I’ll be damned if this isn’t right up my fn’ alley: In Let’s Build a Dungeon, I am an MMO designer/developer, and I have to create an entire game world from scratch, tile by tile, designing elements of the world, placing fences, lighting, buildings, and terrain. I have to create NPCs and wire up quest givers and quest finishers. I earn money and points as players enter my custom realm, and this allows me to expand the game even more. Hot damn! Let’s get crankin’!

[Record scratch]

The game starts with a randomized island and a town center. I clicked the RANDOMIZE button a few times until I got an island shape I liked.

I was then told to make my island a bit more robust, so I put in some fencing and some lanterns using the only materials I had available. After hitting certain milestones, I was able to throw in my first NPCs, my first buildings, my first quests, and my first resolutions.

Then the players came in. They started doing the quests. I could look at a whole lot of stats to see which quests were getting completed, how often, and how quickly. Every milestone I hit allowed me to unlock more decorations, more NPCs, and more quests. More. More. More.

Too much, actually. I got completely overwhelmed. I don’t know if it’s me, or if it’s the gogogo nature of the Modern MMO experience, but I never felt like I could take a breath here. I was so tuned into the stupid NPCs who were “playing the game” that I felt that my meager offerings weren’t satisfying them well enough to keep them playing. Holy hell…is this what real MMO designers have to deal with?

All that aside, this is a really novel take on the “behind the counter” genre we see in games like Tavern Keeper and others I can’t remember right now. We’re not the adventurers here, but the ones who create the situations and materials for the adventurers. I used to play a game on the C64 called Unlimited Adventures (an SSI Gold Box game!) that was like an RPG construction kit, and this is so very much like that.

I am trying to figure out if my anxiety is a game mechanic, or if it’s all just me. I want to get my fake MMO to a point where players can enjoy it, but early on I don’t think they are because there’s so little to do. The good news is that LBaD offers three modes: campaign, free-form, and creative. Campaign contains all of the tutorial bells and whistles and has me creating a game for a company focused on acquisition, retention and profits. Free-form has all of that, but I don’t think there’s a “game over” feature; I can just roll with the ebb and flow of my fortunes.

I really do like this game in both concept and execution. It’s like a tycoon game in that it has a massive amount of stats that can be used to tweak the product being built, if I were able to take a breath and go over them at my leisure. Sadly, due to the nature of what’s being simulated — a live service game — there doesn’t seem to be a way to pause the action [edit: the devs said that there is, but not in the demo!], and that’s sad because if there were, I think I might be able to ride this rollercoaster. Still, I’m going to go back in and poke around a bit more. I want to see how the creative mode works. I also want to see what happens if I’m not at the beck-and-call of the obnoxious runts who are playing my game: can I learn to love the process despite the obnoxious customers? One can only hope.

Late Breaking Update

OK I wrote this post yesterday, but I jumped into the creative mode this morning and holy hell, chat…this is way more than just a tycoon game.

Creative mode takes all the tools and gives them to us. I was able to draw an island, select NPCs, create quests with conversations, player options, objectives, chains, and rewards — only “kill quests” are available as the objective right now, but I could choose what to kill and how many. Then I could create normal conversations for NPCs in case they have something important to say that isn’t quest related (“Go talk to Ol’ Stoney for more info”, and such).

I could also create a custom player character. It uses a paper doll onto which I could paint some clothes. I suck a pixel art, so my character looked like he was wearing a bathrobe and was bald, but whatever. There was also a portrait maker which allowed me to add pre-made accessories to the character’s headshot, for when he shows up in conversations.

The real kicker is that I could then spawn in and play the game I made. At that point it was one NPC quest giver who wanted me to kill two skeletons, but still! It also seems that the game will allow our creations to be uploaded and shared with other people.

I’m not entirely sure the extent of this project right now. The dashboard used in the creative mode was extensive, and most of it was inaccessible for the demo. I am wondering if it’ll be possible to create different maps representing indoor areas like, you know, the dungeons mentioned in the title. And if we can build land masses beyond the point value limit I saw in the demo.

I’m going to re-do the creative mode demo and take screenshots next time so you can see the extent of this game, because it’s…well, it’s looking like it’s not just a tycoon game, but an adventure construction set. Stay tuned!