Hey all! I’m Saulo, the creative director, designer and programmer behind Deep Dish Dungeon. First of all, I’d like to thank you for the amazing feedback that we’re getting from our first announcement of the game. You have been very supportive and excited with what’s to come, and we appreciate the amount of love we’re getting so far.
We started this journey of game development a while ago. When I founded the studio back in 2009, I was just finishing my Computer Science course. In the last 16 years, we’ve put out many games, such as Knights of Pen & Paper, Chroma Squad, Out of Space and many others.
Our studio has never been big, only ranging from 3 to 12 people. For Deep Dish Dungeon, we have 2 full-time developers. Me as the coder and designer, and Carol doing all the art, models and animation. But we do have an amazing support of other part-time contractors, for sound design, social media and more recently someone helping on the coding side.
It was important to me that we make a game that is rich and deep, as well as smart, considering the small size of our studio. A game that would fit in my own skills and capabilities. The idea of making a game that revolves around a sandbox multiplayer dungeon experience was a dream of mine and I guess it fit well with what I was looking for to make.
I kept imagining this huge dungeon where you’re more of an explorer than a warrior, and where you learn about the narrative not through dialogues and cutscenes, but the actual exploration and environment of that dungeon. I wanted the players to feel part of the story as well. That they feel that the most important story here is the adventure that they’re getting themselves into.
Once I understood my motivation of creating this game, everything just come along. We got inspired by the idea of decolonizing the dungeon crawlers. We have tons of Latin and Meso-American culture influences, since we’re a team of Brazilians. We had many ideas of different tools and crafting that you could use in the game. The sandboxy elements just came along so well with the handcrafted metroidvania style dungeon.
There’s so much to tell you all, and I look forward to sharing as much as I can about the process with you in these dev blogs.. I’ll try to post as often as I can. So follow along, ask your questions away, and I’ll be trying to answer them as I post more and more about the development process here.
Glad to have you guys delve into this dungeon with us.
Cheers!