Hey frens,
Over the last several months I have been quietly building what I believe to be an exciting, executable, and scalable dungeon crawler concept.
Aavegotchi Roguelike Crawler
The gotchi mines have become overrun by a mysterious corruption! Your job is to descend to the bottom and solve the mystery.
The dungeon: a bottomless dungeon with increasingly valuable rewards. Players have a limited time with each play through before they are overtaken by the corruption. Players must make it to a multiple of 10 floor and teleport out with their treasure, otherwise it is all lost.
Players must decide between racing to the bottom and farming treasure. The deeper they go, the better the treasure. However, the dungeon becomes increasingly perilous and because of the all-or-none reward system, the choice to descend further or cash out is very difficult to make!
Why Roguelike?
Roguelikes fit perfectly with GameFi. They are insanely difficult to beat, are randomised with each playthrough, and allow for customisation of character.
Basic Economics:
The game generates revenue through two methods: entry fee and in-dungeon currency.
There are two gameplay modes: casual and hardcore.
Player Rewards
The objective of the game is to be rewarding yet challenging. A well-designed game would be a net profit, even with player rewards. This can be achieved through an increasingly difficult dungeon, an RNG spawner which can severely handicap a playthrough, and various other ways.
Casual gameplay rewards: GLTR + alchemica
Hardcore gameplay rewards: GLTR + alchemica + alloy + essence + core fragments + schematic shards
Gameplay:
There are a total of 100 floors to descend and complete before the game is considered beaten. Beyond the 100th floor lies the infinite void where elite players can continue into infinity, time and health permitting.
Each floor is randomly generated and different on every playthrough. To advance to the next floor, a player must find the stairs or floor portal which is located underneath the rock piles and treasure chests. Players may also use an escape stair item which can be purchased from the in-game merchant. Stairs descend one floor while portals range from one to seven floors.
The mechanics are similar to Stardew Valley’s bottomless Skull Cavern, but with more enemies and faster fighting.
Once a floor is completed, it cannot be revisited.
Breaking ore and chests:
The fastest way to destroy ore and chests is with bombs. These can be purchased as well as found in chests. Bombs can clear a path quickly and are essential for a player to reach the bottom floors.
Alternatively, a player can melee/ranged attack the ore and individually break them open.
Merchant Floors
On every tenth floor is a rest floor where players can purchase ethereal wearables which vanish upon death/exit. Here players also may choose to portal out of the mines and capture their treasure on-chain.
Gameplay Mechanics
Players begin the dungeon with their equipped wearables. The overall fighting mechanics are very similar to the Gotchiverse and the BRS mods influence characters as expected. There are two basic move sets: melee and ranged. We also introduce a dodge.
There are three components to gameplay: the gotchi with his gear who enters the game, meta skill progression which influences the overall game, and the RNG Aspects which dictate how someone plays through that individual run. The gotchi and wearables is considered to be the slowest meta progression. The skill points are a medium-length progression. The Aspects are randomised each run.
Artwork and Biomes
True to aavegotchi’s origins, the game is designed in beautiful 2d pixel art.
Each 20 floors, the player descends into a new biome.
Some biome concepts with inspiration:
Underground River and Mushroom Biome 1- 20:
The first theme beneath the surface.
Organic, flowing waters, mushrooms, psychedelic, vibrant and glowing.
Blue/green/brown palette with pops of pink contrast.
Geode Mines Biome 21 – 40:
Beneath the underground river lies the geode mines
Rocky, icy, shimmering and crystalline
Base palette of cool greys, icy colours, with prismatic crystals on top (from the geode graphics)
Abandoned Refinery 41 – 60:
Furnace, fire, molten FOMO. a refinery deep underground long abandoned. Mechanical enemies. Robotic. Lots of machinery and traps.
KEK Pits 61- 80:
Beneath the refinery are the KEK Pits. The dungeons open into a vast and expansive space. Ethereal, spacey, and incredibly dangerous.
Palette: purple, grey, pink, shimmering lights
Corrupted Essence 81 - 100:
Infinite Void 100+:
This is just a teaser
I’ve written an entire lite paper which fleshes this design out more comprehensively. Things like meta progression, gameplay mechanics, enemies and so on are already being ideated and shaped. The concept I envision is like an amped up Stardew Valley Skull Cavern meets Hades.
To me, this game concept is what I always imagined and had hoped to play with my aavegotchis. As the DAO continues to take on more autonomy, we have the opportunity to build whatever our hearts desire!
With the successful implementation of the Forge mechanics, we now have an entire array of assets to reward players with. To carry things further, Core Fragments can be introduced, allowing for players to collect X amount of fragments which can eventually be converted into a Core itself.
A Massive Undertaking
This exciting idea expands far beyond what the DAO has so far achieved. It would require a significant budget and time to execute. I see things like this:
Community: shape the concept further as a community. Bring ideas together and refine things the way we like.
DAO Team: a small crew of community members which include myself as lead product designer and asset creator, a project manager, an economist, and smart contract developer.
and most importantly, a reputable indie game studio who executes our vision.
I’ve already began doing some research and indie game studios are indeed available for hire. The budget to develop a game, excluding the DAO team, ranges from $200k into infinity. Timeline estimates I’ve received also range but the average is between three and nine months. Add the complexity of crypto and smart contracts and realistically nine months would be incredibly ambitious in my opinion.
Essentially, we need to have a solid proposal in hand before getting a true cost of execution and understanding of timelines. Naturally the more complex and detail-rich the game, the more expensive and longer it takes to execute.
Realistically, this endeavour I would expect to cost in the ball park of one million USD. Mind you, this number is a very rough estimate at this stage.
Does this excite you?!
I have many more details already mapped out and a clear vision on how this game can take shape. That being said, there is still so much more to design and create and iterate on as a community.
I want to share this vision and build together with you all something truly wonderful which captures the attention of the broader crypto community.
But before I go too much further and reveal any more, I wanted to see if this direction is where the community wants to go?
- Hell yes!
- I like where this is going but need more
- Eh, maybe. But this needs massive revision
- Absolutely not!
0 voters
