Imagine my surprise when I see that DC:PoF has been featured on the front page, and classified as a Gem!

I am beyond thrilled that its been shared to the front page, so I thought I'd take a moment to warmly invite you to give this game a play if you're seeing this page for the first time. I also thought I would share some thoughts on this project.



What is DC:PoF?

DC:PoF is a 14-18 hour dungeon crawler focused around the use of weapons and gear to customize the skills and attributes of the four main characters. The story is incredibly basic, but I did actually include a start and end. The game takes place in a mega-dungeon linked to one town, and the goal is to use your skills, weapons, gear and items to get to the bottom of the 25 story dungeon. There are secrets and hidden events which the player can find while playing the game, and it even includes a very brief mini-game.



Backstory

DC:PoF was a game I made out of "happenstance". That is, I did not originally intend to set out to create this title, but it emerged out of a series of tests I was running.

Originally, this was meant to be a resource submission, but it grew from there. I had taken all of the Ace RTP's tile B+ resources, and had shortened them to fit the dimensions of a one-tile-tall game. That is, whereas most of the resources for Ace's RTP are designed to suite 2-tile-tall walls, if someone wanted to make a 1-tile-tall wall, they had to pick and choose resources carefully so as to not destroy the dynamic. For example, if one creates a room with a wall graphic only one tile tall, they have to fit it with resources that are consistent with that height, otherwise it appears as though the object emerges into the room above (such as the case with the prison bars) in dungeon-B.

So I remade all of the resources and customized them to fit this new dynamic. As I got ready to publish the resources, I made a few custom maps using this. This included a Town, a building, and a few floors of a dungeon.

However, I rather enjoyed how well the maps looked with the edits. Everything managed to fit the 1-tile-tall dynamic. So I kept making dungeons, made a few more buildings, and worked on the town a bit more.

But as I continued, I realized that I could use these files to make a sort of "demo" of the resources. Maybe a dungeon with about five floors, a town with a few simple buildings, and some nice compact interiors.

One thing led to another: I wanted it to be a demo, so I needed characters. The crudely drawn face art for the characters sprung up out my desire only to entertain myself as I played through the demo. Then I needed to make classes and enemies. I set all of the stats of the classes to the same, and played around with some enemies. That's when things spun wonderfully out of control. I began implementing skills and weapons that would hold these skills. I came up with a system with which one could equip these different weapons depending on how they wanted to play. What began as a demo - ending at the first boss - quickly went beyond that into a full game with roughly 14-18 hours of play.

Other details were added, such as a very bare-bones story. Different characters were put in (inspiration for a character and part of the late story goes to Luiishu for the Quest of the Peace Sword), and the idea of Elsa dancing after killing a boss was a need for something to happen, and originally was only intended to be a place-holder for an actual cutscene.

The music came mid-way through, as I had been experimenting with adding music to my games. Because of the silly nature of the character face sets, and the fast-paced combat with custom animations, I felt it needed an energetic music track, which I created, with an absolutely funky victory theme.



Known Issues

DC:PoF is an early project of mine and, because of this, may not be the most well-balanced and in-depth game you've yet to play. It starts off too easy, but if you can push through, the challenge picks up a bit.

It also lacks a story outside of a basic start, middle and end, so if you're looking for a narrative-heavy game, this may not be the game for you. If you do enjoy fighting, you may find a bit of value.

Either way, DC:PoF should fit the bill for those looking for a fun, traditional dungeon-crawler focused on combat. Grinding is minimal, as you can always grind plenty of gold, and you won't have to grind for levels seeing as the random encounters are designed, per area, to boost your XP by a large margin (every four floors you'll begin to make 10 level jumps).

If you like to fight things, play with weapons and skills, attack enemies with a banjo (what?) and crush your enemies under the might of your decked out characters, this is definitely the game for you.



Going Forward

As of right now, DC:PoF is complete. There are currently no plans to introduce further content to the game or to change what has already been done: my idea is that I want to introduce a complete game that fully works out the gate without needing further patches (despite patch v.1.1 where I had to remove an item I left in for a tester). But if people want to see a sequel or want to see more of these characters, it's very possible I could start another project.

Got a few topics for you! Here's the order.
1. Key Game-play Elements!
2. Build sample: the Monk!
3. Progress Notes!

1. Key Game-play Elements!

As you can probably tell, it's all about the game-play to me! Combat in this game is designed to be challenging. There is no concept of "spam attack to win," rather, it's "spam attack to get stomped". Status ailments are plentiful, and that applies for both you and your enemies. The further you get, the more difficult and complex the enemies become, to the point where they're working together to take you out. There's a few surprises they'll begin to pull out that I don't want to spoil for you. But basically, there will come a time where the gloves will come off. By then, however, you will be adequately equipped to handle them.

Puzzles are not the biggest focus on the game. There are some minor mechanics unique to some areas, but no actual "puzzles". That's because combat is the focus of this game. I could add some half-hearted puzzles to this game, but they would only serve as a distraction to the focus of the game-play. Rather, I want to allow you to enjoy the combat instead. This game will be about finding cool new items, swapping gear around, playing with new builds, and trying new approaches to combat.

Want to be a ranged archer with a deadly knife for quick actions at the start of a turn? You can do it. Want to be a metal wall? Sure, how about a magic-focused metal wall? Maybe you want to be an offensive axe and shield user? Or a spear user focused on lowering enemy defense while buffing your allies? Or how about a spellsword? Want to use hand-to-hand combat? How about attacking enemies using a magical banjo in one hand, and a focus in the other? Sure, because why not? At the end of the day, this is a combat focused dungeon crawler that allows you to experiment with builds on the fly. I hope you enjoy playing it as much as I do!

This game uses random encounters. There's a script in play to make sure that you don't get into a battle every step. There's also an item that can significantly reduce them, if you choose to avoid combat. My goal, however, is that you won't want to use this. The enemies are challenging yet the XP is plenty.

I'm doing the best I can to keep grinding at a minimum. My goal right now is to make it so that no level grinding is required, that by the time you fight your way to the next boss, you'll be at the appropriate level. I haven't capped the levels yet, but most likely the cap will be around 50. A little grinding may be needed not for xp, but for gold. One area, in particular, is quite filled with gold, and you may even want to revisit its levels after beating it, simply for the gold.

Status effects are huge, and can turn the tide of battle. Both you and your enemies have access to a plethora of them. Most status effects are set to last for 3 turns, and 3 turns only. In practice, this means that statuses go into effect for the turn they're applied, then the two following turns after that, before dropping off. Exceptions to this will be blind and poison. This 3-turn rule applies to both buffs and debuffs, so you'll have to time your skill synergy carefully!

Items play a big role in the game. Not only equipment, but consumables. You'll want to get your hands on a nice stack of consumables each time you visit the town. This means your usual antidotes, health and spirit potions, as well as Bagged Lunches. Yes, stock up on Bagged Lunches. They'll save you so much hassle.

Spell rings are complimentary. I'm still tweaking these, but the idea is that there are a bit of spell rings that you can swap around. They're mainly meant to compliment other things, for example, raising your attack power, or poisoning an enemy, putting them to sleep. In a way, they can be used to fill in blanks in your gear, as well as to compliment other skills. Each player can equip 3 spell rings.

2. Build sample: the Monk!

Here's a sneak peak at one of my higher level builds. The monk!



This build is a rather straight-forward one. If you're someone that doesn't like having to juggle a lot of skills but just wants some straight forward damage and defense, this one is perfect for you!

The weapons are the Brutal Claws, found in the dungeon. This weapon is strong against humanoid targets. This weapon type is also unique in that it does not permit the use of an off-hand weapon. These are the three skills:

Cross: A straight-up, full damage attack.
Tiger Stance: Buffs the user's attack and agility.
Mantis Stance: Buffs the user's evasion and agility.

The stances for claws are different, in that they defy the 3-turn rule. Once you enter a stance, you are in that stance until you switch to another chance, and it will last the entire battle.

The spell rings are complimentary: a heal, a non-elemental attack, and a sleep skill for enemies that are rather pesky and need to be put out of commission until later in the battle.

The two augments are "thick skin," which essentially are tanking augments. They don't do anything to boost your attack, but they're for high-defense characters. So why is the monk wearing them? Because her damage is quite plentiful even without attack augments. That means that not only is she focused in damage, but she's got a good bit of physical defense. She won't go down that easily!

In combat, I buff her using one of Sally's spell rings, War Cry, which raises attack power. This stacks with Elsa's stances, meaning her damage goes from good to REALLY good. Now if you take that and keep in mind that this is strong against humanoid enemies, her damage goes even higher. And if you really want to get nasty, change those tanking augments to physical attack augments and her damage will skyrocket!

This is an example of one of the many builds you can create in this game! Here, I took a weapon I liked, and I build around it and customized it. No other weapon will handle this way. What I came out with, is a one-punch powerhouse that doesn't require a lot of maintenance.

The downsides? Well, she's got a generic non-elemental magic attack, but that's only for enemies with really high defense, and Elsa won't hit hard with the spell since her stats aren't focused into magic. Furthermore, defense-heavy augments don't tend to compliment your evasion and agility very well, which means she's a slower attacker. She's also got a magical defense of 2. That's bad. Real bad. But luckily, even in this weaknesses, you have three other allies in your party that can more than make up for it.

3. Progress Notes!

I'm at the end of production and I'm almost ready for the release. There's only a few things left to do, and that includes plenty of testing. And that testing, however, is going to take up quite a bit of time. This game turned out much larger than when I first started out.

If you would like to volunteer to test the game, please let me know either in the comments or through a message, your choice! This is a difficult game however, so just keep that in mind.

I'm looking to release it very soon! It's almost done. I hope you're as excited as I am!