'Dungeon Runners' Loot, Build, Customize.

My personal favorite Zelda game.  Link to the Past

In Dungeon Runners, every player account gets both a Hero and a Dungeon.  Imagine a top down 2d grid.  On this grid, players place pieces:  floors, walls, traps, mobs, etc.  This basically constitutes the dungeon.  Let's say I log into the site and I want to try out your custom made dungeon.  Your dungeon is simply stored as values on a grid or an array and that information is sent to me.  I play it out of the browser, but the beauty is that all the gameplay happens offline.  So you don't have to worry about net code.  In a way it's a massively multiplayer game without direct interaction.  Let's say I successfully make it to the end of your dungeon.  I would then earn gold which I could spend at the marketplace, either buying new gear for my Hero; like boots that let me run a bit faster, or a better sword for killing mob heavy dungeons, or maybe a shield so I can try and block those pesky fireball traps.  Or I could spend the gold buying new pieces for My dungeon.  When I'm done, it's off to quest in another user created dungeon.

How do we ensure players create decent dungeons and not just easy to beat garbage to feed their second accounts or their friends or unbeatable levels?  I've spent some time coming up with a few simple rules, and I believe with these in place the quality of the levels would increase dramatically.  Basically, we want to create and nurture an environment of competition.

1.  Both the hero and dungeon will have their own unique rating.  If I overcome a tough dungeon that has a rating near that of my Hero rating, then my rating goes up, that dungeon's rating goes down a bit, and I earn some nice gold for the marketplace.  Likewise, if I am defeated in a dungeon, that dungeon's rating goes up and the player who's home dungeon it was earns gold, even if they weren't online when I played it.  Someone tries to make a simple dungeon to feed gold to their friends?  The often beaten dungeon would quickly gain a low rating and would provide a miniscule amount of gold when passed.  They'd be better off playing the game legitimately.  Bonuses may be given for players with dungeons on a winning streak, that is, not beaten in so many days.  Little things like this encourage players to make the best most challenging dungeons they can. 

2.  No blocking.  Dungeons must be passable.  Like most tower D's just ensure that blocking is not allowed.  Very basic rule.

3.  Piece limits.  'I think I'll just place a long hallway with 30 statues that shoot fireballs out so that players simply must take damage to pass.'  We will establish a maximum number of any one kind of piece that can be placed on the map.  Perhaps you can only place 7 fireball shooting statues in any dungeon, for instance.

4.  Saturation limits.  All this means is that you can't place all your mobs and traps right in one spot on the map to maul the player.  This would be poor, unimaginative  level design.  Only X number of action pieces may be placed in a certain size area of the grid.  By action pieces I just mean anything that can damage the Hero.  In short- You have to spread your mobs and traps out.  By forcing players to do this, we encourage much healthier level design. 

With some simple limits like this in place, we can really see some nice creativity from the community.


We can keep all kinds of fun stats to help the players feel more connected.  Let's say I come in from work, log in to the server and see that 5 players tried my dungeon today.  3 were defeated and 2 conquered it.  I can investigate further and see that neither player took damage from my spike traps.. and both took damage from my goblins.  Perhaps I'll sell the spikes and buy more mobs. 




The marketplace could be monetized by allowing players to purchase in game gold if they didn't want to earn it by playing the game. 

Well that's basically it.  I've thought out some nice details for the gameplay but I don't want to make this post too long.  Just wanted to lay out the concept