I’ve heard Kenshi is in this vein. Is it fun? It seems a bit dark and gritty totally, but the gameplay sounds like it’d be up my alley.
1 Like
I’ve been listening to GMTK on YouTube who did an analysis of the open world design in LoZ Breath of the Wild.
It had great ideas for hexcrawl design. Specifically, landmarks on high visiblity places. The horizon acts as a fog of war, limiting visible landmarks but having a few landmarks draws the players toward different regions naturally and encourages the kind of exploration the designers intended.
They had tried using a points and paths model where events triggered on paths between key locations, but few players actually bothered to explore that way, so they changed to the landmark model instead.
3 Likes
Found that video. Enjoy OP.
You may also like the GMTK Bosskeys series analyzing every LoZ dungeon design. It taught me about lock and key vs puzzle box style dungeons.
It’s definitely a bit darker in tone and very gritty. I think it’s fairly fun though and some of the NPCs are very quirky, not in a bad way but in a nice palate-cleanser way so it’s not all doom-&-gloom.
My favorite Kenshi videos are a series called Torsolo by ambiguousamphibian. It’s much more on the comedic side but I think it shows how capable a character can be with smart decision-making, especially a character with 0 limbs! Bad decisions have very real consequences that are hard to correct.
1 Like
It would lot a bit like Darkest Dungeon IMO:
- Detailed resource management (Torches, rations, etc) - yes.
- Retainers and henchmen - yes.
Not much travel and no morale for monsters, but has the right feel in my opinion. I don’t remember if traps are a thing.
1 Like
couple of people have already said Kenshi and Darkest Dungeon, which I totally agree. I will throw in a game called fear and hunger. specifically the first one, but also the second, but slightly less so [at least in vibe of a dungeon, mechanics wise its the same to improved] Dark and gritty megadungeon vibes. Dismemberment, needing to manage resources like torches and food, sanity mechanics, you can talk to monsters and find stuff out or avoid combat. Different ways to get around encounters and the sort. a content warning, the game and its sequel has some very strong adult themes, gore, sexual assault, its pretty rough. Sometimes it feels a bit much, games are still good, all considered.
1 Like