Nandrew
Subdungeons and regions
Although the reliable ol’ dungeon remains a good standard unit of adventuring throughout Desktop Dungeons, we’ve recently been putting some more work into other classifications such as puzzles, subdungeons and regions.
Puzzles have been discussed recently, and subdungeons have been mentioned here and there (one or two simple ones were included with the E3 demo), but I don’t think we’ve mentioned regions yet. So here’s a little bit about ’em.
Regions are organisational units for larger groups of dungeons. They determine a couple of unique characteristics such as active quests, tilesets and what sort of subdungeons spawn in any given area. Thus, while something like the Tundra region may consist of five or six member levels, all of these dungeons will occasionally spawn unique (SPOILER ALERT) subdungeons, altars dedicated to the lost god of (SPOILER ALERT), or even random instances of the special (SPOILER ALERT) discovery quest. These traits are unique to any level classified as Tundra, and allows us to establish all sorts of characteristic similarities, up to and including their own list of hidden (SPOILER ALERT).
Every region in the game has its own loose story, and players will frequently come across specialised “lore” subdungeons which can give valuable information about other subdungeons in the region. These can be hints on where to look for cool artifacts (a tome inside the Swamp region can tell players which dungeons spawn the legendary Corrosive Whip subdungeon, for example) or just warnings about what can be encountered in similar areas (if you find yourself inside a subdungeon filled with innocent-looking plants, BACK OUT SLOWLY AND NEVER RETURN).
In a nutshell, regions help us determine the placement and spawn rate of “set pieces” like subdungeons, and help a loose collection of game levels feel far more like a coherent world for players to travel through and explore.
June 23rd, 2011 at 9:13 pm
Hopefully these subdungeons are not too exploitable for extra tiles to reveal for regenerating health/mana. The presence or absence of a lore dungeon could make or break completing the main dungeon.
June 24th, 2011 at 5:21 am
Heartfelt feature request: Please have the information gained from lore subdungeons collected in the game somewhere. A separate lore file I can read, or even “Here be awesome artifact X” messages on zones.
I love DD for being a game I can play for ten minutes while waiting for a train or eating lunch. Having to keep a pile of scribbled lore notes in my desk is not conducive to this.
June 24th, 2011 at 1:57 pm
@Artemus
The whole theme of DD seems to be balance. I can’t imagine that they would overlook something like that.
Also, it may be for dungeons already completed, so completing them again might not matter.
July 2nd, 2011 at 5:20 pm
I thought it was stated that regeneration through exploration was not going to be a reoccurring theme in DD.
July 2nd, 2011 at 5:32 pm
@Randonx: … What?
July 3rd, 2011 at 6:12 am
Maybe I was cracking smoke. That, or dreaming. I could’ve sworn I read somewhere that regeneration of health/mana by exploring new tiles in the dungeon wasn’t going to be how the game worked upon release.
July 3rd, 2011 at 1:42 pm
@Randonx: Well, it would be rather hard to change that, seeing as that’s the core design concept that the whole game is build around. If you did read it anywhere, then we were probably being sarcastic about something 😉