It all started with a game jam I did in April 2020. I enjoyed the result. And it kept popping back in my mind.
November 24th I picked it up again, full-time. I plublished One Way Dungeon last friday. So it was about five and a half month work. While I'm a professional (backend) software developer, and have played around with game dev, I never worked on and finished a game.
Last weekend I shared it with a small group of people (just to check everything was OK on their devices and with downloading it from Google Play.) And yesterday I started sharing it on the internet.
I don't have any concrete numbers to share. Google's reports are still a couple of days late. And I predict a spike on users starting yesterday.
I'm going back to a normal job because:
- I am unemployed. I have some savings but I don't want to spend more than I already have.
- I don't predict One Way Dungeon to generate enough income to keep me working on it indefinitely. I might be wrong. But competition in mobile gaming is fierce!
- I'm kinda missing working on backend. And working with people.
If possible I recommend applying for work at a mobile game company. Even as a backend dev you can learn a lot. There's a ton of interesting stuff to learn about game design, marketing, analytics, ads vs iap, etc.
I'm inclined to think this was a labor of love, not profit.
There are people out there who quit their jobs to go backpacking on arduous trails for 5 months. It's long, hard work, but they do it for the other joys that come with the experience. And they do it all with the expectation of returning back to working life--not on cashing out. I don't see how what OP did is any different, other than it being a digital journey rather than a physical one.
Cool, I just ask because I have similar aspirations and never was able to pull the trigger to quit out of fear of losing income/falling behind financially.
- This is effectively a progression game, where the player builds up abilities. But defeating a low-level enemy is boring and slow, even when you kill them with your first blow.
- It's disconcerting that you forget how to punch. I was expecting punching to not advance quickly, but instead it has limited uses. That's a strange metaphor.
- Everything feels slow - not because it needs better programming, but because it doesn't resolve actions fast enough. Asking whether I want to return to the start after every enemy is aggravating.
- There's no actual sense of progression or reward.
> Everything feels slow - not because it needs better programming, but because it doesn't resolve actions fast enough.
This is, unfortunately, a sin committed by a whole lot of games these days. Off the top of my head I can name XCOM 2, which notoriously seemed to have delays resolving actions for no discernible reason whatsoever. The mod to fix this was literally named "stop wasting my time".
I don't 100% percent know this for sure, but since a lot of gamers are using "how long the game is" as a significant portion of their "is this game worth buying" metric, we've unfortunately incentivized game developers to pad this unnecessarily. I'm not sure which is worse, the micro ways like this that they pad things out or the inclusion of entire irrelevant subplots or the "Cut and Paste Dungeon It Will Take You Longer To Go Through Than It Took Us To Make (Please Enjoy These Palette Swapped Enemies And Palette Swapped Boss Rush)" in the last third of the game just because they need more run time.
Another possible explanation is that it feels/looks better for demonstration purposes. For press and initial players, having some time to process the information or make the animation look pretty is probably much more attractive then if information is spewing at them. As you progress, you need less processing time and understand what information on the screen is actually valuable, and therefore don't need as much time, so now the long animations go from being useful to being repetitive and boring.
> I don't 100% percent know this for sure, but since a lot of gamers are using "how long the game is" as a significant portion of their "is this game worth buying" metric, we've unfortunately incentivized game developers to pad this unnecessarily.
I can confirm that this is a common, intentional practice in the games industry.
Magic Arena does this. It's _incredibly_ irritating, especially if you play a combo deck or something click intensive. Those 5-10s animations get really old after the millionth time.
> It's disconcerting that you forget how to punch.
This style of fight / abilities is almost exactly how Pokemon games work - it will be familiar to a lot of people. Actually so familiar I'd be worried about overzealous Nintendo lawyers :-P
Ah yes, I think they were called AP(Action Points) or something. But you rarely felt them as a player aside from long journeys and really strong attacks that are balanced out by having more limited uses.
I think it makes more sense to have at least one unlimited attack, though. It's hard to logically justify it otherwise.
In response to the slowness: I clicked the settings button on the battle screen (top right star-shape) and maxed the text speed, and actions moved very quickly after that.
Played the web app. Pretty fun but also pretty one dimensional. Congrats on releasing either way. That's my goal as well and I don't think I'm likely to reach it until I'm retired :(
- The optimal strategy pretty clearly seemed to be max out speed and one type of attack. Most battles can be one shot victories. I assume it wouldn't be that difficult to build up enough durability to survive multiple rounds of a battle, but it'd likely be a lot slower. Final boss was one shot on my first attempt.
- I only did physical attacks. There wasn't much room for strategy. Tackle if tackle would kill it; wild slashes if tackle wouldn't kill it; big slash if even that wouldn't work. There were some stat change attacks available but they didn't seem too interesting. Most of the time you just wanted to do enough damage to win quickly. Sand attack seemed somewhat useful once or twice. Because battles were so short, an enemy would need to be able to survive at least 3 tackles AND survive fewer than that with a debuff in order to make using any sort of buff or debuff worthwhile. Cuz tackle/tackle is basically the same outcome as sand attack/tackle. I'm not sure any fights lasted longer than 3 rounds for me.
- I had no obvious way to know if magic was more effective against certain enemies. But in any case, physical was more than enough, and thus, splitting any points between physical and magic attack was sort of a waste. I think there was a beastiery but I wasn't really interested enough to look through it
- The attack ammunition felt a little odd. Mainly in that I mostly just wanted more tackle ammo but as the game went on, mostly got variants that felt less useful. Reckless tackle in particular felt weirdly useless in how dangerous it was to yourself. I did feel like I wanted to conserve some ammo, but mostly for not wanting the annoyance of farming level 1 for tackles. If I had known the game capped out at warehouse 3 I probably would have finished it a lot sooner just blasting everything with big slash and calling it a day.
- I think it would be difficult to continue to add more meaningful content without adding more depth to the combat.
I wonder if you could add the game to F-Droid?
I think there are quite a few Android users that don't load apps through the Google Play store. Game looks interesting, but I suspect it would be better to play on Android as app, instead of website.
I like this game! Just enough thinking to make it interesting but not as brutal as most roguelikes. The ads are a bit jarring but I get it. The aesthetics are pleasing and I love the soundtrack.
I bet there are a lot of ways you can go with this including non-linear dungeons. There might be that but I haven't had a chance to play too far. This reminds me of the 3D dungeons in Phantasy Star I but with a much better twist.
One thing I noticed is that the text can be difficult to read easily sometime.
Interesting concept. I like it generally. Congrats! Things I don't like:
* Too many ads. No way to escape them (eg can't pay to remove ads). Even without payment, I think you should remove ads that appear after the player finishes a dungeon. Ads can be used as a punishment mechanism when you die or when you run away. But I think it would be a lot better if you removed ads from the bottom of the upgrade screen, and if you reduced the frequency of seeing ads. I might just not play much if there are that many ads. It really degrades the experience.
After 10 minutes of playing, the repetition of messages gets a bit old. Especially in situations where one attack move has multiple similar effect. Like there's one that gives you more physical and magic attack power. However it splits up the messages and animations into two, making it take twice as long.
The winning messages could be a lot quicker too - put the "you absorb the monster's magic" (or whatever) message in the pop up that asks you whether you want to learn it or not, rather than as another combat message at the bottom you have to wait for.
And when you kill a monster, you shouldn't have to wait through irrelevant effects like poisoning them, or raising your attack power. They're dead, its over. Would be nice to squelch irrelevant messages.
Had a play through and found it pretty addictive; similar to other clickminer/grind style games I've liked in the past.
I found the action swap mechanic a little odd at first but ultimately a nice change of pace from the more typical "unlock/pay to play" style progression of actions.
I do agree with some other posters that there is a good deal of unnecessary tapping (choosing to return/continue, etc) but I think it would take a little ingenuity about how to keep the core gameplay as is and reduce those taps.
The ads did make me sad and really interrupted the flow/immersiveness of the experience. A revenue model I'd play with is a paywall after the first level (and capping the stats as kind of an "intro" experience) and doing away with the ads.
Last thought was around the item that allows the player to see the unit's information. That part felt especially clunky/tap heavy. Might be cool to just see the general strengths/weaknesses mid-battle.
Again, just a bunch of random thoughts, and the main takeaway is that you should be proud of not only building something cool, but putting it out there for others to enjoy!
Coming back after a long hiatus. I beat the game! No spoilers here. I just wanted to say you did a great job and this was a great first stab at design. I felt like you thought through some of the interactions and tried to hone a bit of a custom experience. Your design was noticed and appreciated!
I like the mix of mobile casual and pokemon / mystery dungeon style. However I played two runs (returned safely, upgraded abilities, got killed by angry bear) and I don't want to try again. I'm missing some meaningful interaction (maybe shops? or alternate routes?). I'm bored by long transitions and repeated messages after battles (maybe let me skip or speed up the animation about absorbing monster energy?). I'm also overwhelmed by seeing so many different moves; perhaps moves could drop less frequently? This way it would be more of a special event instead of a regular thing.
Overall, I enjoyed it and will look out for future upgrades.
I'm currently trying to figure a way to make the "post battle" smoother.
Inside the dungeon, I'm planning on adding "events". To mix it up a bit from battles. But I want it to continue linear and simple. The game is, in fact, a "boss rush game" with a "dungeon crawler" look.
What a great game, my only comment is I would love to be able to pay to remove the ads. Although from my own experience I know that this is probably more trouble than it's worth since the vast majority of people will never pay
Very good!
I usually don't test out any demos here on HN, and I was really supposed to be going to bed, but the web version of your game delayed that for 45 minutes. Really enjoyable and well made!
this is super fun to play. I love the music, the interface, leveling etc. Perfect for mobile. Unfortunately the game crashed on me mid-dungeon level 2 after defeating a monsta :/
I really enjoyed godot. Once I "got" some of the concepts, I became very fast in creating elements and changing them. And I used GDScript.
When I built the first prototype[0] I also used the opportunity to try out godot. I like it a lot. It's main concept (scene <==> node) felt really elegant.
Some other engines might have better features. But One Way Dungeon is a 2D game with no real-time gameplay or physics or networking... So ease of use is more important than high-end capabilities.
I'll continue supporting the game and adding new content to it. But not at full time. I'm going back to a "normal life".
(For those who don't want to install it or don't have Android, you can play it here: https://vaskivodev.gitlab.io/onewaydungeon/builds/release-1-...)
I welcome all and any criticism. And I hope you like it. Thank you!