Game Concept

Magical Dungeon Hunter

Working Title: Magical Dungeon Hunter Concept Statement: “In Magical Dungeon Hunter the newly apprenticed magician crawls through a newly formed dungeon collecting and upgrading spells and defeating enemies all to get strong enough to defeat the dungeon boss.”

Genres: Action, Adventure. The reason the adventure genre was chosen is because the game involves exploring the different paths in the dungeon for new and better loot and fighting and finding enemies; strengthening spells and, subsequentially, the character. The reason the action genre was chosen is because the game incorporates fighting enemies into the game loop and by beating the boss you win the game.

The games concept is really due to a bunch of fantasy I’ve read and played throughout my life. The game being located in a dungeon mainly came about due to the tutorials we had done earlier with the soldier. I realised I might have a bit of trouble making a more open game with custom assets. I figured that as a bunch of assets were already provided for us from the tutorials and due to the limited scale of the game, I chose to make the game in a dungeon because it would allow more energy to be spent on the game systems. The magic system takes influences from too many sources to really name a main one and my memory is foggy; however, I did love the Versatile Mage series and hope the author comes back to finish it and I also loved Elden Ring’s magic. I’m not sure on what games were mashed up to create this game as I’ve never actually played a dungeon crawler. The games magic system, however, is basically just a bunch of things that seem fun to create and concepts from Elden ring.

The target audience is anyone that likes Dungeon Crawlers and strengthening their characters, like in RPGs, to fight bigger and stronger enemies in a more casual environment. This is because the game is centred around exploring a dungeon to get the character stronger and find stronger attacks to be able to beat the owner of the dungeon.

For the competitive analysis, as I said earlier, I’ve never actually played a dungeon crawler before so I’m not sure how different it is to others in the same category or how original it is. I do know that magic is a concept that has been done a million times over so it is unlikely that I will create anything amazingly unique. A couple of other games in the same genre are Hades, The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, Enter the Gungeon and Minecraft Dungeons and are all very successful showing that games that are of the dungeon crawler genre are very popular. My competitors are the games I listed above but my dream version of this game has a deeper focus on the magical system than compared to others. There would be multiple element types of magic which would each have type effectivity against enemies like form Pokémon. Each element would have a different focus on individual game systems with limited overlap between them.

Game Treatment:

You are a newly apprenticed magician who has been tasked by your teacher to explore and defeat a small dungeon. As you defeat enemies you will gain experience and become stronger. You’ll learn to use your mana more efficiently and with more potency. Your body will become healthier and tougher losing less health from your greater health pool. Defeating the same enemies has diminishing returns over time so you will be encouraged to explore further into the dungeon to fight tougher opponents. Throughout the dungeon you will find spells and be able to upgrade them to increase their power and unlock additional effects. Once you are strong enough, take on the dungeons’ boss to pass your teachers test.

Concept Art: Similar health and mana bar at top left corner from image below:

The atmosphere is similar to the below image, but I want to corners to be more grainy. Also plan to have similar walls but I want the background objects to still retain their colour instead of just being a grey tint.

The character should look a bit like below. Going for a younger appearance as they are only an apprentice.

The magic objects will be in simple pixel art. They will have a similar vibe to the images below but have worse art.