Retro Dungeon [Working Title]

[kikutano]

Hello to everyone! I'm working a new game for NES called "Retro Dungeon" ( working title ). The main idea is to create a rougue like game, with radomized rooms and a tactical turn based combat system. You can also improve your player stats, equip and abilities by killing enemies, collectiong money and advance into the game.

My main goal now is to reach a playable demo with a complete dungeon ( 8/9 rooms + boss fight ) with a single class player ( Warrior ) and start to get some feedbacks to understand if this project can reach a complete release. I want to finish the entire tech, and maybe, after this, try to find an artist to do the graphics ( now it's a complete placeholder ). I know it is hard, and the fail probability are really high, but ehi, I'm really tired to make game using Unity .

By the way, for now you can:

- Move the player and using a basic attack to kill enemies.
- Dynamic walking cells calculation ( 1x or 2x ).
- Room generation is completely dynamic, I descrive levels with a simple matrix.
- Enemy AI can reach you, avoid obstacles, but they skip to attack you.
- You can change the room by enter into next door ( not in the GIF ).
- Animation system for blinking sprites, and "puff" animation after dead.

Next steps:

- Improve and update GUI with real enemy and player stats
- Implement enemies attack and Game Over.
- Insert money, items and more.
- Level Up and the first shopping system to buy abilities and equip.
- Switch from NROM to a more capable ROM, like MMC3?
- Find the time to do all of this stuffs!

I will try to update this topic as soon as I can, I'm working on this project on my spare time. Attached there is a video because the gif had a really poor quality and you can't see the amazing bliking animations!

Anyway, any suggets are welcome! Thanks!

[Pokun]

As a big fan of RPGs I like the idea, and it looks good.
Since it uses a normal turn-based combat system on a grid, I'm a bit puzzled how much of it is a roguelike though? Random generated dungeons and perma-death maybe?

Also how does the walkabout mode work? Realtime or maybe roguelike?

Other than the hero, it looks very good for just replacement graphics. My replacement graphics are always much simpler. If you can draw that much by yourself I don't see a reason why you couldn't polish it up without an artist (unless it's about the work time).


I've also been working on an RPG since forever and I planned it to have roguelike movement in dungeons at least (towns will be realtime). If I make it for NES, actual battles will probably be standard Dragon Quest-style though so it's more like Lufia 2 than Rogue, and no perma-death or random dungeons either.

[kikutano]

Other than the hero, it looks very good for just replacement graphics. My replacement graphics are always much simpler. If you can draw that much by yourself I don't see a reason why you couldn't polish it up without an artist (unless it's about the work time).

All the assets are taken from other artist projects ( https://opengameart.org/content/loveable-rogue ) and some animations is "stolen" from other nes games . This is the reason why are all placeholders. I'm not really able to draw like that.

[M_Tee]

Excited for it. I love the genres.

[Pokun]

Other than the hero, it looks very good for just replacement graphics. My replacement graphics are always much simpler. If you can draw that much by yourself I don't see a reason why you couldn't polish it up without an artist (unless it's about the work time).

All the assets are taken from other artist projects ( https://opengameart.org/content/loveable-rogue ) and some animations is "stolen" from other nes games . This is the reason why are all placeholders. I'm not really able to draw like that.

Oh I see, Loveable Rogue looks nice.

[kikutano]

Some improvements here:

- Finally you can go from a Room to another.
- Everything is loaded ad runtime, enemies, background, turn system etc etc.

Next Step:
- Rooms compression. Rooms are described as you can see in the image below. ~1.48Kb needed for every level, too much for a single level. I need to create a sort of compression model to improve the space.

https://twitter.com/kikuTano/status/1240917635468050437

[kikutano]

The complete video here: https://twitter.com/kikuTano/status/1240917635468050437

[kikutano]

Back to work on enemy AI, now I'm working on enemy attacking.

[kikutano]

Some graphics update:



Enjoy!

[Pokun]

I much preferred the FF-style green guy over this square-shaped blue guy.

[calima]

Agreed, the new hero doesn't fit in. Instead of agreeing with the bgs, he looks like a cross between Famicom Wars and modern pixelcrap.

[Alp]

Agreed, the new hero doesn't fit in. Instead of agreeing with the bgs, he looks like a cross between Famicom Wars and modern pixelcrap.

I disagree. If the knight looked like modern pixel crap, he'd look like this:



Big head, no face, and thin, noodly limbs.
(It physically hurt me, to draw this. )

[kikutano]

Thanks you for your feedbacks, but we prefer to use a "modern" style for now. Our goal is to make a game for nes that feel "modern". I know this is probably a controversial, but we are happy with the result for now.

I hope to release a playable demo as soo as I can. Feel free to post your feedback!

[qbradq]

I think this looks really fun! I love rogue likes, especially the rare tactical ones. I would love to try the demo when it's ready.

[Tuï]

@kikutano Just saw your game on twitter and knew i already saw it in a thread! It looks really promising, congratulations! I don't know what your plans are concerning music but it'll be a pleasure to offer my help, nice work !!