(WIP) "Maw of the Dungeon" - a Dungeon Crawler game in early development

[Pony]

Hello everyone. Many of you may not know me, I’m rather new in this forum, and inspired by some of the game projects shared in here, I wanted to make one of my own, and I’m making this post to ask you guys what are your thoughts or suggestions for great additions in this project?

As the post title says, I recently started to work on a “Dungeon Crawler” style of game with a first-person 2.5D world (A 3D world with 2D sprites). I’m entirely new to videogame coding, so this project is being made with Godot as it is a very friendly game engine that I was able to learn in a week (I’m actually still learning as I make this game).

All assets are currently mere placeholders as I keep working on the mechanics themselves. Like in any other dungeon crawler, the objective here is to explore the map while defeating enemies on random encounters and collecting equipment while managing your stats. In this case, the main stat is “hunger”, which is important to balance as a starving adventurer won’t do much damage and will fail many attacks, but a bloated adventurer isn’t of much use either, as it becomes too slow while exploring, unable to crouch to pass through low passages and a very easy target to hit in combat.

There are 6 hunger stages:

1. Starving
2. Very Hungry
3. Hungry
4. Satisfied
5. Full
6. Overstuffed

However, some states can give you a bit of a advantage during combat, like “hungry/very hungry” giving you dodge and flee bonuses, while “Full/Overstuffed” giving you access to heavier stronger attacks. If your hunger reaches 0, the player starves and loses, as well if the player’s health reaches 0.

You can eat during combat to recover health and hunger, which is needed for most non-basic attacks, and I want to use of as the fuel for “Spells” unless I can think of a good way to add a mana bar or something like that.

Right now I’m afraid the game is still in extremely early development, so I cannot provide a playable demo just yet, but I’d like to hear suggestions from others about what direction should I take with the project, mostly on how can I develop further the “weight gaining” focus of this game.

[BuizelSofts]

oh. my goodness. this looks lovely ohmygosh!!! how exciting… very excited to see more :3

[Gigantron]

I like the li’l doodle of our main protagonist, does he/she/they have a name?

[Pony]

Not yet. It’s just a blank little kobold doodle and I’m open for suggestions haha

[Kaiser_Dragon]

The artstyle looks adorable and i love the dungeon crawler type, seems very fitting. Tough the way you present fullness seems to imply that fatness is temporary or is weight gain possible over time, i also see the eat command and its a slime, so i know what can happen but will that mean something more, like food constructs or traps or even vore of other type of enemies?

[TheGungis]

Seems very cute! The hunger concept seems fun, have you considered perhaps a 7th/8th ‘hunger’ level that either makes the dungeon come to you, or perhaps has other neat things?

On the topic of hunger, It would be neat if later on there were skills or perhaps items that would either permanently cause say, a +1 or -1 hunger, or even a few that are dependent upon ‘weight’.

Either way, the biggest issue I personally have with most games that rely on fluctuating weights make it difficult to be a big wobbling mess trying (and probably failing) to adventure! It’s not everyone’s cup of tea though

thus far, it looks very good, Excited to see your progress…

[Parnash]

Definitely looks good as a proof of concept, though.

[Fenrir10X]

I love what we can see so far! Some upgrades to the character depending on the weight like a bigger capacity or more stats would be good, and I lobe how we can see how stuffed the MC is as they go explore the dungeon, it is a nice detail!

[Pony]

The way it is implemented is that when you eat, you fill your stomach percentage, which will satisfy your hunger overtime. When your hunger reaches its top, the stomach will instead add directly to your weight. It is merely for showcase as I haven’t thought of clear mechanics that involve the actual character’s weight outside of hunger stages, but you can lose weight by simply exploring (walking) or by resting, which also recovers a bit of hp overtime but attracts ambushes.

Also I like the idea of voring enemies, it was not the plan at first but could be a neat interaction alongisde other possible actions. Maybe a new “actions” button?

[Pony]

I did consider adding more hunger stages and I still do, mostly I was attracted to the idea of a “blob” stage in which the character is render immobile if you do nothing about it and enemies ambush you. However that would better fit as a character “weight” stage which I’m looking into adding. I’d say these 6 hunger stages will do, but I can add more if we can come up with ideas. If you keep eating, it will be fairly easy to maintain your wobbliness haha

[Da_Birb]

i love the idea of it! plus the MC being a kobold sells the game idea even further to me! (i’m a fantasy fan)

[Necrow_25]

cant wait this looks really good fr

[wespooh]

looking good cant wait to see what happens

[LupusGamer]

What sort of direction are you wanting the project to go? Knowing that may help with suggestions before I just rattle off whatever comes to mind, but I do love the premise! I like dungeon crawlers/mystery dungeon games.
One thing that comes to mind for a potential map generation thing would be weight specific pressure plates. Like if you are too heavy, more traps could go off or maybe being too light will make it so the trap goes off instead etc.
As well as some puzzles or interactions only able to be done at a heavier weight to encourage the player to gain weight? Gotta have that wg have a positive impact on gameplay and all that jazz people say.

[diorite]

For weight, the obvious choice would be to make the player gain additional max HP/other defenses depending on how fat they are. I personally enjoy expansion RPGs where being a big pile of lard allows you to be extremely tanky, even if it comes at an overall disadvantage.

I would also recommend gatekeeping certain abilities behind weight. That would provide a direct and exciting incentive for players to gain weight.

[Alastor_Morgan]

Will it be possible to change the font of the text? I am not an English speaker myself, so I will have to translate through third-party programs(

[Arro192]

ill be watching this game closely im very interested in it due to its clear direction

[Pony]

Sure thing, I was already working in some accesibility options, so you can change the text font to a more conventional one.

[Pony]

Pressure plate traps is something I wanna add later on, but these cannot stop the player from progress further into the dungeon, these will only help with hidden shortcuts and loot. I want the player to always be able to “complete” the game regardless of weight/hunger stage, that is really the direction I wanna take with this game. As for puzzle solving stuff I still need to think of some I can integrate into the map without breaking the game.

[Gp-15_4]

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