Design a Dungeon Crawler Game

Adding headings to our design document

Diving head-first into writing a larger game is fun, but it’s often a bad idea. With a little bit of planning, we can save ourselves a lot of anxiety.

We don’t need to create an enormous, formal Game Design Document, but planning before we leap into writing code is always a good idea.

A well-designed plan can help keep us motivated by demonstrating regular progress. Early planning helps us determine if we’re taking on too much work at once and helps us determine our game’s structure.

Naming our game

Names are difficult, and it’s unlikely that the first name we pick will be the name of our game. The working title for the dungeon crawler is Rusty Roguelike.

Short Description

The game involves the adventurer arriving in a randomly-generated dungeon. The player guides their adventurer around the dungeon, defeating monsters and collecting power-ups until they find the Amulet of Yala (Yet Another Lost Amulet) and win the game. Here’s the short description for Rusty Roguelike:

A dungeon crawler with procedurally-generated levels, monsters of increasing difficulty, and turn-based movement.