Dungeon Cooking comes out on November 19. Before it does, I want to say plainly what kind of game this is and how it was made.
Why I'm making it
Not to make money. I'm making a game that wouldn't have been afraid to come out in the eighties or nineties.
Games like that barely come out anymore. I say "barely" on purpose, because the exceptions exist and I know them well. Someone is going to name a few titles in the comments and they will be right. I play those games myself. But they are still exceptions, not what I see on the front page of the store.
Because most games today hold your hand. They hint, they undo your mistakes, they smooth over anything that might sting. I understand why that happens. But somewhere along the way we lost something those old games had: the feeling that you could genuinely lose, and that it was your fault.
In Dungeon Cooking you can poison the people you were supposed to feed. Not at a scripted moment, but because you served something you never tested, since you were short on time or short on ingredients. You can lose a hero for good. You can make a decision that looks small and pay for it a few days later.
The game will not stop you from doing any of it. It will only tell you how much food is left.
I don't know if that will land. I know it is how I wanted to make it.
About the art, to be clear
I can't draw. That isn't false modesty, I simply don't have the skill.
Most of the art in the game comes from licensed pixel art packs. For some things I couldn't find anything that fit: six of the seventeen monsters and a few pieces of the environment. I looked for a long time, through free sets and paid ones, and it was always the style, or the resolution, or the tone.
For those missing pieces I used AI tools, then cleaned them up and put them into the game myself. I did it because I would rather have a game that holds together than one where six enemies stick out from everything else. Some of the dungeon event descriptions started as AI drafts and were rewritten by me. The announcement trailer was made with the same tools.
All of it is declared on the game's Steam page. I'm writing about it here at greater length because I would rather say it myself and say it straight than hope nobody notices.
The code, the design, the story, the dialogue, the cooking and poisoning system, the combat: mine.
That's it
I'm not looking for applause, and I'm not looking for excuses. I would rather you knew what you are dealing with and decided for yourselves whether this is a game for you.
And by the way, because I am genuinely curious: don't you ever get the feeling that those old games had something to them?