If you haven’t heard of Desktop Dungeons yet, then where have you been?

South African games making it big on a global scale is the kind of news we wish we heard more of; Desktop Dungeons from indie devs, QCF Design, is one of those success stories.

Desktop Dungeons started off as the brainchild of Rodain Joubert on the Game.Dev forums – the home-base for the local indie game-development community.

Even back then, within the community, the game was a bona fide hit – with almost everyone who played it getting nabbed up by the addictive dungeon crawling time-sink.

After joining Danny Day and Marc Luck at QCF Design, the team applied a whole lot of spit and polish – refining and designing Desktop Dungeons into the game that won the Excellence in Design Award at the 13th annual Independent Games Festival (IGF).

We here at MyGaming not only got to experience Desktop Dungeons in its early days, but we also got to witness it bloom and boom into something huge – sort of like watching the neighbour’s kid get famous.

We were also fortunate enough to load up the beta, and have none other than Monsieur Joubert himself walk us through the motions – and answer our random questions.

MyGaming: For the record, sir, please state your name, address, credit card details and bank PIN – or, you know, who you are and what you do.

Rodain: Oh ho ho! I am more internet savvy than that, sir! I am Rodain Joubert, and I liek mak gaem. I currently work for QCF Design, a small indie outfit based in Cape Town. Since January 2010, I’ve been working on various incarnations of the Desktop Dungeons project.

MyGaming: Whew, glad we got all the formal stuff out the way.

Rodain: I could be more formal. I could introduce myself as Rodain PIERRE Joubert – You see that sh*t? That’s a middle name, b*tches!

MyGaming: Now, I’m currently playing Desktop Dungeons as we speak (type) and I think it’s pretty darn dandy to have the FATHER OF ALL GOATS right here to talk me through some stuff – speaking of which, what’s up with the goats?

Rodain: One of the major inspirations for the creation and evolution of Desktop Dungeons was Crawl – perhaps one of the bestest-best Roguelike games in existence. Now, Crawl has this little enemy thing called a yak (and several variants, including the dreaded Death Yak). Within a menagerie of foul and fantastic monsters – including golems, demons, and sentient plant-people – the game decided to throw yaks at us.

Quite unapologetically, too.

The in-game “detail” description for the enemy is simply “A common dungeon yak”. So of course, Desktop Dungeons being the sort of game it is, it absolutely HAD to include some innocuous animal of its own; I think goats just felt like the best option, given their tendency to get everywhere and eat everything.

This is probably going to be my most detailed answer in the entire interview, I feel quite strongly about goats.

MyGaming: You could have just said “I was bitten by a goat once”

Rodain: Also, I was bitten by a goat once.

MyGaming: Haha! So, I’ve already hit into quite a snag here on one of the dungeons. On my FOURTH try (and note this is pretty early on) – I’ve managed to defeat the evil level 10 wraith. It was quite a battle; so I rush downstairs to save the Dwarf. But he wants a potion. I kind of used my potions up. And have no money for a new one. This makes me sad.

Rodain: That’s a halfling, mister 😀 Don’t worry though, he’ll be back. He likes to whine about impending death, but he’ll basically be there until you find it in your heart to liquor him up.

MyGaming: So basically I can’t finish the level until I give him a potion? Even though I have no way to get one – so I have to restart?

Rodain: Nope, most things that happen in sub-dungeons tend to be independent of the level goal – The game has evolved a lot, but your basic aims in any given dungeon tend to be the same: kill the damn boss. Some dungeons will throw multiple bosses at you; others will be like “oh well done you just killed the bo- HAHA NO PSYCH!!!; while others will have you running along weird obstacle courses, strange gladiator arenas and mid-level situations which may impede access to the boss in NEW AND EXCITING WAYS.

But you basically gotta kill the boss.

Though as you get further on in the game, old dungeons WILL provide new unlocks and challenges. Stuff like “defeat the boss WITHOUT A BEARD” or, er, something.

MyGaming: You see, I was side-tracked by “the plot”; I thought the dw- er HALFLING was important – is there an actual plot going on here? Or are the witty musings between levels simply there to give controlled access to new features?

Rodain: There’s a loose plot, of sorts. Basic progression eventually emerges once you unlock what we call the “cardinal dungeons”: sets of dungeons in four basic themed directions which each form their own basic story. Although people seem to like the writing in Desktop Dungeons, actual narrative doesn’t have as much focus.

The closest we got to that in the alpha was a “campaign” of three dungeons in a row linked to each other with a generic stories about elves hating baddies and fighting them and stuff. And because progression quickly becomes non-linear, it’s more difficult to promote the idea of a single “big bad” that the player fights “at the end of the game”.

But we want to go up the wazoo with game lore, extras and interesting enrichment scenarios, mostly throwing them into sub-dungeons so that people know they’re optional experiences.

MyGaming: The game has changed a LOT from when I last saw it. Most people don’t know about the early beginnings on the Dev.Mag forums at NAG – what was the evolution like in terms of what you started with and what you added next?

Rodain: It was a delightfully fluid and, er, “organic” sorta thing. Kinda like “hey, I slapped this game up with just some bare-bones features” and people are all like “OOOOH DO THIS STUFF” and I’m like “YA THAT SOUNDS COOL” and just end up throwing in new crap willy-nilly.

It wasn’t always disciplined or balanced, but it was such a lot of raw fun on top of a concept that people already found raw fun that I think it basically just worked out anyway. All sorts of wacky ideas were tried out, and it’s kinda surprising how many of them lasted until this very day … a lot of the core classes, for example, have survived without any tweaks to their behaviour at all.

Evolution slowed down after a point, of course, because the base of the game was coded rather clumsily and without much room for change and the entire game was basically bursting its seams before we switched to Unity.

MyGaming: I just died again

Rodain: Yeah, that happens. A lot. Some players want to die less for some reason, so we’re definitely looking at that, but Desktop Dungeons will definitely never become an “easy” game.

Unless you’re one of those dicks who manages to complete literally impossible challenges like, 2 seconds after the game update and casually say “done!” on the forums afterwards.

MyGaming: Clearly difficulty is a big part of the game design – but not in the brutal way that, say Demon’s Souls gives it out to you. Hmmm, I kind of find that dying a lot makes me try a different approach – I guess that’s the whole idea?

Rodain: Yeah, Desktop Dungeons FORCES you to understand the game properly and actually dive into its complexity; there’s a lot of other detailed and interesting and well-designed games out there (a lot of them actually quite superior), but a lot of the skill can be lost on the player base because when a monster shrivels up just from being tapped by a dagger, players are never required to pay attention, or get creative, or dive into the emergent complexity of a system.

By dying and being forced to become invested, players create a better game experience FOR THEMSELVES.

MyGaming: I do find that I’m not using the magic glyphs so much – is that because the Warrior class is sort of a “beginners-do-all-solution” character?

Rodain: If you find you’re not using the glyphs, and you find that you’re dying like you are, for example … time to get creative with them glyphs, ey? 😛

MyGaming: …touché. Did you ever expect DD to get so popular? I mean surely you guys have some big corporation after you, trying to buy you up and have you make game-to-movie adaptations?

Rodain: Dude, we get all sorts of offers – not all of them amazing, but I guess you kinda just have to develop some sifting skizzles at this stage in the bizzles. And of course we fly off to a bunch of the regular events like IGF, E3 and most recently IndieCade – FOR MUCH REWARD AND PRAISE.

And then there’s the frequent offers of “hey, can we be the guys publishing your game on THIS platform?”

MyGaming: So do you feel like a bona fide (internet) celebrity? Can I touch you?

Rodain: You cannot touch me. This is the internet. Touching is actually impossible – the closest you get is fingerprints on your monitor and a feeling of emptiness.

MyGaming: But you dress so well! You were recently named best-dressed Indie developer by the MyGaming editorial team (Congratulations, by the way, the award is in the mail) – where do you get your fashion inspiration from?

Rodain: People ask me if I dress like that for the PR. The answer is no. I always dress well. Always. At least by my definition. I have a new purple top that one of my friends say is “loud” but, well, screw her opinion.

I think my fingernails are currently painted pink, too. Actually, I don’t think, I KNOW – I have them right here.

MyGaming: I’m sure it looks fabulous! Speaking of: the game’s also come a long way, graphically – who did all the preeeetty pictures?

Rodain: Various artists, by this stage. Though if you’re asking about the character graphics and AWESOME portraits in particular, that’s a mysterious dude in Canada who goes by the name of Lurk, online. Nobody knows much about him: he occasionally drops amazing stuff in random places, then disappears in a puff of smoke.

Conveying that puff of smoke on the Internet is a work of art in itself.

MyGaming: I’ve had that happen before, but that had to do with Eskom and power surges. The game is still in beta, yes?

Rodain: Yep 🙂

MyGaming: When is the full release gonna happen?

Rodain: Umm, was supposed to be November, but I think we’re gonna fall prey to that thing that happens to literally everyone else in the industry. We Thought for a moment we were special.

MyGaming: Ah, you mean you’re trying to circumvent the gazillion dollar big-budget titles that are litterally waving their [Yoink!] in our faces? So no real ETA yet? What are you guys working on in the mean time? Might I suggest a huge GAME OVER screen that openly mocks you when you die?

Rodain: Oooh, not a bad idea – after all, players may spend a considerable amount of time there.

Right now, we’re looking to push for some level of content-completion, then we’ll move onto REMOVING some of that content all over again, tightening up what still exists afterwards and — something I think people will be pleased to hear — reworking that horrible, hateful, sinful Kingdom interface.

I notice you haven’t mentioned anything about it yet, you’re very kind

MyGaming: That’s probably because I didn’t really notice anything that wrong with it. But now that you’ve brought it up – what are people hating about it?

Rodain: Well, for a start, dungeon setup is a lot more complex, so there’s the matter of streamlining that – character, dungeon, preparation selection and whatnot – but also, we promised an intuitive graphical interface for all of this stuff and, well, we haven’t got the graphics yet.

So right now there’s mostly buttons sitting around on the screen, there’s no spatial or visual logic, and although it’s a serviceable system once you understand it, the learning curve is a teensy bit steep.

MyGaming: Hmmm, I guess that’s a fair assessment, but then again, I’ve just rummaged through the Pirate Kart, and 86% of that (estimate) is purely incomprehensible, so this is great in comparison. I did notice the puzzle mode floating about the kingdom. That provided a fair bit of added challenge; it almost felt like an expanded tutorial; is that the idea you were aiming for?

Rodain: Yep, puzzles are fantastically primed to reinforce game concepts and help players exercise creativity within geared environments. Ideally, once you’ve learned to overcome the puzzles, you’ll actually become a BETTER DD player 🙂

But we have to hold out on those for a while until we’re more sure about the balance of the core game, since changing stats and figures would screw with some puzzles quite horribly – but more packs will make an appearance later.

MyGaming: Oh! That reminds me; I recently got an iPad 2, and funnily enough DD was the first thing to spring to mind. Okay, I lie; the first thing to spring to mind was OMFG AN IPAD 2 I AM AWESOME NOW – but DD did cross my mind. Are you guys looking to get onto other platforms?

Rodain: Oh yeah, we get that question a lot. A LOT. In fact, I’m still surprised that people are asking this question, we’re becoming increasingly suspicious that we’re really really really just not advertising in any of the right places.

Basically, we’re going to go to every platform that the Unity compiler will allow – including Christmas pudding, if the latest patch irons out some of the conversion issues.

MyGaming: So, the obvious question: what comes next for you guys? After DD goes live, what will your next project be? Or are you going to focus on DD and expansion for a while?

Rodain: Forseeable future is release of DD, followed by platform-hopping, maybe followed by additional content, followed by a couple of months spent cooling down and prototyping awesome new games on yachts.

MyGaming: Are you going to have a huge launch party? Am I invited? I promise to keep most of my clothes on.

Rodain: Oh yeah, totally. We’re installing stripper poles just for the party. Better still, we can use them afterwards to pretend we’re firemen. Or Batman.

MyGaming: I don’t think Batman uses poles – unless those Batman and Robin rumours are true! Heyoooo! On that note, let me say thank you, Rodain Joubert, for taking the time to help a DD n00b through this awesome, awesome game. It’s kind of tough not to be biased, having seen it come from its humble beginnings back in the day – to this pretty global addiction, but bravo, sir, bravo!

Any closing statements?

Rodain: Remember, kids: always aim for the high-XP kills – and beware the goat!

Interview: Rodain Joubert, Desktop Dungeons creator << Comments and views