The Deep Paths: Labyrinth Of Andokost

Labyrinth Of Andokost is a first-person, grid-based dungeon crawler with heavily old-school influences. The game is inspired by the likes of Dungeon Master and Lands Of Lore.

There is currently no testing or release schedule, but I'll post updates whenever something significant happens. Keep in mind that anything posted here is WIP and does not necessarily represent the final game.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/375500/

https://www.humblebundle.com/store/p/the-deep-paths-labyrinth-of-andokost

 

Just a quick screenshot and an update. Getting close to complete on all of the preliminary systems for building the dungeons and setting up all of the levels. At the moment I'm putting together all of the different texture sets for the various areas in the game. After that, I might actually be able to start building some dungeons. For the time being, you may notice that I'm using some Coldfire Keep artwork - that's just temporary.

 

One more WIP screenshot, and then back to work for a while. More updates down the track.

 

Looks rather promising. Good luck!

Barely related tangent: I remember years ago (back when you could have your choice of VGA or EGA graphics) playing a dungeon crawler called Eye of the Beholder, and for no reason whatsoever I convinced myself that the next level will take me out of the dungeon and into a big, sprawling city on the surface where much more exciting adventures and plenty of sunlight awaits.

Would be awesome if you could do that

 

Not so much a "big sprawling city", but there is a home town in this game and a world map that connects all of the dungeon areas. I'm thinking about having on-the-road encounters too while you travel from place to place.

 

In exciting news, The Deep Paths now has its very own Kickstarter!

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As well as this little promo video thingy:

Check them out!

 

Looks good

 

What kind of combat system are you planning?

 

Thanks mate!

Combat is fully turn-based with the option to "break away" from a fight if you want to escape.

 

While I'm posting, here's the latest screenshots as seen on the Kickstarter page.

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I like the look of it. One of my favorite games ever was Eye of the Beholder 2. However, once you knew how the combat system worked, it was pretty easy to "cheat". That's why I asked.

 

I found the same thing with Legend Of Grimrock. Combat was just about constantly moving which prevented enemies from ever hitting you. I like more traditional stuff - your stats vs. the enemy's stats, with a sprinkling of strategy and luck.

 

Nice little write up about The Deep Paths, based on the Kickstarter campaign information:

http://www.indieretronews.com/2014/08/the-deep-paths-latest-dungeon-crawler.html

 

Reminds me of some old Saga Saturn game I used to play... can't remember the name. Good times.

 

I thought I'd share a little more information about the character generation system in "The Deep Paths". The game uses the traditional RPG archetypes of Fighter, Rogue, Cleric, and Mage. This was a very conscious decision building "tradition" into the very roots of the game. Aside from that, I like these old-school character generators a great deal. I'm a big fan of rolling dice to try and come up with the best stat set for each of my characters. I like that I can experiment with different party member combinations. Hopefully I'm not the only one that feels that way... pretty confident that I'm not!

Each party member has 5 key stats that govern the effectiveness of their abilities. Strength is the Fighter's primary stat, Dexterity the Rogue's. Clerics rely on Faith, and the Mage uses their Intellect. Across the board, Vitality makes for healthy characters and is also a deciding factor for numerous "saving throw" type dice rolls.

Another very conscious decision at this initial level of creation is the exclusion of any form of skills. I wanted to make sure that people could enjoy the character generation process, but limit it to something reasonably quick and manageable so as not to alienate newcomers to this style of RPG. Rest assured though, each character has a set of skills (or "Talents") that allows you to further specialize their abilities inside of their overarching class, as they level up throughout the adventure. Talent selections also lend an extra element of variety to repeated play-throughs.

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Back to working on this game after a little break. Will be posting some more interesting details soon. In the meantime I've got rid of the old UI and redone it all (using an Asset Store package!). Pretty much finished most of the systems and almost ready to start building real levels.

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First screenshot showing the new WIP environments, and a post with some thoughts on the current evolution of this little project:

http://www.stevejarman.com/2014/11/28/scope-negative-creep/​

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Looks very nice, but to be very honest, I am missing something fresh. It looks and feels like a lot of games before this one. What are you going to add that is new?

 

The game definitely has a few innovations. But it's a retro dungeon crawler - it's not really aiming to be fresh Old-school is kind of in its blood.

 

I understand, but still. I played a lot of old school dungeon crawlers back in the day, but if I wanted the same experience again, I could just play those. I would think today's audience wants something new as well. Personally, what puts me off in a lot of RPG's is the same combat system and DnD style stats. I would love to see something new there.

 

Fair points. I guess time will tell as to whether or not The Deep Paths brings something new to the table. I appreciate the feedback.

 

No problem. I think you are on the right track. The game looks good. Really looking forward to the endresult.

 

Wow this looks great! Did you do all by yourself? Didn't know there was a kickstarter. Also awesome, that it's turn-based instead of realtime. The rpgcodex is dying for turn based games, did they even know about this project?

 

Myself and a couple of artists. The Kickstarter went nowhere so I'm slowly funding it myself...

 

Another week, another progress screenshot. Starting to add inhabitants, courtesy of @Andreas Braun

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Don't see why you can't be on the same lvl with this as grimrock.. Those guys made a killing with it. You going to be releasing this on pc?.Working on a old school rpg myself more along the line of dragon age than dungeon master though.

 

Yes, it's slowly coming along. Should be done within the next 6 months.

Releasing on PC initially and then porting it to iOS/Android.

 

I put together a little teaser video tonight of some of the WIP stuff that I'm doing. Check it out

 

This is coming along very nicely, although I think Abed should be a mage.

 

Visually it looks stunning!

 

You're right - now that I think about it, Abed would definitely be a mage

 

Latest screenshot testing in Unity 5. Making good progress on the game and aiming to put the Greenlight page together within the next month.

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I like the graphics a lot. Dungeon and lighting looks awesome. However, I think the UI is a bit ugly to be honest. It takes away from the immersion. I would prefect a more minimalistic UI that is more in tune with the rest of the look of the game.

 

What don't you like about the UI specifically?

 

The way the portraits are depicted. I don't like how straight it looks. Nothing in the game is perfectly straight, except for the UI. It feels too cold right now compared to the rest which is much warmer. Also, the text is redundant. Everyone knows what Red, blue and green means. No need to put the text there as well.

Legend of Grimrock does it a bit more minimalistic, but still very straight in my opinion, so the screenshot below is only part of what I mean:

http://cf.shacknews.com/images/20120302/gui_revision_arrows_21241.jpg

This second screenshot uses an oval picture of the main chars, which I think is a bit better, although the style in general is too clean for what you have.

http://nerdbacon.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Loren-Character_Inventory-Interface.jpg

I hope you know what I mean.

 

Thanks very much for the feedback. A lot of food-for-thought.

The text in the character blocks in particular is something that I internally debated about quite a bit. That and the fact that having text led to having horizontal bars rather than vertical (like almost every other game uses to keep things compact).

What I did like though, and what led to the decision, was having them spaced out evenly across the top of the screen. Having them all in a corner of down one side felt unbalanced to me.

At any rate. I'll experiment. Maybe there's another way to do things...

 

What if I compact the character blocks and set the feedback window along-side of them to take up whatever screen space is left available?

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To me, that kills the symmetry that I have in my original layout?

 

How about this option? I get my symmetry back and the voices in my head subside somewhat.

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That latest picture looks very nice!

 

Going with this variation for now. It also allows me to open up more lines of history in the feedback area which is something I was wanting for a while.

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Much better, but I would put them all in the middle then if symmetry is what you want. The text I would put in the bottom left somewhere. Almost all the major games have their text over there, like Diablo 3.

 

It looked much better the way it was befpre. I would def move the portraits to the middle side if u keep it as is
Text bottom middle

 

Happy with it as it is now (last screen shot posted). The text needs a lot of room as there are some area descriptions, narrations (the blue text) that are quite long. Having the portraits stacked gives me that room and introduces the extra length to have 8 lines of history instead of 4.

 

Reposting this here from another thread cause it looks so damn cool.

@nipoco playing around in Unity 5 with "The Deep Paths" props and environments.

 

I like that final layout the most, although I think you could stand to make the character panels a little bigger.

Why have a bar on the screen for exp? You don't need that information during combat. Just adds more bars to clutter up the screen imo.

 

In this game, that bar is the ONLY place that you see your XP. I used to display it numerically on the Character Sheet too, but I decided to remove all numerical references to XP (e.g. Killed monster - you gained 25XP) as I think it's unnecessary for the player to see that, and it stops them dwelling too much on the XP system in general. It's enough for them to know that if they discover a secret wall, their XP bar increases a little.

I like the MMO style XP where you can always see your progress to the next level at-a-glance, right there on the main screen.

 

That's fair enough. Btw I'm in fan of getting rid of numbers in the interface in general, I think that was a good decision.

 

Yeah, you're right about that. I've left Health and Mana numbers in the Character Sheet for people who want to see the progression of those stats through levelling, but it does feel much better not having those numbers on the main interface. They were a huge distraction.

 

My 2 cents the portraits right at the top cnr of the screen looks terrible plus it draws the eyes away from the center of the screen(unless u playing on a small screen(thinking monitor here)) which kinda defeats the point of having awesome graphics.
A good game wants its players to take a interest in there characters this looks like its relegating them to a bit part in the game which is kind of like a bad horror movie where no one cares about what happens to the victims because they not fleshed out a good horror makes people care for the victims or heroes.

Also i like numbers that's why weapons have damage stats and not hmm this weapon packs a wollop or this dagger might sting a bit and i certainly want to know how much exp i'm getting.