in South Africa (apart from one or two notable Canadian imports) so we were all on the hobbyist side until a few years ago.
I did some really eclectic game design freelancing after accidentally starting a development community and ended up briefly working at the only console development studio in the country. When they closed, I started QCF as a place to make the sorts of game ideas that you keep wanting to make, but never get around to.
What development tools did you use?
DD: The Desktop Dungeons prototype that exploded into the free alpha is built in Game Maker. It started seriously creaking at the seams last year, so we moved over to Unity in the hopes of hitting as many platforms as possible.
How long has your team been working on the game?
DD: Just over a year now. I think the IGF announcement came around about the time Rodain was first working on the prototype last year. Half that time has been testing ideas and balance tweaks with the free version, the rest was "nose to the grindstone" for the full game.
How did you come up with the concept for Desktop Dungeons?
Rodain Joubert: It basically stemmed from a white-hot desire to play stuff like Crawl in convenient, ten-minute sessions. Condensing a genre as deep and nuanced as the venerable roguelike into an accessible coffee-break game proved to be tricky (and at the time felt kinda like borderline heresy).
To get the game working in a single-screen environment, many roguelike features needed to be abstracted or eliminated entirely. These changes became some of Desktop Dungeons' strongest qualities: Enemies couldn't move due to the limited dungeon area; exploration drove regeneration since game time didn't progress normally; etc.
For you, what's the attraction of the roguelike genre?
DD: Anything that's procedurally generated is always a big win. Add in permadeath and you have intense play sessions that are never going to be 100 percent the same.
Very few game genres are as inherently replayable and rewarding as roguelikes. You're creatively and emotionally engaged as a player because it's your story, even if you end up dying horribly, which is something that "load-after-any-mistake" game design often chases away.
A lot of rougelike vets seem to feel like roguelikes are "supposed" to be very difficult and relatively inaccessible. Do you agree with that sentiment to an extent?
DD: Difficult yes, inaccessible no. Difficulty is a measure of the density of important decisions a player has to make. Rodain built everything in DD to be a tough decision - if it was a no-brainer, it got taken out.
Accessibility is a completely different story, games that rely on inaccessibility challenges are dexterity tests - fighting games, twitch shmups or even high-level RTS play. We don't think roguelikes need to obscure their deliciously detailed systems with confusing interfaces and controls. Then again, we don't code in VI either...
How do you plan on making DD commercially viable?
DD: We're going to start courting Steam very soon, then once the full game is out on PC/Mac we're be heading for iPhone and Android as fast as possible. If we can figure out a way to make the same kingdom carry over to your portable device, that'd be perfect.
We've had some rather out there ideas for Facebooking the game too, but those are still a little more tenuous. We've basically got a core that a lot of people find really fun, so we want to give them the best possible version of that with features they didn't know they were missing.
What's next for the development of DD?
DD: We're eating sleep so that we can have a playable test of the new version at our IGF stand. It's been too long since anyone but us played the latest DD and we could do with the feedback.
Have you played any of the other IGF finalists? Any games you've particularly enjoyed?
DD: Minecraft destroys huge chunks of my time every time I load it up (potions next Notch, potions of speed, flight, resist fire!). Between us we've enjoyed Amnesia, Solipskier and Super Crate Box. Rodain keeps threatening to "throw a party" so that he can break out B.U.T.T.O.N.
What do you think of the current state of the indie scene?
DD: I think the indie scene is so large and varied that you get out what you put in - it's very participatory. Coming from a rather isolated place in terms of game development, we tend to view the international indies as this big collection of people doing a bewildering array of awesome stuff.
It's exciting being able to emerge from our local sphere and meet all these cool people that we've only read about before. We're realising that you need to just get out there and poke people, make stuff happen.
Without the local scene DD wouldn't have formed. Without the international coverage it got it wouldn't have grown. I'm dying to see what we end up making after all the things we learn and the people we meet at the IGF and how we can bring that all back to SA.
Posted by Simon Carless on February 13, 2011 12:00 AM | Permalink Post a commentName:
Email Address:
URL:
Remember personal info?
Comments:If you enjoy reading GameSetWatch.com, you might also want to check out these UBM TechWeb Game Network sites:
Gamasutra (the 'art and business of games'.)
Game Career Guide (for student game developers.)
Indie Games (for independent game players/developers.)
Finger Gaming (news, reviews, and analysis on iPhone and iPod Touch games.)
GamerBytes (for the latest console digital download news.)
Worlds In Motion (discussing the business of online worlds.)Monthly Archive February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 GameSetWatch [Twitter / RSS feed] is an alt.video game weblog from the people who run:
Recent Comments RSS? GameSetWatch's RSS feed
Who? Editors: Simon Carless & Eric CaoiliAbout GameSetWatch
Search Search GameSetWatch:
Game Set Watch Jobs Mobile Games Developers - Dubai Police [02.12.11]
Lead Artist - Telltale Games [02.12.11]
Junior Programmer - GameSalad Inc. [02.12.11]
ART DIRECTOR - Avalanche Studios [02.12.11]
Game Designer - Meteor Games, LLC [02.12.11]
View All Jobs Gamasutra News
Sony Ericsson's Xperia Play Confirmed For March - Verizon, Unity As Partners
Limbo, Inertia Win Top Prizes At 2011 Indie Game Challenge
Top iPad Game Apps: Discounted World of Goo Leads Platform Sales
Arrowhead's Magicka Breaks 200,000 Units Sold
DICE 2011: Bing Gordon Puts The Mother-In-Law Above Moore's Law
Industry Lawyers Establish Video Game Bar Association
DICE 2011: Futurist McGonigal Says Gaming 'Single Most Productive' Way To Spend Time
Nintendo's Game & Watch Veterans Talk Creating Classic Handhelds
HL2 Mod Dear Esther Receiving Standalone Commercial Release
RealNetworks' Game Revenues Drop 9% In 2010
Read All News Columns Column: The Interactive Palette Column: Game Time With Mr. Raroo Column: Homer In Silicon Column: The Magic Resolution Column: Battle Klaxon Column: Sound Current Column: Diamond In The Rough Column: The Game Anthropologist Column: @ Play Column: Alt Space Column: Game Mag Weaseling Irregular Columns Berkley's BUZZ, Bastards Of 32-Bit, Shmup Me Up, Letters From The Metaverse, Game Rag Slapdown, Cherish The Chips, Game Ads A-Go-Go, Compilation Catalog, The Gaijin Restoration, Free Play, Keyboard Bashing, The Gentleman Nerd, Green And Black Attack, Arcade Obscurities, Beyond 3DO, MMOG Nation, Parallax Memories, Game Collector's Melancholy, Cinema Pixeldiso, Column: Might Have Been, Column: HDR Knowledge, Column: Beyond Tetris, Column: Play Evolution, Column: The Aberrant Gamer, Column: Roboto-chan, Column: World Of Warcraft Exposed, Column: Jump Button, Column: The Amateur, Column: Save The Robot, Column: The Z Axis, Column: Why We Play, Column: Welcome To The GameSetWatch Comic, Column: GDRI Wisdom, Column: Vox Populi, Column: Quiz Me Qwik, Column: Bell Game And Candle, Column: Lingua Franca. Copyright © UBM TechWeb
0 comments:
Post a Comment