The name was simple: AntiCrawl.

The vision was simpler: Survival game + Brogue.

So the thing is that most Roguelikes have survival elements in them especially ones like Brogue and Pixel Dungeon where food is scarce and hunger comes quick (as opposed to old versions of Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, where food isn’t scarce and hunger barely comes, or Nethack, where hunger comes quick but food is abundant). Pixel Dungeon had the element even more because you couldn’t just eat raw meat, but if you found some you would need to cook it in fire first. And I thought that was cool.

Though that was about it. Pixel Dungeon didn’t (and still doesn’t) label itself as a survival game. So I thought that I would expand on that.

But at one point I realized I was just trying to make turn based Don’t Starve. … I didn’t know what I was doing.

But then …

DUNGEON CRAWL STONE SOUP

(I know that seems wierd. Like,“but then dungeon crawl stone soup”, ???)

I hadn’t even played Don’t Starve for … reasons (I plan on doing so eventually), but I know I didn’t want to make my game too survival. Roguelikes are about progressing through an area, so I didn’t really want to put in basebuilding and though I already implemented crafting and an anvil item I also didn’t want it to be in the game. I made the map spacey and cave like but I was mostly lost in direction. I was just adding what I knew I wanted as the basics like a fire and gas system.

But the thing is, at that time, I started playing DCSS (Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup)…a roguelike. For me it was …okay. Not better than Brogue, but okay. I was just clicking tab and “o” (autoexplore and autofight respectively) most of the time and then getting a warning that my HP was too low to autofight and I’d manually use the arrow keys and repeat the process until I came across a creature that would oneshot me at full health. Okay. I kept on trying and I found out playing as a different class (bezerker) was more fun, but still kind of … lacking.

Then I found its alternate game mode: Dungeon Sprints.

DUNGEON CRAWL STONE SOUP: DUNGEON SPRINTS

Dungeon Sprints consist of a short map that condenses the whole game into one dungeon and it’s beautiful. The first challenge, Dungeon Sprint 1 (a.k.a Red Sonja) puts the quest for “the orb of zot” (item needed to beat the game) into one floor instead of the 15+ it normally takes. DCSS on a normal has large maps for each floor but here it’s compact and all the fluff is cut away. The level is the same (no procedural generation) every time yet I have quite a lot of fun replaying it over and over, checking different tactics against the difficult situations. Playing as a Bezerker makes me crazy strong but at the cost of food, which in that compact map becomes a problem (unlike in the main game where I mostly breeze through everything). The enemies are varied and each have different personalities instead of just goblin, hob goblin, orc, etc that basically do the same thing at the start of the game.

Challenging. Short. Exciting.

That’s what I wanted my game to be, Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup: Dungeon Sprint: Red Sonja + Brogue.

• BROGUE

If you know me even a little, or even if you don’t then know now, that I will always, most times, in most games I try to make, add a “+ Brogue” or cite Brogue as a partial inspiration. The simplicity, the distinctions in items, the environmental systems, the lighting. That’s why I’ll always site Brogue. All it’s enemies are so different from one another and have a role to play. Recently I came across a new enemy in Brogue (after +100 hours of play), the FlameDancer. It was unlike any of the other enemies I’d seen. It’s surrounded by flames so you can’t get close without burning or fire resitance. It hurls flames and keeps it’s distance. It cancelled so many of my strategies for it.

I always think: “Brogue is good at putting you in a bad situation.”

Kind of like what Rimworld does but without the AI storyteller. It’s good at challenging your current build. That time I had one of the most overpowered items, a scale male of “respiration” which allowed me to step on traps of, let’s say, paralysis gas, and not be affected while the creature right next to be gets paralyzed and it’s an easy kill from there. But with the systems in play the fire would spread through the gas and stop it from being as effectivel burning me at the same time. And Brogue has things to counter all builds, so you’ll have to be prepared an not rely on one thing. Revenants don’t take melee damage, pixies negate your magical effefts and cause allies to become enemies, Golems reflect spells, etc.

So I redid the philosophy of “AntiCrawl”. It wasn’t going to be a survival hotpot mess of a roguelike, ot was going to be …

Madcrawl.