Weird Game Idea: My Pet Dungeon

Anyway, I'm a fan of 13th Age, and one of the ideas that's always stuck with me is the fact that dungeons in that game are often living beings that like to dig around, release monsters at anyone living nearby, and then dig away after they've ruined everyone's day. Adventurers are obviously paid to find out what a particular dungeon's vital bits are and...remove them.

What an excellent idea for the world's strangest pet sim. Sort of like Dungeon Keeper, except of course you're not the one with the monsters or the rooms, the dungeon spawns and builds them, respectively, by itself. You, like the responsible overlord you are, just care for the oddly puppy-like living soul of the dungeon, playing with it, feeding it gold, magic, the occasional legendary artifact, the corpses of those parasitic adventurers you worm regularly for (sometimes with giant sandworms) and going on walks/excursions of mayhem into the civilized lands. Along the way, you help your dungeon grow new themes and sizes, contract your dungeon out as a working animal for some would be conqueror or another, enter it into demonically-hosted competitions against other dungeon owners, and pursue the longstanding rivalry of Dungeon People vs. Dragon People.

So yeah, the idea is regularly switching between reveling in chaos and destruction, and d'awww when your dungeon does cute things.

Does this interest you at all, and if so how would you implement it?

(Note: Not a game developer at all).

That's... actually pretty interesting. Sort of a procedural game where you manipulate from the sidelines, but the thing develops organically, maybe tangentally from what inputs you provide.

Sounds awful, but it could be a great mobile game as well...

Plus you could have a mode where you make the dungeon "public" and people can try adventuring in it.

Thanks.

Part of the reason I had the idea was wondering if a sort of "reverse Roguelike" could be fun, trying to adapt to whatever your dungeon throws at the heroes next and how to take advantage of it. There's already an example of this, Crawl, but I was wondering how it could be made single-player but still fun.

And, of course, the bizarre humor value of the fact that your dungeon is essentially your dog, and acts like one on an abstract level (you don't get its attention to a specific point on the world map by pointing, you throw a stick at the destination. Upgrades to a ball, frisbee, damsel-in-distress squeaky toy..).

As you've mentioned, the idea of making your own dungeon has been done. If I'm not mistaken, Ubisoft or some other big AAA had something recent on PC to that effect, too? Though something as hands-off as you're mentioning wouldn't be very fun without a bit more to it, in my honest opinion.

It really sounds like you're just describing a hands-off Dungeon Keeper with some presentation changes.

... As a side-note, I know it's unintentional, but the title sounds like a porn title.

edited 6th Jan '15 12:13:11 PM by burnpsy

And now I can't unsee it.

Thanks a bunch.

And yes, that would be a problem, a huge one. Needs player input. How you do that, is well, beyond me.

Maybe a "trained commands" system? I dunno.