Developer Interview: 2D Artist
Goblin Stone Devblog #3: Embarking on Adventures
For this devblog we will be highlighting Adventures. Adventuring is a major feature of the game where a good chunk of the player’s time will be spent here exploring, fighting, and collecting loot. It entails leaving the Lair to explore different locations available on the World Map. During adventures, Goblins go out and harvest materials used to build out the Lair. Each location on the world map is unique, with its own loot and monster preference.
Early Concepts
During the pre-conceptualization phase, we played around with some ideas and tried out different concepts. We always knew we wanted a side scrolling experience, but how to present it was an enduring challenge. In particular we had to find a good way to allow branching paths so we don’t just get a simple linear experience. We also wanted to make it feel like we are really exploring so we opted for each level to be randomly generated. Random dungeon generation proved to be a very daunting task but we believe it will be well worth it in the end. On the right and below, are some of our early concepts back when we were still trying to figure out how to design adventures.
An early concept of how Adventuring might look like
Another concept we were playing around with. You can see the finalized design of the Goblins.
Our current iteration of the world map’s interface
The World Map
The World Map is viewable through the Goblin Lair’s War Room. It provides access to different locations to adventure in. We wanted to keep the visuals in the old parchment map style, while still adding a bit of 3D to it to keep consistent with the rest of our UI. We actually did a few iterations on the World Map’s interface and felt we had it in a good place. Though, after a few play test sessions, testers found it confusing as hell. We had to iterate over our original design and rethink it. On the left you can see its current state.
Adventures and quests
Once a location is selected in the World Map, the Goblins will be set on their Adventure. Each adventure comes along with a quest objective, which can vary from finding a specific item in the area or defeating a certain enemy. The availability of quests are random, some are easy other are rare and rewarding. Quests in general are still in the works. We hope to to able to talk more about it soon!