The Ghost of Gaming Past
Zizka and I (RefresherTowel) met online awhile ago, and after doing a game jam together, we decided to take a dive and team up for a proper game.
We began with the idea of making a relatively simple card game, something that played around the rules of Poker like Balatro. But that idea quite quickly went out the door as we started the pre-development discussions about what each of us wanted from the project and what we hoped to end up with. It was here that the idea of Doggy Dungeons was born, a roguelite card collecting game where you are a lost pet trying to find their way home.
Progress has been lightning fast so far, and we're getting close-ish to being able to release a demo, so I thought it was time to talk a little about what our plans are for both the demo and the full release.
Presently Present
We've got a few design pillars that we've established over the time we've been working on the game, so here they are:
- Everything Is In Your Hand - Your hand space is your most precious resource. If you get a buff, that buff will occupy space in your hand. If you get a debuff, that debuff will occupy space in your hand. Want to buy a special Crow Card when you find the Crow? That'll cost a Coin Card, which will be in your hand, and when you buy the Crow Card, that too, will exist in your hand. We think this leads to having to make interesting and sometimes scary choices as a player. Each play you make alters this "resource" and it's up to you to make smart decisions about managing it.
- Simplicity - We believe in simplicity. Not simplicity in terms of a lack of synergies or having no deep strategical decisions to make, but rather simplicity of design. We don't want a bunch of different areas that you play different types of cards onto or anything like that, or whatever other things you might need to learn in order to play other card games. You have your hand, and you have the arena, you have combat and you play. We want it to be intuitive while still being deep.
- Pets! - We love our pets and assume you do too! We want to explore the adventures they get up to when they aren't at home.
And in terms of development, we're getting close to a demo release, as previously mentioned, so let's see where we are headed...
The Future
Our current plan is to get a demo out, get some feedback from it and then release into early access a bit after that. We want to be able to hone the steel edge of the game in the fires of live gameplay.
In terms of the actual game, we're planning for each run to consist of a few biomes randomly picked from a pool (the biome pool being basically as big as time will allow us to make it), with multiple arenas to fight through in each biome.
The biomes will each have a unique pool of enemies to fight, as well as cards to add to your deck (note: cards are collected on a per run basis, with each run having a standardised starting deck based on the pet you choose), plus some "special events". Runs should be fairly short, with a successful run likely to last around half an hour-ish.
We've got quite a few pets planned to pick from, as well as unlockable skins for each pet, so hopefully you'll be able to play as your pet!
There's more to talk about, but we don't want to ruin all the surprises right now, plus development goes on it's own merry path, plans be damned and so anything we've talked about here is liable to change as development continues, this is just a brief outline of where our heads are right now! As I said at the start, we just wanted to put a bit more information out there about what our plans are to keep everyone updated.
Stay tuned for more coming =)