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DC:PoF has been FEATURED!!

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.

Posts

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Thanks buddy! I thought it was hilarious what you did with Quest for the Peace Sword, and it really stuck with me. So I wound up using Natalie not only for her weapon, but I also worked her into the plot a bit.
Congratulations, dude! It's awesome to hear that you got inspired by Quest for the Peace Sword! xD
Thank you for the feedback! I think if I add in Town Portal Scrolls at a low cost, it should do the trick.
I think one of the biggest issues is not being about to get out of the dungeon (and back to where you were) easily - especially as levelling up doesn't help you get through the trash mobs any faster despite being stronger than them/lasting longer against them.

It's a pity as apart from that it's actually a pretty neat game (what hour or so I've played of it at least - I had to stop because there was no way for me to leave the dungeon without having to reset each and every time due to dying whilst trying to leave. Four floors in and there's no easy escape option - which is where other games like this do well. Getting out in a dungeon delving game is a big part of gameplay, especially if you have to fight all the way back down to where you were before you left.)
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