Ludum Dare #43compo

Dungeon Clicker

by legulysse

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.78

Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.63

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★4.07

Theme★★★★★★★★★★4.15

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★2.70

Audio★★★★★★★★★★3.63

Humor★★★★★★★★★★2.45

Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.59

Send adventurers inside a dungeon to gather some loot !
You can't control them, but you can mark rooms to improve their efficiency.
How rich can you become ?

This game is a kind of mix of cookie-clickers, mine-sweeper, and pachinko.
It wasn't planned this way :D

The game is built on my own little game engine, if you are curious it's available here :
https://github.com/Legulysse/gugu-engine

Instructions

- Press spacebar like a mad man to send lots of adventurers (green stamps) explore the dungeon.
- They leave red stamps when dying, blue stamps when finding loot.
- Click on rooms to mark them as dangerous, or rich.
- Marked rooms greatly improves adventurers efficiency when visiting them.
- Gather loot, buy upgrades, and explore further and further !

______________

Comments27

Kalshutein4 Dec 2018, 12:45

This is a really unique game with a good execution. I would love to play a fully fledged RPG/Management game with a similar idea. Congrats

Syrapt0r4 Dec 2018, 12:46

I liked the minimalistic graphics and the atmospheric music, the gameplay feels a bit too random though. I got the hang eventually and it was funny watching my adventurers go out into the dungeon but I felt a bit lost in the beginning. You could just show the help on startup to fix that though. Overall a solid entry, good job!

Amanda Priest4 Dec 2018, 12:46

I really enjoyed this. Is there an end? I played for a while and nearly had the whole map exposed. The music is perfect and I didn't feel the need to turn my speakers off at all haha. Fun different concept. Well done.

CptFinn4 Dec 2018, 12:51

Very good idea!

Quite complex in reality and if you somehow could better give feedback to the player this would be great.
A simpler version of the game with more focus on choices and perhaps random events could be an amazing f2p clicker game on steam perhaps, i think you should take this further!

Great job! :heartbeat:

Ale4 Dec 2018, 13:03

That was pretty great. I managed to unlock all the upgrades, but couldn't get my adventurers to reach the bottom right grid cell before I lost interest. Guess that'd require marking all of the rooms in the whole map to maximize efficiency? It wasn't totally clear how the marks affected the adventurers, as it seems like most of them just ignored the recommendations and walked through the dangerous areas anyways.

Overall, great submission! This is one of my favorites so far :)

Kerdelos4 Dec 2018, 13:10

The concept is fun and it is really enjoyable to see the map be discovered and filled with information as adventurers progress in the dungeon. The dungeon feels a bit too big however. Maybe some other way to move around the map (with right clic for example) and to drop flag (by maintaining a button pressed) would suppress some tedious aspect of the game. The music was also on point so great job !

egos4 Dec 2018, 13:10

did nt work for me on win 10 pro

Niarkou4 Dec 2018, 13:45

As planned, I loved it :)

It was hard at the end, having unlocked all the improvements available.

I used this method:

Also, music suits the game well.

nusan4 Dec 2018, 14:00

Once you understand how it works, it's really great! Having to spam space is a bit tiring after a few minutes. Also a final goal would be great, once you unlocked all the upgrades. Great work, I see a lot of potential for adding upgrades and content.

legulysseauthor4 Dec 2018, 14:47

Thanks everyone for the feedbacks

shubart4 Dec 2018, 23:02

Nice mood. As a improval, you could make the grid always more visible. Thanks

Lucien Catonnet5 Dec 2018, 12:40

Really neat music, it didn't even feel repetitive after a while. I like the concept, it's a bit simplistic though: click on red cells, double click on blue dots. The space bar press became tiresome after some time, maybe add an upgrade that autosends adventurers? That would be very clicker-like :stuck_out_tongue:

Also "They don't need to be paid. They are fueled by passion.", I see what you did there :smirk:

samh5 Dec 2018, 23:00

Help! The game does not want to end!

legulysseauthor5 Dec 2018, 23:18

@samh I am both impressed and scared :D
Thanks for playing !

Lex6 Dec 2018, 02:08

You know everyone is trying to clear the map, right? We're only humans.

Lazertrax10 Dec 2018, 12:59

This game is really unique and fun to play. I like the whole mix of genres and the music really sets the mood. I have a question though:

- Does marking a room dangerous stop explorers from going in it (because it appears that it doesn't)? I'm interested to know the math behind that :laughing:

I absolutely love the minesweeper vibes I get while playing this, great job!

legulysseauthor10 Dec 2018, 15:14

@lex hehe, it's an endurance test disguised as a game :D
@lazertrax Thanks, glad you liked it !

Since several people asked : the markers are interpreted by adventurers as guides to better handle the rooms they walk in, not as pathfind priorities (I have the code for that, but it allowed exploits).
A room marked correctly will provide a x5 efficiency/survivability bonus (dangerous cells from 15% to 3% chance of dying, loot cells from 1.5% to 7.5% chance of looting).
Armor and Loot upgrades will further improve those numbers.

falak11 Dec 2018, 12:30

WOW! Nice idea but I think the gameplay is too hard and random. Good Luck!

Doey17 Dec 2018, 22:19

Amazing atmosphere and music, really well done. I underestimated the game going into it and was nicely surprised by how much I enjoyed it! Cool concept.

Nanda17 Dec 2018, 22:27

The core idea is really good, but I think it lacks a bit of feedback. Has lots of potential though!

sorlok18 Dec 2018, 00:21

Really clever concept; never seen anything like it! Good use of theme, but overall just a really fascinating game! Great job.

Shweep18 Dec 2018, 01:46

Pretty neat, feels like a very busy minesweeper almost. Took me awhile to figure out the markers actually had a purpose as I thought they were like.. reminders. Until I actually looked at the bottom right. Maybe a green flag and a red flag might have been more self evident? There's not a whole lot of thinking going on, as in there's no "wrong" choice to do other than just being inefficient. I assume that's just the nature of the jam though.

Hindbodes18 Dec 2018, 08:29

I really like this game. There was a proper review brewing in my head, but I am le tired. I previously had a goal to uncover the bottom-rightmost gridplace because I thought it might be a win-condition, which I gave up on. All upgrades.

randomphantom18 Dec 2018, 18:02

Neat concept although it really needs to be smaller to be able to be completed. Got a little bored waiting for the results. Feels like you're doing some machine learning algorithm.

legulysseauthor21 Dec 2018, 16:42

Thanks everyone for the feedbacks !
@hindbodes I planned to add some boss or artifact cells on the outer limits of the dungeon, to give a proper objective/endgame, unfortunately time ran out^^

oda23 Dec 2018, 17:02

Did I just spend the last half hour hitting spacebar?
Yes!

Did I enjoy that? Yes, that's a clicker but that's a good one :)

Rosik24 Dec 2018, 08:33

Nice game, but it becomes very repetitive soon. It is a pity that you did not have time to add artifacts and bosses to help with this problem. But overall game fits well with the sacrifice theme, so many adventurers have to die so that others passed further.

Other games by @legulysse

co-authored

★3.40