Descent of Doom

Before I started in VFX, I actually was trained in video game programming, and while I haven’t made anything significant in quite a long time, this particular game idea has gripped me and I’ve begun the process of developing it. So far I’ve mainly just worked out the idea and the overall mechanics, but I find that’s often the hardest part of the process.

Descent of Doom is primarily a “dungeon-crawler” RPG where the goal is to reach the end of a long series of underground chambers. Each chamber (or room) has some combination of monsters, treasure and characters (that may or may not be helpful). Every few rooms, there is an escape hatch, where you can leave the dungeon and keep all the treasure you’ve collected. If you are defeated in the dungeon, you lose all of the treasure you have collected in that run, so you have to gamble on whether or not you can make it to the next set of rooms.

Outside of the dungeon, there’s a little town where you can buy equipment, learn new skills and perhaps hire companions to help you along the way (although I’m not sure about this one). The better your equipment and skills, the further into the dungeon you’ll likely be able to traverse, due to lower-difficulty rooms being easier to overcome.

The primary goal is to reach the end of the dungeon, with secondary goals of collecting specific artifacts throughout the dungeon, defeating every type of monster and other such things.

I want this to be a primarily single-player experience, but to promote a sense of community, I like the idea that if you’re defeated, you have the option of “calling for help”. This will provide you with a code that you can send to a friend / community. Whoever enters the code into their game can enter the same dungeon you were defeated in, and try to reach the room / level on which you were defeated. If they manage that, they are given a “rescue code” that they can give back to you, and that allows you to recover some of the treasure you lost in that run. The rescuer gets a reward as well, so there’s motivation to help other players.

This will all be handled offline, with absolutely no need for an internet connection. I despise ads and microtransactions in games, and while there would be a purchase price for the full game (I like the idea of making a demo), it would only be a one-time payment, and not a very big one.

I would like this to be available on mobile, PC and consoles, but we’ll see how we go.

The art used for this project page (and the thumbnail) is a very-temporary AI-generated artwork to give the vague impression of the style I want, but the imagery in the final game would be created entirely by myself and maybe some other artists if I decide I need assistance.