[WIP] Kobold Caves - a SimAnt and classic D&D inspired sandbox game

[botman]

Hello all,

 

Kobold Caves is a sandbox, dungeon-building game inspired by SimAnt; a fantastic, old Dungeons & Dragons module called Keep on the Borderlands; and Majesty. You look after a tribe of kobolds on a randomly generated map, however, you don't control your kobolds directly. Instead you issue orders such as dig here or attack that, which your kobolds will try their best to complete, while juggling their own needs such as food and sleep.

 

Kobold Caves is in its early stages. I've gotten it to the point where I feel enough of the core concepts are in place you can at least see what I'm trying to do, but it needs a bit more work before it'll be much fun. So take a look, have a play around, and come back again soon if you are interested as I have a lot to add.

 

I've been tinkering on Kobold Caves after work and such for the past 6 months or so. The game is custom JavaScript, so no framework. It has been good experience, but from this point on I plan to alternate between working on Kobold Caves and making much smaller games, about a month at a time (I'm super excited to try Phaser).

 

 

Would love to hear any initial feedback you have. As much as I wanted to add more features and try to make things perfect before I share this, I am trying to go with the 'never too early for feedback' mantra. 

 

Play now or check the quickstart guide.

 

Thanks very much!

[demisephi]

This I would love to see finished I like the game idea and the progress so far

[sanojian]

Except for the art style, this is somewhat similar to a prototype I made earlier this year called Kobold Caverns.  The project is on hold.  Would have you any interest in teaming up?

 

[botman]

Sorry for the slow reply. Thanks for the kind words, demisephi.

 

Sanojian, wow, that's crazy. I thought it was a pretty obscure idea to to use kobolds, but it looks like our concepts are almost identical! I really like your art style. Why did you stop working on it? Certainly Kobold Caves is proving a lot more work than I expected. 

 

Have you seen a game called Gnomoria? It is a very similar game to ours, though much further along and has your style of art. It's gnomes rather than kobolds though. That in itself is somewhat similar to Towns and I suppose Dwarf Fortress, though none of those were sources of inspiration for me as I was sitting on the idea for years before I heard of any of those. 

 

I appreciate the offer to team up but for now I'm happy plugging away at Kobold Caves myself. I spend all day working for clients so it's nice to have complete creative control over something.

[sanojian]

I had not seen Gnomoria before.  It looks neat.

 

My game was going to be an expansion of my Ludum Dare 25 entry, Evil Lair Construction Set.  I like the idea of playing the weak villain against the strong goody-two-shoes hero so kobolds were a natural fit.

 

The tech was all working, but I was having a difficult time picking a direction.  I am not very good at game design and this is an after-work hobby for me too.  If any game designers out there can think of cool gameplay possibilities for my game and want to team up, send me a note!  :-)