Dungeons Developer Interview
Sean W. Gibson / Feb 7th, 2011 No Comments
Dungeons, released by Kalypso Media, is a highly anticipated RPG that is out for PC gamers. The game centers on Deimos, the boss of all Dungeon Lords. He’s a sucker and falls victim to a plot devised by his evil and fairly sexy ex-girlfriend, Calypso. Suddenly he goes from being the top evil doer to the bottom of the dungeon master hierarchy.
In the game, you play as Deimos and try to thwart heroes as they come into your dungeon and regain your place as chief bad guy, all while trying to get revenge on your rather annoying ex-girlfriend. The game combines strategy, lore and a large chunk of humor to come together for a game that has been highly anticipated for some time.
We sat down with Dungeons Creative Director Christian Wolfertstetter from the Realmforge Studios to talk about the game.
1. The concept for Dungeons has a bit of a different spin than what we’ve seen from other traditional games in this genre. Could you comment about the need to do something unique for gamers?
From the development side, it’s simply interesting to try something new that has never been done before. It’s also important for your game to stand out from the rest.
For a gamer it’s necessary to see something new every now and then. A simple graphics update is not enough most of the time. However there are examples that have proven me wrong in that area…
2. I think most gamers can related to having a vicious evil succubus of an ex-girlfriend. Hopefully in Dungeons we actually get even with her rather than see her go out with our (former) best friend, right?
Of course! The whole campaign is about getting your revenge!
3. There are going to be three bosses played out through 17 campaign missions. What’s in store for the gamer as they progress through missions and how are the bosses a part of the bigger story?
At the beginning of the game, your alter ego was the mightiest dungeon lord of them all, However, after your ex-girlfriend betrayed you (becoming your ex in that process) you find yourself holed up in the lowest dungeon and the lowest place in the food chain of dungeon lords. In order to get revenge on your girlfriend, you have to shove those other dungeon lords aside, descending deeper and deeper into the dungeon.
While doing that, the player’s Dungeon Lord becomes mightier as he gets attribute and skill points to grow his skills while progressing through the levels.
Screenshot from Dungeons
4. In this game, you play the master of the dungeon and try to thwart what we’re hearing are 10 different classes of heroes. The general idea here will be to make sure they die horrible (and entertaining) deaths with the armies you have at your disposal?
Not quite.
The basic idea behind Dungeons is to explain why dungeons look like they do in MMOs and Action-RPGs these days. Why is there loot lying around for heroes to pick up? Why are the monsters challenging but not overpowering to the hero? Dungeons is what we came up with for an answer.
In Dungeons you control the evil Dungeon Lord and craft your own dungeon. You place monsters, loot and so on until finally those heroes enter your lair. Now your job is not to kill them (at least not in the beginning) but rather keep them happy. The reason being, that happy heroes generate soul energy, which is a precious resource for you.
So your Dungeon Lord lurks in the dark and waits for those heroes to build up soul energy until they are “ripe” for him to harvest. That’s where the kill and / or imprison part kicks in.
5. It looks like there’s going to be a lot of open-endedness to the game, specifically with 15 different monsters and 50 total unique objects for your own dungeon creation. Is this system going to cater to people that invest a lot of time, or will there be a reward for those that want to do something quick & fun?
Hopefully both will get enough out of Dungeons! The campaign should be entertaining for people who just want to enjoy a quick and fun round of play. Other players may invest more time into the sandbox maps and build up the evil lair of their dreams.
She's Hot ... But She's a Pain.
6. Could you speak to the replayability of the game and how the three difficulty levels will be different?
Since you can use your skill points in three different skill trees, you might want to try multiple games on the campaign maps. Aside from the campaign, several sandbox and survival maps await you, and we’ll try to release more maps with upcoming updates. Also, every campaign map has “challenges” (something like achievements) which you can try to complete.
The difficulty settings mostly vary the power of your Dungeon Lord and the soul energy you get from defeated heroes.
7. We’re also hearing that there’s no initial plans for multi-player but that it might be in the works?
Yes we tried to focus our efforts on singleplayer in the initial release because making both multiplayer and singleplayer would have stretched our resources too much.
However our whole code base works on a client/server basis so that multiplayer is something we hopefully can do in the future.
One of the Many Dungeons You Can Create
8. Developing the game’s story with a good amount of humor isn’t something we see a lot of for PC gaming, but is definitely needed. What’s the experience of developing the story for Dungeons been like?
Actually it’s always great to make a humorous game! Not only for the story but rather the whole game has a “not too serious” mood. It’s definitely more fun to make a non serious game rather than a serious one. However, I guess players rather appreciate realistic games these days.
To find out more about Dungeons, visit the official Dungeons Game website.
Sean W. Gibson
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