In January of 2016 I challenged myself to make 1 new game every month, for a year; 12 months- 12 games. This is one of those games.
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Development Stats
- Language: C#
- Engine: MonoGame 3.4
- Platforms: Windows (DirectX)
- Resolution: 128×120 (half that of the NES!)
- Source: Open Source
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At the start of this month I got word that Play Canvas was holding a game jam style challenge to create a game in 6 weeks. The challenge would include free assets to use, and a theme to follow, so it seemed like a great fit for me (being a programmer with no artistic talent).
February 1st hit, and the theme and assets were finally released! And they were… pretty boring.
The theme was “Rockets! Robots! UFOs!” and the assets were, you guessed it, a Rocket, a Robot and a UFO. Not the most inspiring stuff, and pretty limited set of assets. But I decided to try and make the most of it, and started brain storming ideas.
I landed on the idea of an infinite take on the arcade classic, Lunar Lander. The player would fly the rocket deeper and deeper into a planet’s core, landing along the way to make repairs/refuel.
I was never super excited about the idea, and progress was really slow. I wasn’t enjoying the development at all. PlayCanvas was fun to use, and pretty full-featured, but making a game in 3D with no 3D modeling experience was limiting, and after a few weeks of trudging through the game, I decided to abandon the concept.
You can see where I ended up here:
Unfortunately I didn’t really know what game I was going to do instead on Lunar Lander, and I spent a week spinning my tires trying to come up with something. I eventually remembered an old idea I had, and so, with 1 week remaining in the month, I committed to that.
The one liner for this game is: “Minesweeper Rouge-like”.
They player travels a dungeon searching for loot and fighting monsters, but the locations of the monsters can be gleaned by small numbers found on the floor tiles. These numbers hint at which monsters surround the tile.
For instance, a 1 on the floor means a level 1 monster is on one of the surrounding tiles. With that in mind, the player can make an attack into the fog-of-war and avoid taking any damage. However, if they calculate wrong, they swing at air, and leave themselves open for any nearby enemies to attack.
If the player sees a 2 on the floor it could mean either a) a surrounding tile has a level 2 monster on it, or b) there are 2 level 1 monsters on the surrounding tiles.
As the player reveals more and more of the map, they can make more informed decisions.
However, with only a week of development the concept didn’t get much further than this. There is no loot, and therefore no real motivation to explore. There are only 2 attack types which leads to dead ends in the gameplay (eg. there are configurations of enemies which the player cannot properly predict without taking some damage). There are also no tutorials explaining how to play.
But the basics are there; you can explore, fight, find stairs to the next floor and, like any good rogue-like, you can die. There is a lot of room to expand on the idea, and this is definitely one of those games that I hope to come back to at the end of my 1-game-a-month challenge!
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System Requirements
- Windows 7 or newer
- Shader model 4 or better
- Mouse
- Download: Mage Sweeper ZIP
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How to Play
- Left Click to Attack/Move (kills level 1 enemies)
- Right Click to Magic/Move (kills all enemies instantly, but any surrounding enemies will attack you)
- Find exit move to next level
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