[Indie Center] Jigxor, Creators of Dungeon Dashers

[Lekon]

Starting this week, Colony of Gamers will be hosting a regular column about Indie studios. I'll be having various studios or developers answer a few questions about their upcoming games and the general development process. Each week we'll also have some updates on previous guests' projects. So, I welcome everyone to Indie Center, with our first guest, Jigxor, and their game Dungeon Dashers!

CoG: So, tell us about Jigxor! How many folk are a part of it, and where's everyone located?

AS: My name is Andrew Sum and I live in Melbourne, Australia. I'm a game developer who is working on Dungeon Dashers full-time with a small team of artists, designers, and musicians located all over the world. Their talent spans the US, the UK, Australia and more! Because of this distance, the "studio" really consists of me hiring freelancers to create assets rather than being a full-time team. Besides the self-funding aspect of the project, I am personally responsible for the programming and most of the design.

CoG: What has the studio's crew worked on before?

This crew has never worked together before, and a couple of the artists have never worked on any sort of commercial project before either. Despite this, I'm extremely happy with the high quality of assets that they are creating and I think the team's styles all blend well together. Dungeon Dashers will be my second commercial project after previously co-developing Faerie Solitaire with a friend.

CoG: What's a game, mechanic, or just a small touch in a game lately that's really impressed you?

AS: FTL is a game which really impressed me. I think one of my favorite features is the semi-realtime mechanic, especially during combat. I love how you can pause the game at any time and think about your next tactical move, yet when actions are being executed they're in real time. It allows everyone to play at their own pace, and it's extremely exciting when you get into a situation where the next 10 seconds will make or break your ship and you need careful thinking to execute a particular plan of action. It's a fantastic game for lovers of roguelikes and sci-fi.

CoG: Tell us about your upcoming project!

Dungeon Dashers is a fast-paced multiplayer dungeon crawler currently in development. It's a streamlined dungeon crawling experience which plays quickly when you want it to, but still allows strategic decisions when necessary. It's got hand-crafted dungeons as opposed to procedurally generated ones, which aims to mimic tabletop board games with unique scenarios and complex interactions. There's a whole lot of equipment to unlock and craft, and a range of different skills to use.

Every good fighter needs some shiny metal on their chest

CoG: What was the original thought or idea that lead to Dungeon Dashers?

AS: Dungeon Dashers is primarily inspired by tabletop board games with fantasy and RPG elements. A couple of years ago I got into playing board games with some friends and we had a lot of fun moving our characters around and talking about tactical decisions. It was fun to play with friends and get together. The main problem was that these board games have extremely complex rules and many different pieces. They can take a long time to setup and also to read and understand how to play. I wanted something much more fast paced that would handle all of the tedious work for us while still giving a fun environment to play with friends, and hence, Dungeon Dashers was born.

CoG: After release, what would you like to add to the game?

AS: Lots of people have expressed interest in a level editor to create their own scenarios as well as randomly generated dungeons. I'd really love to add these features to the game, but they're a bit too much work to get into the first release. However, I plan to release free updates to Dungeon Dashers with features like these so people can continue to enjoy the game long after they've bought it.

Here we see a rogue reconsidering his career choice

I'd like to thank Andrew for his time, and talk a bit about Dungeon Dashers from a preview perspective. The game is currently in an alpha state, with only single player available at the moment. You take a team of four adventurers into a dungeon of your choice, and play chop slash loot with several enemies faces along the way. Even at this early stage, the game's a blast. They've nailed that feeling of moving little adventurer miniatures around on a board, while the skill system is pretty easy to get a handle on.

It doesn't take too long to figure out how the game plays out, how to use your rogue's blink to get to a good stabbing position, your mage's ice to setup a critical hit from your fighter, or just how to keep your squishy people out of harms way. Interestingly enough, characters can walk through, and even attack from squares occupied by friendly units, just not end their turn on an occupied square. This sets up great choke points, allowing your fighter to hold them off while the rogue sneaks in and gets a few good stabs in. On the downside, your enemies can do this too, so even if it's just a bat blocking your path, the three orcs behind it can come by for attacks on their turns.

While in combat, each character has a certain amount of AP to move, attack, or use special abilities. Each monster and player character is shown at the bottom right, in the order they'll act that turn. Managing your skill use becomes critical even in the early fights, so you don't end up with a rogue or elf getting surrounded and murdered. When out of combat, you can move any of your characters without using AP, letting you explore as much as you like. To keep everything easy though, each door to a new room has a teleport rune under it, so before opening any door that might have monsters behind it, the entire party will be teleported to you, saving you the time of having to move each of them individually to the combat zone. It's a little touch, but a really handy and convenient one to save some setup time and avoid some easy errors in player judgement.

Dungeon Dashers is a ton of fun already, and when they're able to add multiplayer, I expect this will eat up many of our nights with Co-Op looting and shooting/stabbing joy.

The Dungeon Dashers Main Website allows alpha funding (with access to the most current builds) for $10.
Dungeon Dasher's Steam Greenlight page also quite a bit of info on the game.
Andrew's InDev thread on TIGSource will let you follow along as development gets ever close to completion.
Lastly, those who'd like to contact the developer or just follow along for updates can do so via Andrew Sum's twitter.


As a bonus, here's the most recent Trailer for Dungeon Dashers!

At the end of each Indie Center, we'll be catching up with former guests. This week, I'd like to point out that Blue Bottle Games has their upcoming game Neo Scavenger for sale as part of a bundle Be Mine 5, with some of the proceeds going to charity.

[OrangePulp]

That looks pretty cool. I especially like the ability to freely explore, yet your party teleports to you on entering a new room so you don't have someone walk in foolishly and get murdered, before everyone else can come to the rescue. I'll have to keep an eye on this one.

[Karak]

I actually said 'o hell yes'

[Purple Santa]

Originally Posted by Karak

I actually said 'o hell yes'

Funny, as I was reading this I thought of you.


I played Faerie Solitaire. Also gifted a copy to ADDGirl.

[Lekon]

Originally Posted by Purple Santa

Funny, as I was reading this I thought of you.


I played Faerie Solitaire. Also gifted a copy to ADDGirl.

Seriously. I was following Dungeon Dashers, started talking with/interviewing Andrew and he just casually mentions "oh and the last game I worked on was Faerie Solitaire." Gobsmacked, I was.

I'm not sure what it is with Australian dev crews and board games on digital formats lately (Card Hunter's Blue Manchu's also in the southern lands), but damn... I like this trend.