Indie Sonucido: The Mage - A turn-based Dungeon Crawler

[Moaning_Clock]

Spoiler

Hey, I'm working on a 90° grid-based Dungeon Crawler. I made a couple of games over the years but this is the biggest one yet.
It will be released before Q4 this year. It will be released 2nd of December this year! It will be released December 2, 2022!

A quick overview so you can easily judge for yourself if you will like or hate the game.
- Single Character, no party
- No battle-dancing
- Very little loot but no loot is pointless
- Only a few weapons but no weapon is pointless (no +1, +2, +3 swords, every enemy has different weaknesses)
- No big tutorial, just rtfm
- Controller support
- There are dialogue and notes but it's not a word-heavy game
- Choices matter (in dialogue but also decisions which way you take)
- Multiple endings
- Focus on only a few stats
- You can throw bombs
- Most enemies and npcs don't move, you decide when you fight them but you also can't flee after the fight started
- You can kill almost anyone
- One playthrough will most likely take you 3 hours
- No minimap, so you might get lost sometimes
- Will be available on Linux and Windows

If you want to know more about the game you can check out the webpage of the game: https://sonucido.com

Spoiler

 

[CryptRat]

Will map .

 

[Moaning_Clock]

Forgot to add: I have also one of these devlog-series on YouTube.



And I will be part of the Steam Next Fest thing where everyone can try out the game if they want.

Thanks for the developer badge!

 

[Moaning_Clock]

I wanted to post more regularly about my game but the deadline for the Steam Next Fest demo release is approaching.

I finally started implementing sounds and ambience which makes a big difference in the overall feel/mood. Of the 15 sounds that are in the game right now 7 are recorded by myself. I would like to have at least 30% of the sounds made by myself to give the game a unique feel. (I really dislike using premade assets even when I modify them but some things are really hard to record).

The in-game manual is mostly done (this is the controller half).

In the next couple of days I'll send the game to some friends and colleagues and gather some feedback to polish the demo further.

I still need to speak with the translators and work on the German localization and improve some details here and there but everything should come out in time.

The demo is intended as a vertical slice and will show combat, dialogue, a puzzle and more. It won't show the first couple of levels but more in the middle section of the game.

 

[Darth Canoli]

Forgot to add: I have also one of these devlog-series on YouTube.



And I will be part of the Steam Next Fest thing where everyone can try out the game if they want.

Thanks for the developer badge!

That video bored me to death in no less than 20 seconds.
Single character TB dungeon crawler ... Why?

 

[Stormcrowfleet]

Forgot to add: I have also one of these devlog-series on YouTube.



And I will be part of the Steam Next Fest thing where everyone can try out the game if they want.

Thanks for the developer badge!

That video bored me to death in no less than 20 seconds.
Single character TB dungeon crawler ... Why?

I was actually going to comment that I like SC TB DC and I wish there was more. I do understand it's less popular/classic, but I guess some people do prefer it.

 

[Harthwain]

Single character TB dungeon crawler ... Why?

It can work, provided you can customize your character to make each playstyle feel unique.

 

[Moaning_Clock]

That video bored me to death in no less than 20 seconds.

Yeah, need to work on that. It's getting better but slower than I want to

Single character TB dungeon crawler ... Why?

Honestly, I just decided that without deep thought. I'll stick to it, feels better with dialogue/choices and I think it is easier to implement/debug although I really like party-based RPGs (and it would be easier to market, many people when they look for new Dungeon Crawlers search with the tags Party-Based RPG + Dungeon Crawler) but I think it fits better in this case.

I was actually going to comment that I like SC TB DC and I wish there was more.

It's actually reassuring to hear that. You don't see people often who actually prefer SC DCs in the internet (even thought they are more common now outside of Fantasy, Vaporum and Geisterjäger iirc). But I guess most people don't have strong preferences.

It can work, provided you can customize your character to make each playstyle feel unique.

That will be possible. I still need to decide how exactly in addition to assigning points to stats. - Thought about something like the birth signs in Morrowind that for example affect stuff that isn't affected by stats.

 

[Moaning_Clock]

I finally implemented the level up system.
It still looks kinda basic but gets the job done for now. This was one of the last big systems I needed to implement if I don't come up with additional stuff. Combat, dialogue, movement, inventory, settings, ... all more or less done - the only thing that is still missing is the save system but this will be easy to implement.

The level up system works very differently from other games and is extremely simple: You find an experience potion, drink it immediately and level up.
Why not the typical experience gathering from fighting monsters? First of all, I can reward exploration better with this method since I stay away from the typical loot system. There is no +5 sword and +2 sword. There's just a sword and some enemies are killed better with a sword and some have a strong resistance against it. As I wrote in the first post: Not much loot but no bullshit loot, everything has its use.
The other reasons are that this system avoids grind, it is a lot faster to implement and doesn't repeat the typical implementations.

I still need to finish the demo but it shouldn't take too long. It's a bit short now but should show all of the important stuff that is in the game. Deadline for the Steam Next Fest is approaching.

 

[Moaning_Clock]

While implementing the aforementioned level up system I forgot a couple of minor systems which I'm tackling now. You can now change the volume of sounds and music (impressive, I know). I still need to implement the death system for the demo.
If you die and see something that seems like effort my fiancee draw something for it but we'll see if the time frame is sufficient - the latest date I want to send the demo files to Steam is Monday.

I updated Godot in the last couple of weeks 3 times which didn't produce any major headaches but I honestly don't see benefits of it. For any game I'll make after Sonucido I'll likely just take the latest engine version, ignore all updates and maybe update the engine when the game is released.

The dialogue part is implemented and after I understood the code I could fix the bugs. Implementing branching dialogue is always weird and everyone has a different solution for it. If the branching dialogue has only a bit complicated a visual tool helps greatly but if you have anything with a lot of triggers which interact with each other it gets really messy. My first desktop game (Intra-System: Trust Issues) seems relatively simple on the surface but the branching dialogue made it internally a total mess. Maybe that's just the nature of these things. Gladly, the requirements for the dialogue of Sonucido are manageable, so I wrote a system that has resemblance of the system that Bethesda uses i.e. dialogue states (if you modded Morrowind etc., you know what I mean). It's not particularly great or readable but enough for now since it's stable and all the bugs that can happen when I forget something are easily fixable. As long as players don't notice it's a I-will-rewrite-it-I-should-rewrite-it-oh-the-game-shipped-with-it.



In the most dialogues you have 4 options: leaving the dialogue (literally just going backwards), deciding option #1 or #2 and attacking your dialogue partner. I want to make everyone killable (except 1-3 instances where I'm unsure at the moment).

The stuff I'm going to work on before the demo is released:

- End of Demo screen/message
- Player death
- Additions/Replacements of a couple of sounds
- Adding a start message to get to the manual
- Adding Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish, German
- Polishing, Polishing, Polishing

 

[Moaning_Clock]

Today marks the 180th day of working on Sonucido: The Mage! After 6 months most systems are complete, the game is a lot more polished and many bugs are ironed out!

This is btw how the game looked in the first couple of days.

Spoiler

I'm still working on the demo but it's nearly ready. Both the Brazilian Portuguese translator as well as the Spanish translator have the text and demo now!
Tomorrow, I'll send the demo to Steam to start the approval process!

Todo

- End of Demo screen/message
- Player death
- Additions/Replacements of a couple of sounds
- Adding a start message to get to the manual
- Adding Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish, German
- Polishing, Polishing, Polishing

 

[Moaning_Clock]

Send the first demo build to Steam and hopefully I will get approved soon! The German translation is mostly done, the rest is still missing but every translator has the base text now.
Polished a couple of things and will put in more time when I have the translations but aside from that and more polish the demo is done, playable from start to finish and bug-free.

Since I'm mostly waiting now, I have a lot of time to play a game myself! Decided to play Conglomerate 451 - I dunno if it will be incline or decline, I know almost nothing about the game.

Todo

- End of Demo screen/message
- Player death
- Additions/Replacements of a couple of sounds
- Adding a start message to get to the manual
- Adding Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish, German
- Polishing, Polishing, Polishing

 

[Thac0]

Since I'm mostly waiting now, I have a lot of time to play a game myself! Decided to play Conglomerate 451 - I dunno if it will be incline or decline, I know almost nothing about the game.

Didn't like that one, refunded it. Like Starcrawlers they managed to make crawling grindy and boring, by making enemies too tanky and letting combat focus around shields too much.
Yours looks better on that front, I skimmed your dev videos and most enemies seem to die in the 3-6 hits that they should.

 

[Moaning_Clock]

Yeah, the fights are a bit long. Something that bothered me: the system requirements are really high also (even though the Steam page states otherwise) for playing with good framerates - walking just felt really bad with 30-40 FPS.
Feels like a mix between Dungeon Crawler + XCOM (from the research aspect). Exploration doesn't feel so great which is a bummer for me. After enabling Fast Combat in the options, the fighting felt a lot better.
It took me a bit to get warm with the game but overall it's okay. But I'm only 1-1.5 hours in.

I skimmed your dev videos and most enemies seem to die in the 3-6 hits that they should.

It's great that you noticed it. I certainly don't want the combat to overstay its welcome. If an enemy takes a lot of time to beat, this will most likely be a sign of the wrong weapon. Only characters who put 100% of their statpoints into vitality will have longer fights but even with over 50% in vitality the fights should be short in length - either you kill them quickly or they kill you.

 

[Reapa]

so bad. so fucking bad.

 

[Moaning_Clock]

The first Demo version was accepted by Steam! The Brazilian Portuguese translation is also ready!

If you aren't sure if your potato pc can run the game, I put a system requirements list together and my fiancee made it look nice (yeah, inspired by Cyberpunk) If it isn't one of these weak old netbooks or an ancient pc the game should run (Open GL 2.1 is the graphical requirement and supported by almost everything in the last 10+ years).

 

[Moaning_Clock]

All the translations are done except for the German translation, die ich aber in den nächsten Tagen fertigstellen werde.
I had another small test with a sibling of my fiancee and he didn't even knew how the game looked so it was great to have a pair of fresh eyes looking at the game.
He didn't even played classic Dungeon Crawlers either but liked the game.
Since all languages have different word lengths I need to redo parts of the UI but it actually simplifies the code so that's good.

What can you expect from the demo?

- drops June 16th as part of the Steam Next Fest
- 10-20 minutes of playtime longer if you die at least once (likely)
- it's what industry guys call vertical slice
- keyboard/controller work both (tested with PS4 and XBox 360 controller but should work with other controllers too)
- English, German, Spanish, Portuguese (BR/EU) translation
- Windows & Linux
- the compressed essence of years of experience

What will improve after the demo is released?

- I want to add a bit more visual variety to the game
- The game will be a lot longer (obviously)
- Cutscene art (beginning and endings)
- and a lot more

In the next couple of days, I will put all of the translations in and polish the demo further.
95% of the systems are complete now so after the demo phase is over I can focus fully on building dungeons, writing dialogue, making puzzles and more!

 

[Moaning_Clock]

In a moment of sheer insanity (or it might be my fair share of neanderthal genes) I decided to splurge and get even more translations!



Now the game will be translated in:

Simplified Chinese 索努西多：法师 - 地牢探索 - 出品自丹尼尔·达席尔瓦
Japanese ソヌシード: 魔法使い - 地下牢の徘徊者　ダニエル・ダ・シルバ作
Korean 소누시도: 마법사 – 다니엘 다 실바의 던전 크롤러
Russian Сонусидо: Маг! – игра в жанре «Подземелья» от Даниэля Да Сильва
Turkish
German Sonuzido: Der Magus, ein Kellerkriecher von Daniel da Silva
English
Spanish
Portuguese (BR/EU)

In the next couple of days I'll resume work and will put all the translations in the game (and additional fonts). Still need a language selection screen but this shouldn't be a problem.

 

[Mustawd]

The first Demo version was accepted by Steam! The Brazilian Portuguese translation is also ready!

If you aren't sure if your potato pc can run the game, I put a system requirements list together and my fiancee made it look nice (yeah, inspired by Cyberpunk) If it isn't one of these weak old netbooks or an ancient pc the game should run (Open GL 2.1 is the graphical requirement and supported by almost everything in the last 10+ years).

Those requirements seem kind of high for a blobber. How come?

 

[Darth Canoli]

Not for a blobber but it's extremely high for this blobber.

 

[Thac0]

Der Magus, ein Kellerkriecher

Dein Ernst Bruder? Will der den Boiler da unten flicken oder was?

 

[Moaning_Clock]

Dein Ernst Bruder? Will der den Boiler da unten flicken oder was?

Na klar, irgendwer muss es ja machen

 

[Moaning_Clock]

Those requirements seem kind of high for a blobber. How come?

Not for a blobber but it's extremely high for this blobber.

It's always a trade-off - at least 96% of Steam users - judging from the Steam Hardware Survey - can run this game at least with the Minimum settings (which are kind of high for minimum settings, I mean 1920x1080 and MSAA x2 isn't exactly minimum) and I think that's quite good tbh. Another 3% can likely run this game at the bare minimum. Since I'm working mostly alone I need to decide if I work on the actual game or work on performance and 96-99% is good enough for now.

Here comes the more in-depth explanation for all the nerds.

Spoiler

The biggest performance hit is the real-time lighting. In certain areas I could bake the lighting but most of the time this looks worse or is more work or both but I need to do testing on that. The system requirements have all a bit of wiggle room, so you might actually achieve a bit higher framerates most of the time. To ensure that 99,5% of Steam users could run this game on the minimum settings would be a big effort but certainly possible. The CPU is a bit overkill but since people are likely running stuff in the background it's better to have a bit of a better CPU. And most users with better PCs tend to have many programs open at the same time (The same reason is for RAM - the game consumes maybe 200 mb of RAM tops). Actually you very likely could run the game with an i3-6100 all the way up to the Ultra settings (when paired with a decent graphics card), maybe even the Celeron (or a later iteration of that) but I like the pairing - if you know you have a i3-6100 you also know that the integrated graphics are good enough. Another reason is the Engine - although Godot is lightweight every general purpose Engine has performance costs.

I have a few switches implemented that aren't in the normal settings so that if the game runs poorly on your ancient laptop you can still play the game - one switch is for the player light for example and it will be possible to change that in your save-file. I personally really like to work on performance stuff and am planning to improve performance a bit after the game ships but for now I want to focus on stuff that actually matters for most people.

 

[Mustawd]

Makes sense. My cpu is slightly better than an i3 6100, so sounds like I’ll be ok. Thanks for the in depth explanation.

EDIT: It’s good to clarify what Minimum specs mean, as that can vary. Sometimes it’s more than enough and sometimes it means it can barely run the thing.

 

[Moaning_Clock]

Yeah, Minimum might be a bit misleading. Most studios would consider the minimum more in the ballpark of my bare minimum. In my case Minimum is what I consider a pleasing experience i. e. fullscreen on a normal 1080p monitor with at least 40-50 FPS.
I tested the game on a i5-7200u which is a bit weaker than an i3-6100 and it achieves 40-60 FPS, so I searched for a slightly better CPU with a slightly better integrated GPU (620 vs 530) to give it the aforementioned wiggle room. Which CPU are you using and do you run on integrated graphics? If you have a dedicated GPU it almost certainly won't be a problem (unless the GPU is 10+ years old or something).

Maybe I should call the settings Bare Minimum, Normal, High, Ultra to make it less confusing.