Hey, I'm Landon! I'm a software engineer and game dev living in Seattle.
I created this channel to document my game dev progress and hopefully, build a community around games and game development. I hope to make videos around all aspects of game development and get to know other developers and enthusiasts!
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You said you almost forgot to make the game public... That's exactly what I did on my first game jam a few weeks ago! Made a whole video about it... 🤣 Happy you didn't make that same mistake! Nice video!
Oh no! That sucks haha I'll have to check out your video
@@LandonDevelops Thanks for checking it out! Subbed!
Hey, the game is very cool, even i'm not a big fan of such type of games. The moment i realised i ll be a huge mommy boss and just destroy everyone 🤌The only thing is that i'm very bad at dodging and if u basicly made main hero immortal i d be playing it non stop till night, it's pretty addictive. in my opinion
Thank you!
7:16 sick setup bro
Thanks!
you should do tutorials... LOVE YOUR WORK
Thank you! I've thought about it but it seems hard lol any particular topic you'd be interested in?
@@LandonDevelops yeah like "gameMaker" or Godot, maybe create a full video just you making a game, it might not be enjoyable but will e helpful for a lot of people, mabye about GameMaker cuz there aren't much tutorials out there instead of the official ones
@@arnegative9277 Unfortunately, I don't really know how to use Game Maker
@@LandonDevelops you could start with easy and short videos, like how to make the player move or how to use animations and then move up to like how to make the enemy AI.
@@cihni Hmm, yeah that could be doable! I'll try it out and see what people think :)
This was a really cool video! Thank you for making it!
Thank you!
What's the sound wave of you have framed in that room?
It's from a song I wrote a while ago, my partner got it for me for Christmas one year 😊
Absolutely loved your demo. This was really fun. Also, the music and sound effects work really well I disagree with you. Also the economy is busted but I'm sure thats just because its early and unbalanced.
Thank you! Also, you're so right, the economy is incredibly busted 🤣it definitely needs some balancing work!
Hey so I tried the game since I love roguelikes and tycoons, and while I wanna say I like where the game is going, I feel like the concept itself is fine, but there are some things that are both confusing and annoying. I know this might get fixed later and maybe u already got this same feedback, but it never hurts to say my opinion I hope. I'm not gonna comment on the amount of content because it's clearly a very early alpha version, but there is something in the design that I feel like u really need to figure out, and that's the fact that the dungeon HAS to be linear. This is an issue in 2 levels imo. One problem is with the randomly generated potions. I had a situation where 2 of them spawned next to each other and there was no way of grabbing them because the only one that I could get access to was the right-most one for some reason. I also had a situation where a potion was right next to the exit, so I just connected my dungeon to that and hit start, but I lost because I didn't notice that the potion room was NOT connected to the exit for some reason. The other issue that I feel like exists is that making it a whole corridor limits your options way too much. Even if u had 100 different rooms, if you can only lay them in a line, there won't be much to do. Therefore, it would be nice to maybe have branching paths and maybe have something like artifacts that could give the hero information on what path is the fastest one, or where is the treasure or stuff like that. Another option would be to make the heroes have personalities, so if they are a completionist they don't leave until the whole dungeon is explored and stuff like that. Regarding the hunger system, I don't feel like its a bad idea, but I really feel like an option of either adding areas like the potions but for food, or some other way of regaining hunger are needed. I also feel like since traps only take 1 hp and don't really risk losing time like puzzles, they are WAY too op, but that's basically what u mentioned in the video. As a potential balancing solution, maybe make monsters drop more gold and puzzles have potential for healing could be an option? As a last feedback, I am not sure if I imagined, but I think my hero went over max hp with the potions, since I saw him getting hit and not losing any hp on the bar, but I might have seen that wrongly so take it with a grain of salt. Anyway, I hope u continue the project and I already subscribed to keep up with ur work. Have a great day! On a side note, loading screens are ungodly long for such a simple game, u should probably take a look at that at some point, although it might be a browser issue.
Thanks for such detailed feedback! I agree with everything you said. The issues you ran into with the chambers not connecting correctly was a bug, I've fixed it now. I like that you mentioned the personalities thing, that's actually something I've been thinking about myself. I'm not sure if I'll implement branching paths in the dungeons because that adds an extra layer of complexity but maybe I'll try it out and see how it feels. I'll take a look at the loading thing, I know the first loading screen takes a long time and I think that's just a browser/build thing.
Found this while researching behavior trees, great video! Keep up the good work, really enjoyed how chill this was!
Thank you!
looks cool! sorry I didn't watch the first video so if this comment is repetitive I apologize. I think the time for the hero to complete the dungeon way too long, from just the one video you showed it took about twice the time for the hero to run through the dungeon as it did for you to setup the tiles, and I don't think you setup the tiles very quickly. Right now this is wandering a bit into idle game territory but without the automation I feel like that could get kind of tiresome. Games like Loophero require quite a bit of constant management to offset this issue, and games like super auto pets have a way for the player to skip through the summery phase.
It's not repetitive, I think you're the first person to say something about that! 🙂 It's definitely something that's been on my mind but I haven't thought up a solution for it yet. I've considered having the option to just fast forward time or maybe adding some sort of interaction during the dungeon phase but I'm not sure yet.
@@LandonDevelopsAwesome, it's worth trying a few things. I'm looking forward to the next Dev update!
Thank you!
Can you summarize what the hunger system is supposed to achieve? Maybe condensing the idea and goal of the system into one or two sentences will help you with thinking on how to improve it
It's really just another way to lose because puzzles don't take health away they just take time so if you didn't have a time limit to complete the dungeon, the puzzles wouldn't be a hindrance.
@@LandonDevelops Ok! Why not use simply a timer then? Right now it looks a bit arbitrary, at least based on the video I had no idea how much hunger one puzzle would spend
Yeah the hunger meet is just a timer, the different chambers don't consume variable hunger. I think it would probably be better to do something where the meter is consumed by actions rather than just continuously ticking down
@@LandonDevelops that sounds good to me. Also it might help if the hunger bar also showed a value like 50/50 etc, and then maybe the puzzles could also show like a floating text "-10" for the hunger effect. Then the player had a much better understanding how to deal with it
@@denkkab1366 That's exactly what I was thinking 🙂
Second time's the charm! I accidentally uploaded the wrong video file like an idiot and then immediately flew off to New York for a week so I couldn't reupload immediately. Sorry for the weirdness!
It's all good. Life's too short to beat yourself up. Maybe I missed if you did this, but you might want a north star metric like "time user plays game", which is then broken down by "if they pick X class" or "if they survive X long". That helps avoid the "measure everything and then try to draw insights randomly" tar pit.
@@AlexWilkinsonYYC That's a good idea! I'll have to try to implement that in the next build, thanks!
really a nice idea, this genre needs new things :)
Thank you!
did u have discord
I don't have a discord server set up but I would consider it if there was enough interest
@@LandonDevelops in case I have douts in unity were to ask bro!
I actually don't use Unity so I don't think I'd be much help, sorry!
This is such a cool concept - great work!
Thank you!
Would love to see a full video about the data collection. Cool video!
Thank you!
Liked and subscribed, mate! Good luck in your gamedev journey!
Thank you!
love what you're doing here! i just watched through all of your videos and am definitely looking forward to seeing more in the future. i'd be super interested to see some more technical videos breaking down the code behind some of your systems, if that's something you'd be willing to do. i'm just getting in to programming & game development and your videos have been inspirational for me. thank you!
Thank you so much! I'd be willing to do more technical videos, any specific topic you're interested in?
@@LandonDevelops Personally I'd be interested in seeing more about enemy behavior/behavior trees and what that process looks like. Definitely would be interested in other topics as well though, if you have something different in mind
@@malcusG That's a good idea!
From one dev to another - great devlog! Not too long and kept me engaged. I’m curious to see where this goes. I’m coming along for the ride. Subscribed!
Thank you so much!
cant wait to play this!!!!
Thank you! There's actually a demo on itch.io right now but it's an older version, I believe the link is in the description of the video
this looks really good count me in
Thank you!
Keep up work, looks good
Thank you!
You could look at this as you are trying to overwhelm the hero, or you are trying to push them as they gain enough experience to defeat the boss.
One minute in, and I immediately think you have a hit if this is done in fast turns and you only get about five tiles to choose. The hero progresses through your selections and you get five more, etc. Similar to Slay the Spire.
Thank you! I've actually never played Slay the Spire, maybe I should for inspo
@@LandonDevelops When you do, notice how fast your turns can be. So what's your vision for this game going forward? I really like the idea of the chambers. When you have multiple chambers, I think you can build on that idea by forcing the player to choose which one to build their tiles into. Kind of like a path they have commit to. They can't reach every chamber. Why does this matter? The hero develops weaknesses as they progress, or possibly starts with one. Certain chambers are effective against certain weaknesses.
Yeah the idea is to kind of play on the idea of when the hero does a certain thing like a fight or a puzzle they get better at it so the hero will develop certain strengths and you can play to those strengths to help them get through the dungeon
@@LandonDevelops Then what does that make the player as far as how would you label their role? I'm big into narrative, even if the story is very small. Reason is, if you can label what the player's role is then designing mechanics becomes way easier and is sure to have logical patterns. Is the player a guardian angel who can manipulate earth, or a computer programmer who who overseers heros like Tank in The Matrix. Also I'm curious what you have in mind for bosses. Also what is the antagonist or conflict exactly? Is it the hero's weakness or laziness, or is the boss of each level, or a rival programmer? In other words, what is going to make the hero's journey difficult and thus the player's objective difficult?
I honestly haven't figured out the narrative fully, it definitely still needs some thought, the current idea is that it's your 9-5 job to build the dungeons for the heroes to go through over and over but it's not a fully fleshed out idea yet
This looks promising. Keep it up and keep up with the “it works for now” attitude over getting lost in the weeds of premature optimization.
Thanks! Yeah, I constantly have to remind myself not to prematurely optimize
This was a great format, keep it up! And congrats on your progress!!
Thank you!
ever tried Loop Hero?
Yes! I love that game and I'm definitely taking some inspiration from it
I'd say go for it and take even more, 'cause it can make your game more unpredictable, where you have to learn how tile mixing and matching works as in, two potion tiles could turn into an infirmary or two enemy tiles could turn into an enemy encampment, or something like that there would be some mechanic to learn
That's a really cool idea, thanks!
This ides feels...*familiar* (daisybell song starts Playing)
So cool! Looking forward to see how it progresses!
Thank you!
Fun little game thanks! Can't wait to see where you go with it.
Thank you!
Awesome video
Thank you!
Great job, thanks man !
Thanks!
While I imagine that was fun to program I am wondering about the game design of it, what is the strategy that comes in? Like what causes the player to have to make decisions here? Because right now I dont see much a difference between different tiles other than a visual one, and basically it seems like you just want to connect as many as you can just so you can get to the pre-laid down tiles.
Currently the strategy surrounds placing tiles that the hero is best at completing so they don't die or starve before making it through the dungeon. I think I'm still in the discovery phase of the deep strategy but if you have any ideas I'm open to them!
@@LandonDevelops Well given you have "cards" as the dungeon tiles it makes me think this would be like a deck building game. Maybe you can add some extra tiles to your deck every floor. And the strategy would come mainly from what tiles you keep in your deck so that each floor you have useful tiles. But some tiles wouldnt go back into your deck (mainly heals), and other tiles might even upgrade to scale with your character (enemy fights for example) I could see that leading to a lot of strategy like "do I use a healing potion room now or hold off until ive lost more health?" And then some really cool stuff could happen with the enemy fight tiles like "do I risk taking damage to get Exp or do I hold off" because then if you hold off too long you dont have good enough stats to deal with the enemies because you held off too long. But if you do it too early its also risky. I also think its a fun idea to have a tile with a chest in it which would have a random effect of giving maybe a health potion, maybe something else, but it could also hold another card to potentially add to your deck. While im throwing out ideas, maybe some cards could effect the character rather than being placeable.
Thank you! Those are all really good ideas!
Ive seen a game with a similar concept to this, a "reverse dungeon crawler" but this one goes all in on the roguelike aspect and doesnt make the "player" essentially an antagonist. Which definitely makes it a completely separate take.
What game was that? I'd be interested to see how it's done!
@@LandonDevelops I found the name, its called Veggiequest.
Also "Crawl" is kinds like a role switched roguelike
I checked it out and a bit of feedback. The most I made so far was clearing 4 levels 1) It is tough to get started. The combats and levers can take up a lot of time so some levels are impossible based on starting titles. 2) I didn't see a way to get items though there are slots for them. Is this implemented yet? 3) I don't understand how you get gold. Sometimes empty rooms or potion rooms give the gold. Sometimes they don't. 4) I find the "hunger" loss mechanic a little frustrating sometimes. There was once where I had walked into the final room and was standing there for a few frames and still lost. 5) Someone mentioned below swapping energy for hunger. I think this is a good idea. Also, to pause the bar between rooms. If you don't build out your map fully once you reach the dead end it drains it all very quickly. Would be nice to have more strategy if you could build one room at a time to see how much energy you have left and be able to make decisions about the next rooms you are placing. 6) I've also run into issues where I attempt to place a room next to an existing and it doesn't correct properly. This makes it impossible to have enough tiles to reach the end of the level. This seems to happen if 2 potion rooms spawned next to each other already connected for example. 7) Sometimes it is impossible to reach the end without connecting to a potion room. I could use two tiles to reach the end for example but if there is a potion room to the north or south it automatically connects forcing me to go through the potion room and then I need an extra tile to reach the end goal. So if I know I won't have enough energy, instead of placing two tiles and reaching the end I am forced to go through 4 even though I know there won't be enough time. I do think a lot of this could be resolved if energy isn't consumed on a timer but per room. Then as you build out to can choose to connect to existing rooms or skip them if you are running out of energy.
Thank you for the in depth feedback! I agree with a lot of what you said. 1. Yeah, this is very true, the combat and puzzles take up a lot of time and need a lot of balancing 2. The items aren't implemented yet, I probably should've removed that UI because a few people have asked about that lol 3. My original plan was to have treasure rooms randomly spawn like the potion rooms but I didn't have time to implement it so I just made every chamber have a random chance of giving gold so that you have the option to buy new chambers because there are times when you don't have enough chambers to complete the level 4. & 5. Yeah, I think making the meter paused between rooms might be smart because of the slight pause even in empty chambers. I think I may have to rethink hunger in general and maybe calling it energy is a better idea 6. & 7. Yeah, there are definitely some weird quirks with the chamber placement that I need to figure out. I added in the ability to buy a chamber card to bypass a little bit of the frustration but it's still not great
@@LandonDevelops Good luck!
nice! but have you ever been told you look like Sean from 1 minute talk show? (Also this is a very awesome idea... it wild that it only has this many views)
OMG, Yeah, ur right! but he sounds like the other one
:0 True!@@Ankhaz
Haha no one has told me that before but I just looked him up and I kinda see it! Also, thanks!
Small nitpicking thing: instead of the ‘hunger’ bar I would change it to a more general ‘energy’ bar. I think a hunger stat seems replenishable, changing it to energy makes more sense as it resets between floors. Really interesting concept!
That's a good idea! Thanks!
I believe a sanity, or morale bar could also work, depending on the setting or theme, if you want to get fancy.
This is literally a video game version of Boss Monster card game :D
I actually got this game for a Christmas and I haven't played it yet so now I definitely have to try it out!
@@LandonDevelops I've got both base games (base + independent xpac) and dlc's. It's fun if you have friends lol
Oof, gotta get me some of those 🤣
If you fit the idea well it can be quite successful as the ones I've seen trying this are not fun enough.
I'm definitely hoping to make the game fun! What other games are you thinking of trying something similar? Are there specific things you don't like about them that I can avoid?
This looks so cool wish I could try it
Thank you! You can try it, check the description for the itch.io demo link!
Awesome devlog! 💎
Thank you!! 😁
I like this games premise a lot! You have a new subscriber here thats already excited to play it my guy! :D
Thank you so much!
You called C# stinky, crappy gdscript (doesn't even have private/public separation) I disliked the video 🤷♂
Fair point, I just don't find encapsulation very useful, especially in game dev - but GDScript certainly isn't an OOP language, so if that's what you prefer then C# is the way to go
Just kidding btw, I liked the video. And I don't know how much experience you have in programming but I appreciate that you are aware of the difference between Function and Method. As a developer with +6 years of experience in C# Unity and .Net, I started developing my next game with Godot. And I accept that GDScript and Godot is a better option for game development (most indie cases) C# is certainly not designed for game development. Without using DI and polymorphism C# is not that effective language. Unity is not a game development-focused engine it still lacks many basic features. @@LandonDevelops
I have like 6ish years experience but my day job is more frontend stuff. I've worked with .NET outside of game dev quite a bit as well but I agree it's not ideal for game dev. I've done a good bit of Unity but I kind of just feel like Unity and OOP in general is too bulky for the small games I'm trying to make. However, I think mostly just semantics, I even noticed when making this video that the "duck typing" in Godot 4 function/method that I used was called "has_method" so it's all murky and messed up haha!
Exactly, too bulky. Especially for prototypes. @@LandonDevelops
This is just my idea but i think you should add a secret boss fight and get a special item if you beat him and dont make it easy to get to the boss and make it a bit difficult and some mobile controls would be nice
A secret boss would be cool! Unfortunately, I don't think I'll be supporting mobile but eventually, I will add controller support. Thanks for the recommendations!
I like this style of devlog. I also love programming concepts so don't stop rambling on about them :D
Thank you! That's all the encouragement I need 😁
It seems pretty good, great content on your channel. Good luck!
Thank you!
Also any place for the demo recommendations? I think biggest suggestion now is to have a faster animation for your swinging sword and hammer. Combat feels clunky because the arrows are fast but the swing animation is slow. Cool progress so far!
Yeah, either commenting here or on the itch.io is fine! Thanks for the rec, I definitely need to polish combat
Hey man, cool devlog. Think it looks kinda weird that you dont look at the camera and reading from a script.
Haha thank you! I was hoping nobody would notice that 🙃 definitely something I have to work on
Ahh yes the common "I though it would only take a day or two problem." Haha Ive run into this so much Good algorithm! I love to see these types of videos!
Haha happens every time! Thank you
I would like to hear you rant about composition in Godot, maybe explain it from scratch
Cool! Yeah I'll try to start at the beginning, I know my explanations in this video weren't the best