For as long as I can remember I've loved playing dungeon crawlers games. For an equal amount of time I've wanted to make my own, and I did, numerous times. If I had a dollar for every proof-of-concept, tech demo or unfinished game project then.. well.. I wouldn't be rich but I'd have a substantial chunk of cash :) On April this year it finally happened! I finished a game! The game is called The Ogre King and albeit small in scope, I finished it and I released it. This makes me an official game developer, and it only took like 35 years, lol!
The game project started out as a personal test to see how far I can get in one day. How much playability I could concoct in very limited time. It turns out that after that first day I had something which felt good and I decide to extend the timeframe to one week. I gave myself one week to make a complete dungeon crawler, creatively called "zooperdan's one-week-dungeon-crawler", which had enough enjoyable crawling to last at least a couple hours. It was pretty hectic and the bulk of the development was done the first three days. The last four days were mostly level design and play testing. Play testing was definitely the biggest time thief of them all.
I decided to hand draw the graphical assets on paper and scan them in to Photoshop. This was done because of the time constraints but also since I wanted to do something a little bit different. I am very uncomfortable with drawing by hand and have no real experience or skill doing it, and as bad as the drawings are I still think they provided the game with a distinct and acceptable style :)
I have made quite a bit of improvements to the game since the release, and I plan to release a second game "soon" (time allowing).
All in all it was a fun and gratifying personal challenge and I think it turned out alright :)
