Another quick update - we are currently working on finetuning the character deployment- and exhaustion-sytem. As mentioned in our last update, there will be a constant stream of recruits and you will need to switch up your party composition during runs to ensure your characters can heal. You can also force deploy exhausted characters, but that will come with hefty debuffs. We want to use this post to talk about the core ideas that shaped Dverghold's design. Yes, Dverghold is a classic dungeon crawler, but it's also quite a bit more than that. The original pitch for the game was:
"What if we take roster- and camp-management like in Darkest Dungeon but the dungeon delving part is a "Blobber"-crawler like Eye of the Beholder or Dungeon Master?"
Dverghold creates a genuinely new experience from those ingredients, by combining these elements we add depth to the parts that were kept simpler in the games we drew inspiration from:
DD had proc-gen "disposable" dungeons for quick runs whereas we have one big handcrafted continuous dungeon with an unfolding story, tactical combat, puzzles etc., making that part of the game more like a full-blown traditional CRPG.
The classic dungeon crawler formula gains a new layer, encounters have deeper consequences beyond moment-to-moment gameplay. A bad fight on level 2 means a veteran benched for three days and having to take a green recruit next time.
(We didn't have time to implement all of this in the free demo & mostly focused on the dungeon crawling part, but the "full package" will be in the Early Access release!)
Marrying those two concepts wasn't always easy and created some game design friction points, since a classic dungeon crawler and games with base building, roster management and procedurally generated missions like Darkest Dungeon or X-Com are structurally different and that forced us to come up with new solutions to certain parts of the formula, but we think we have found solutions for all those design problems by now.
One of those problems and how we solved it: In Darkest Dungeon , you do a run, it's gone, and the consequences land back in camp. That clean cut is a big part of what makes the recovery loop work. But a blobber dungeon is the exact opposite: it's one continuous place you keep coming back to. That opens up an obvious exploit - just step into the dungeon, immediately step back out, and you've passed a "day" and healed your whole party for free.
Our solution is a magically sealed gate. To leave, you have to appease it with an offering in the form of special relics you find while delving. Pay it and you walk out clean. But you can also force your way through without paying: the gate still lets you leave, but a breath of the deep follows you out and settles over the camp, and nobody recovers that night - not even the characters who stayed behind and never set foot in the dungeon.
So instead of an exploit, you get an actual decision: limp out cursed and lose the day, or continue searching for offerings, risking to sacrifice your entire party. That's exactly the kind of choice we want you making at the mouth of the dungeon - and it's a good example of the sort of problem that "marrying two genres" throws at you, and the kind of solution we've been finding for them.
More updates soon - thanks for following Dverghold!