Type Dungeon

nash 2018-04-23 15:32

Interesting idea and I think it could have potential if developed further. The nitpick I have is that the movement in this game feels more like a purposefully designed annoyance. Adding time limit to this makes it even more stressful to play. I know some people enjoy challenges like this but I personally could used some direction and motivation.

Maybe the letters could form actual words where you would have to type those instead of random, disconnected letters? Maybe player could use some skills/spells by typing a specific word? I don't really have an answer but I think this game might have something with a direction like this.

selftitled 2018-04-23 15:38

Wow, I suck at typeing lol, good game though. I like the idea, I might suggest using a different colour other than yellow for the letters you have to type, can be hard to distinguish the yellow from the white.

jharler 2018-04-23 15:45

Nice idea and good execution. I agree with @nash that using actual words instead of random letters would've been an interesting idea. I did run into a bug. I was in a situation like this:

``` B T N N ```

I was in the T and the key was in the lower N. However, every time I typed N, it would go to the right, so I lost because I couldn't go down. An easy bug to miss when doing random generation. Congrats on completing! If you get a chance, please take a look at my entry. Thanks!

djeycreations 2018-04-23 15:50

It is freaking hard XD. Typing only letters and no words is harder than we could think, even if you type fast usually. Good work =)

roy 2018-04-24 00:12

@jharler thx for the feedback, I will try to fix the bug

jaime-paz-lopes 2018-05-02 12:16

cool game. as djeycreations said, it is weird how typing random letters is much harder then words. I had no problem with the timer, it puts a good pression on the player, but I think that a little more time or more clocks on the maze would be nice.

roy 2018-05-03 01:36

@Jaime-paz-lopes it is a little hard to adjust the time length and number of clocks, because someone can type fast while other can't. To get a better difficulty balance, I may need more tester(such as you) than myself alone :)

rayriver 2018-05-03 12:33

Good game and solid execution. Nice work!

shivur 2018-05-09 22:34

Interesting idea.

goffmog 2018-05-11 11:20

Wow that was hard but interesting. I completely get that it's difficult to balance games in 48 hours, I don't think I've ever made a balanced game even when given 18 months :) Great job getting this done for the compo!

blueman 2018-05-11 23:32

It was fun, I enjoyed it.

shellfish-games 2018-05-12 06:26

This was very innovative and cool. Very fitting concept and actually fun to play, despite its simplicity. Got to level 11 and enjoyed it. Well done!

levidsmith 2018-05-12 07:29

I really liked the combination of typing and dungeon crawling. I sort of wish that I was typing real words though. Maybe layout the level like a crossword puzzle. Sometimes the key seemed to spawn close to the starting position, which made completing the levels a little too easy sometimes. I did manage to complete all 20 levels and become the typing master!

doccrazy 2018-05-12 07:41

I love the idea of this game, and I had fun playing it! However, some form of progression beside a time limit would have been nice. Also, I think the game would be much more fun if you had to type real words, like in a crossword puzzle.

gamecarpenter 2018-05-12 09:49

I enjoyed this, probably because my typing is decent. I used my Colemak keyboard layout for playing this, and was pleased that it didn't seem to matter since everything was random anyway.

The level generation worked, but it had some problems. Uncommon letters showed up much more often than their usage frequency would suggest. It might have been nice to weigh them toward more common letters. It was also a little disorienting, but not game breaking, when two characters with the same letter showed up next to each other.

The rating system at the end seemed sort of arbitrarily cruel. I think awarding 'titles' like goblin slayer, orc slayer, giant slayer, and so on, would have been a better choice and helped incorporate more of that dungeon crawling theme (and probably easier to do more variety with). Everyone is going to be somewhere different in terms of typing strength, and just saying, the equivalent of "you're bad" isn't going to encourage further improvement. Another option would be an adaptive system, but that only works in certain contexts, here it might be too abusable.

It was nice to have a dungeon-crawler-esque vision system, but it was quite an unusual implementation. It wasn't really the pseudo-line-of-sight based vision I would expect from a dungeon crawler. The key placement could have had some extra logic tacked on as well. Sometimes it was visible from the very beginning of the level. Other times, the key would spawn directly on a time piece, which is kind of annoying in that it basically removes that piece from the level.

The graphics were simplistic and generic. Sometimes I found the letters difficult to distinguish from each other though. I wonder if a larger size, or darker color would have helped. The sound effects were okay, and if you're going to do them every step, music isn't as important as usual. The 'miss' sound effect was (understandably) a bit extra loud, but in general the volume on them felt good.

Personally I would have preferred if the timer didn't start on a level until you pressed your first key as I expected from both a dungeon crawler and a typing game. It helps make the game a little more reliable in that you don't have to worry about the time you spend to find yourself, and it also adds a bit of strategy in that you can plan a route. Those benefits though are at the cost of pacing and action, so I could understand choosing to start the timer right away as well.

Typing is a common genre crossover choice, although usually you have less real interactivity than with this game. It would have been cool to get more of the typing features (like here, characters per minute) or dungeon features (like some dungeon crawl-y combat) in there as well.

Overall, I felt like the game was carried by being fun. Getting in a good generation system, and the heavily execution-driven gameplay gave it a lot of replayability as well. I just wish you had better assets, and explored integrating the genre's more fully in the game.

roy 2018-05-13 01:16

@LeviDSmith Congratulations, new typing master :) @LeviDSmith @doccrazy I will dig into the crossword puzzle idea of yours

roy 2018-05-13 01:46

@GameCarpenter Thanks for your feedback and usefully suggestions. The game is based on randomness, also many of my game design "decisions" are quite randomly chosen, partly because my developing skills is insuffient and partly the 48h time limit. The vision system is done in this way because it's the easiest to implement. Timer starts immediately because I never give it a thought. The biggset benefit I gain from your comments is that I need to be ware of those micro choices to make better games. Thanks again.