Information Dungeon Kingdom: Sign of the Moon - A Real-time Dungeon Crawler on IndieGoGo

[DarkUnderlord]

Don't be an idiot. Grimrock casts a long shadow over the genre and it's in the best interests of some random IndieGoGo dude to be standing as far away from it as possible.

You're right. He should add more elements from Candy Crush so as to differentiate his game from BEING A BLOBBER.

You god-damned retards.

 

[kanda]

Hello everyone!
Sorry i forgot to "watch the thread" ! I just added it.
Let's show you some portraits for the game : (i published other ones on the indiegogo page) :

 

[Peter]

You're right. He should add more elements from Candy Crush so as to differentiate his game from BEING A BLOBBER.

Am I being trolled or are you being serious with these strawmen?

 

[mastroego]

This guy can draw!
Seriously guys, not much traffic there still I see, try to get in contact with some game-zines or something...

 

[Villagkouras]

The first RPG featuring Jesus Christ?

J/K, portraits are great, game looks really solid.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

You're right. He should add more elements from Candy Crush so as to differentiate his game from BEING A BLOBBER.

Am I being trolled or are you being serious with these strawmen?

A brick wall is, of course, a brick wall, but simple things like a slightly different lighting and colour scheme, or more wooden elements, or slightly different colours/materials for walls/floors/ceilings, or whatever, would already go a long way in making your game seem more unique.

Yes, he could replace the stone walls and floors in his carved out of stone dungeon with exotic materials. Perhaps an avant-garde plastic design and bespoke timber framing? The addition of rugs will definitely make people think this isn't a Grimrock clone and instead of the yellow and orange glow from fires (you know the one, the sort of ambient fire-inspired lighting you'd expect in a stone dungeon that's lit with torches), they could go with a neon and fluorescent combination to give it that modern feel.

 

[Peter]

Yes, he could replace the stone walls and floors in his carved out of stone dungeon with exotic materials. Perhaps an avant-garde plastic design and bespoke timber framing? The addition of rugs will definitely make people think this isn't a Grimrock clone and instead of the yellow and orange glow from fires (you know the one, the sort of ambient fire-inspired lighting you'd expect in a stone dungeon that's lit with torches), they could go with a neon and fluorescent combination to give it that modern feel.

Again with the exaggeration.

It's possible to achieve a more unique aesthetic while still maintaining a traditional blobber look/feel. The screenshot the dev posted near the bottom of page 2 is already more visually interesting than that first video, imo, while still being a completely traditional dungeon. It's not just that the first video has a vaguely Grimrock vibe, it's that it looks almost exactly like it, much like how Grimrock lifted its aesthetic almost completely from Black Crypt.

All I'm saying is that it's not in the dev's interest for the Steam masses to shrug this off as a Grimrock clone. Changing small elements in the visuals would go some ways in helping against this.

I won't be arguing any more. Hopefully you can get through your thick skull what I meant.

 

[bloodlover]

So the races are human, dwarf, elf and...?

 

[kanda]

So the races are human, dwarf, elf and...?

dark elf, halfing, and some "unreferenced/more exotic ones"

 

[kanda]

Yes, he could replace the stone walls and floors in his carved out of stone dungeon with exotic materials. Perhaps an avant-garde plastic design and bespoke timber framing? The addition of rugs will definitely make people think this isn't a Grimrock clone and instead of the yellow and orange glow from fires (you know the one, the sort of ambient fire-inspired lighting you'd expect in a stone dungeon that's lit with torches), they could go with a neon and fluorescent combination to give it that modern feel.

Again with the exaggeration.
It's possible to achieve a more unique aesthetic while still maintaining a traditional blobber look/feel. The screenshot the dev posted near the bottom of page 2 is already more visually interesting than that first video, imo, while still being a completely traditional dungeon. It's not just that the first video has a vaguely Grimrock vibe, it's that it looks almost exactly like it, much like how Grimrock lifted its aesthetic almost completely from Black Crypt.
All I'm saying is that it's not in the dev's interest for the Steam masses to shrug this off as a Grimrock clone. Changing small elements in the visuals would go some ways in helping against this.
I won't be arguing any more. Hopefully you can get through your thick skull what I meant.

No worries dude, i got you. And the 3 others environments are very differents, in no way you will be able to compare them to grimrock (and the 2 included, from what i have seen from then currently, but, of course, there'll be probably some suprises from them too...). And about the bricks one, the walls are one thing, but the decoration, furnitures and also add some variety (sorry for my english ^^), and we have room to make levels to look different. thanks for your feedbacks.

 

[Magellan]

The first RPG featuring Jesus Christ?

J/K, portraits are great, game looks really solid.

Yes, Jesus is going to be a playable wizard character. He starts with three spells in his spell book: Create food, inspire, and of course resurrection.

 

[kanda]

any comments on how to improve on the "combat mambo" gameplay? Or on what you've learned from previous titles in the genre? (EOTB, lands of lore, grimrock etc)

Repeating my question in case kanda missed it.

Sorry, missed it. What do you mean by combat mambo ? The fact that we keep moving / attacking ?

 

[t]

He starts with three spells in his spell book: Create food, inspire, and of course resurrection.

The cooldown on the res spell is a huge downside though: 3 fucking days?!

 

[kanda]

"Combat mambo" refers to the dominant strategy in this genre of games (RT blobbers) has been to kite enemies in a circle. I consider this repetitive, exploiting AI limitations, and an example of degenerate gameplay. What do you think about this?
More generally: Since you are making an RT blobber, could you comment on your design philosophy and how it relates to other titles in the genre? It would be great to hear about what you've learned and/or were inspired by previous RT blobbers (e.g. EOTB 1-3, Lands of Lore, Anvil of Dawn, Dungeon Master, Grimrock).

Well, let me be clear: we are not going, of course, replace a turn based game about the range of possible strategies. Also, Dungeon Kingdom, obviously, is not a fighting game. However, we work a lot of the environments usage to help fighting creatures. It will happen in the game that you meet very strong creatures, probably too strong for most of players, and you'll have to use carefully your environment. A funny example, in Dungeon Master is when you use the doors to bash creatures. We can do that in DK, despite they won't stay long under the door here. There will be many opportunities for player to avoir direct combat. But it will be a choice....Except the few situations you will have to avoid the fight, you can choose (when possible, but it happens often). For example, we don't have "memory" split for each levels, all the levels are continuous...this can be a great source of strategies to kills beast: just put a lot of heavy rocks on a closed pit, if there is a grid under your fit, you can activate the lever on right time to hurt the creature by opening the pit with the rocks falling. About dancing around, it won't alway happen, depending the level topology. Also think about the creatures, they don't have all a behavior that allow you to use the a circle tip. I try to take care to the AI so, as far as possible, not all creature will react the same way.

About the design philosophy, well my main reference being Chaos Strikes Back, for the level design, if you played it, you'll quickly understand that's Dungeon King has a very different Dungeon design from Grimrock. And, i don't want to spoil too much, but actually there is more than just "dungeon" environment...! We also want to use a lot the level verticality, as we are not constrained by grid on height axis. The second thing is the real physics. So you can throw item in a realistic way, here i mean it will have a free trajectory, and won't stuck to grid alignment. If you combine those 3 features, real physics, no level limitation in height axis, continuous levels....You can imagine the great possibilities in the level design...! Add to this some other stuffs, like burning some part of environment... ^^

About the Game system, we are closer to Dungeon Master than to grimrock. (not tree here). Also the magic is a bit different. Like in DM and Grim, we can create spells using runes, but need to do it only once. When you create some, these spells are added in your spell book forever. You can then cast them whenever you want, as long you have the required mana. And you have a few quick launch slots, so it's up to you to assign the rights spells before a fight, according the creatures.

And the ambiance side, the tension factor is important, often missing in the clones of Dungeon Master.

i hope i answered to your wonders ^^ Tell me if you need more details.

 

[Magellan]

He starts with three spells in his spell book: Create food, inspire, and of course resurrection.

The cooldown on the res spell is a huge downside though: 3 fucking days?!

LMAO! Well played sir!

 

[kanda]

Hello all,

A quick update to tell you about the campaign on indiegogo ( http://igg.me/at/dungeonkingdom) :

We'll be a bit more quiet the next days. we are preapring a trailer with new environments for the last part of the campaign, so no worries, we are still very active even we don't publish screens or only few updates for few days. That's said, i am still keeping an eye on the forums if there are some questions. And thanks to all spreading the word. Thanks so much to the RPGCodex community.

kanda

 

[kanda]

sorry dudes, the link above to the indiegogo campaign was mistyped, here is the right one (and thanks to the user who did report it to me)
http://igg.me/at/dungeonkingdom
While i am here, let's post a new screenshot:

Regards all!

 

[mastroego]

Why isn't people pledging this?
Kanda, you have to contact some websites, this thread isn't enough apparently

 

[Mortmal]

He did , but mainstream sites even french ones arent helping . Tough world for indies.

 

[kanda]

Why isn't people pledging this?
Kanda, you have to contact some websites, this thread isn't enough apparently

Well, i wonder too
Actually, according the statistics, we got a few pledgers coming from RPGCodex domain, exactly 5, which is much better than nothing, and thanks so much to them.

About contacting Websites: well, i'll tell you my daily life since we started the campaign: posting, posting, posting, writing mails, hundreds of mails....
The thing is, we got lot of support on Steam Greenlight, many great comments, we almost reached the top 100 (and i guess we are close to be validated?) without being relayed in press. Which means we have a good amount of potential buyers and a growing community. But there is a problem: even we added link to the indiegogo campaign on the steam greenlight page, most of them will never know about it as they don't get notified of my updates on the greenlight page. This is a first mistake, we should have run both campaigns at the same time (indiegogo and greenlight), so we would have probably get more pledges because of the exposure on Steam on the main page of project during the 3-4 first days. But now, it's very difficult to reach them. We recently started a Dungeon Kingdom group on steam, and we are trying to invite the most enthusiasts based on their comments. But it's taking a lot of time!

But the main problem i think is the press...Not the RPG press, which welcomed us nicely and that was so helpful (thanks again to RPG Codex staff for their post!), but the main video game press. They simply never reply your request, and probably not even read the email we have sent to them. First, they prefer make some post about somthing which make the buzz, as they need traffic to earn more with advertising. Secondly, they probably also receive too many request. But, i also contacted a few guys working as writter on thoses websites, directly, on FB or other way, they just don't reply too. I thought, that as the project is french, and their site is french too, perhaps they could help us just a little bit, who knows ? But no way, they just didn't care. They are absolutely not supporting creativity! Everybody in the community is so surprised, and we eveng ot a few guys from it trying to post themselves and reach those site, without any positive result.I should rename myself to "John carmack" or any famous name, and all doors would probably suddenly open for us.

That's said, we keep working hard, posting to forum to introduce the project, trying reaching more and more websites, keep writing to all "contact@xxxx.com" on earth.... And at the same time, we are improving our strategy, and preparing the 10 last days of the campaign. We are working on a trailer, more dynamic than the gameplay videos, with two new (very different environments). We'll then repost everywhere in a short while. At the same time, not sure yet, but we may have a few articles, even not on major websites, still good ones and we hope it will help too.

The sad thing is, i couldn't add any single new line of code since the begining of the campaign, but it's worth working hard on promoting to reach any single new pledgers.

 

[kanda]

He did , but mainstream sites even french ones arent helping . Tough world for indies.

You have perfectly expressed what i wanted to say, and with only a few words
thanks ^^
This the major problem.

Each time we finally reach some dungeon crawler fans, they write us and say they are so happy about our project. But we can't reach the others...

 

[bussinrounds]

Did you make a thread here ? http://www.dungeon-master.com/forum/

 

[kanda]

Did you make a thread here ? http://www.dungeon-master.com/forum/

Yes i did
this is the first place with grim boards wich i introduced the project in 2013

Regards.

 

[Abelian]

Google translation (plus a few stylistic touch-ups) of the most recent article from the indiegogo updates page:

Dungeon Kingdom: Sign of the Moon, a French 3D dungeon crawler, is currently being developed on Android, iOS, Mac and PC. A push in the right direction from an interesting and ambitious project!

Launched two weeks ago on the crowdfunding platform Indiegogo, Dungeon Kingdom aims to be a return in full force of the dungeon-crawler RPG, from the time when you were brought to explore (as a party composed of different classes) a labyrinthine castle, such as in games like Eye of the Beholder, Ultima Underworld, Ishar, Dungeon Master to name only the oldest, or even Legend of Grimrock and Arx Fatalis for the most recent.

But of course, it is not a cakewalk, creatures and monsters abound in this enclosed area dotted with riddles blocking your way and access to many other treasures and majestic objects.

The development team, consisting of six people, promises us to bring back the genre with a series of planned features. We are told that the game will benefit from powerful graphics and physics engine allowing good light management and animations, in various environments.

Also: an "advanced" artificial intelligence, the ability to interact with certain elements of the environment, and cross-platform play feature that allows for example to start on PC and continue on another platform. The achievements / trophies will also be part of the player’s reward for his exploits.

To materialize, Dungeon Kingdom requests the tidy sum of € 9,000. Currently, € 1,428 (€ 1,838 now) has already been raised, 16% of the amount expected and the fundraising campaign ends on October 4th!

In order to participate in the creation of Dungeon Kingdom: Sign of the Moon or for more information about it, click on this address.

 

[Abelian]

Google translation (plus a few stylistic touch-ups) of another French article from the indiegogo updates page:
http://www.pockett.net/n24098_iPhon..._Moon_en_campagne_de_financement_participatif

Hydro Games launched a campaign on crowd-funding platform Indiegogo for their game Dungeon Kingdom: Sign of the Moon, a very ambitious old-school style role-playing game, designed for computers and mobile devices.

Dungeon Kingdom: Sign of the Moon not only to dusts off the genre, it shows the ambition to be the ultimate successor to a long line of games, initiated by Dungeon Master and whose genre was often rewarded with critique.

An old-school game based on dungeon exploration, encountering many creatures, looking for treasures and solving many puzzles, Dungeon Kingdom: Sign of the Moon belongs to the Dungeon Crawler family with an immersive 3D view.

“Old-school", because it’s faithful to the basic principles that have made the success of its predecessors, but with modern features, including:
- Realistic physics simulation allows new types of interactions and puzzles, and more realistic animations.
- Powerful graphics engine, able to adapt itself to different platforms and take advantage of each one’s power.
- Dynamic rendering of light and shadow, including for mobile, as well as advanced graphics effects for a controlled and immersive atmosphere.
- A cross-platform features, like the ability to start a game on the computer and continue the same game on a tablet.
- Varied environments where special attention was paid to the atmosphere and the details in order to offer a deep immersion to players of Dungeon Kingdom: Sign of the Moon.
- Innovative interactions such as the ability to burn the scenery.

Funding for the game through the Indiegogo campaign will help to considerably speed up the end of its development, enrich its content, and to propose new platforms, languages and features.
Come support then on Indiegogo:
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/dungeon-kingdom-sign-of-the-moon/x/8516640

Game development is already well advanced, and it uses the recognized and highly reliable multi-platform Unity3D.

After this Indiegogo campaign, players will have the pleasure of discovering a quality game that will honor its ancestors, created by fans of the genre.

The Indiegogo campaign further provides a number of perks in gratitude for all the financial contributions. Thus, it offers various gifts bearing the image of Dungeon Kingdom: Sign of the Moon, but also early access to the game, and the opportunity to participate in content creation.

The project is supported by a large community in its validation campaign on Steam GreenLight and votes are very favorable.

It is created by a team of independent developers, consisting of video game professionals working together under the Hydro Games label.