Category: Design Logs

  • Project ZorkDeck (8): Narrative Dialogue UI

    Project ZorkDeck (8): Narrative Dialogue UI

    One of the inspirations that I’ve taken from Zork is the text-based nature of the game. I loved the idea of taking this original gamestyle and applying supporting visuals, while keeping it’s original identity intact. As the player progresses to new tiles, they should be drip-fed parts of the story. The conditions of this are:…

  • Project ZeckDeck(7): Narrative Blocking (1)

    Project ZeckDeck(7): Narrative Blocking (1)

    The handy part about coming up with all those environment and event ideas is that I now I have a pretty clear idea of how to block out each phase. What I mean by this is the overall order of encounters, roadblocks..etc I like the idea of keeping these flexible and modular, as this allows…

  • Project ZorkDeck(6): Narrative(2)

    Project ZorkDeck(6): Narrative(2)

    As far as systems go, we have thought about and implemented; These four systems will make up the core loops of ‘Knight in the Woods’. I have other ideas for potential systems, however what I’m really interested in is populating these five systems and then evaluating the need for any others. In my head, it…

  • Project ZorkDeck (5): Narrative (1)

    Project ZorkDeck (5): Narrative (1)

    The player, at this point, can move and fight a basic set of enemies. My original plans revolved around a heavily narrative experience, such as what can be found in a novel. Of course, the interactive elements need to be strong; but I had envisioned this story unfolding in a storybook style fashioned. But what…

  • Project ZorkDeck (4) Fighting (1)

    Project ZorkDeck (4) Fighting (1)

    With the first stages of the movement and dungeon mechanics working, the time has come to have think about the battle mechanics. As mentioned before, I’m pretty keen to get some card fighting in there; the build part can come later, but for now I’d like to get a turn based system where the player…

  • Project ZorkDeck (3): Procedural Dungeons (2)

    Project ZorkDeck (3): Procedural Dungeons (2)

    When considering how the dungeon system is going to work, I leaned back and forth quite a bit. Would I create an editor tool that allowed me to map out paths? or would I put all of the load on a manager and try to be as reductive as possible? Overall, the outcome would be…

  • Project ZorkDeck (2): Procedural Dungeons

    Project ZorkDeck (2): Procedural Dungeons

    Part of the way that I have always worked is by identifying key parts that I either want to implement/learn to implement, such is the bane of having a passion for learning new things. This being the case, means that the design and development side of things will jump around quite a bit. In the…

  • Project ZorkDeck (1): Concepts of a Plan

    Project ZorkDeck (1): Concepts of a Plan

    Recently, I’ve been fascinated with deckbuilders and card-based games. There’s a massive variety of them out there; Shroom and Gloom combines card collecting with ‘Roguelite’ gameplay and spooky environments to hammer home the ‘dungeon crawler’ feel of the classics (Cave Noir..etc). Inscryption keeps the session playstyle of ‘Roguelites’, but adds in heavy and varied RPG…