by keithburgun on Thu May 09, 2013 9:28 pm
Been thinking about this a bit more, and reading your responses. Just to clarify the most important point, here's what I think.
My Problem: Death makes no sense in Desktop Dungeons because the only time someone would ever experience it is if they misclick or if they've run out of moves (in which case it could just as well be resign). Under no circumstances* does death occur in a way that really thematically justifies death. It's always either "oh shit, misclicked!", or "Ah, ran out of moves, gotta kill myself now." Neither of these is a good mechanical pairing for the thematic concept of "death".
The reason you feel like we're arguing past each other is because you think that I'm advocating just ripping it out and putting nothing in its place. I might have come across that way, but the more I think of it, I realize that you really need something to *replace* death.
I *agree* with you that all else being equal, the game is better off with death
When I said "timer", I didn't mean real-time timer, I meant turns, but nevermind that and my other suggestions. There's a million things that could be tried, really. Here's one example:
- Objective is to beat a high score.
- Game End condition is triggered when the last "middle area tile" is uncovered (tiles that are within 4 tiles of the center of the map, maybe they're colored differently and you can see a highlight of where they are in the black before they're revealed)
- When the game ends, you win if you beat your high score, and you lose if you do not. Or you can use terms like "Pass" / "Fail" or something.
* Possibly the only circumstance would be a character that has some random dodge chance like the thief or whatever had in the alpha (Not sure if that's still in the beta)