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Hey codex,

I've been working on a dungeon crawler / first person action RPG for a while now and I thought instead of clogging up the game development thread I'd just go ahead and create a separate thread.

So, some years ago, while I was waiting for Dark Souls 2, I had the idea "Why not take a look at the origin of that series?". So I looked into King's Field and - despite its awkward combat - I was thinking: "This is really cool! I wish there were more games like that". So I looked into Ultima Underworld (which I - despite being a long time Ultima fan - never really touched). And I also liked that a lot.
One thing led to another and soon I'd have finished System Shock and Thief and LG games in general - and also Arx Fatalis and Dark Messiah. And I really enjoyed all of these a whole lot. But there was one thing that confused me: All of these games were at least 10-20 years old.

So I decided to take the least complex of these games (which is King's Field) and basically make a clone of that (trying to keep the project scale manageable and basically just making a game that I'd like to play). Since then the project has developed quite a bit however and Monomyth has grown into a first person action RPG with King's Field, Thief, Ultima Underworld and System Shock having a strong influence on it.

All in all this game has been in development for a bit more than a year (not counting the entire learning phase - being a programmer I had to learn 3D modelling and anything related to texturing, topology and animation from the ground up) and it's slowly but surely entering a stage where I'd like to put in on Steam Greenlight. There's still a lot of work to do, I'm fully aware of that - however the legal implications of Steam Direct force me to prepone this whole Steam thing a bit. So release will probably be somewhen Q4 2018 (or a bit later, you know how it is) 2019 for now - however I would like to release an alpha demo later this year (Edit: I didn't - but don't worry, it's coming).

Anyway, here are the key features:

• Free Character Movement: No grid based movement. Monomyth is a free movement dungeon crawler like King's Field or Arx Fatalis.

• Action oriented real-time combat: At the end of the day Monomyth is an RPG with character- and item-stats having a strong impact on how well you do in battle. However it is also strongly dependent on the player's skill. You have to actively swing your blade, cast spells, dodge, parry and block. Weapons have certain movesets, range and the combat is based around a stamina system the player has to keep an eye on. There are also optional lock-on mechanics. This is probably unusual for a first person RPG but during playtests it worked really well with melee combat. Ranged combat and spells will not allow lock-on however.

• Blades, bows and spells: The game currently features the three basic RPG archetypes - Warrior, Thief & Mage. There are several melee weapons, certain stealth mechanics and obviously spell casting. I'm not sure how restrictively I will separate these three in the end though since there is....

• Free character development: Means no classes. The character is developed by investing points into character stats. But, much like in Ultima Underworld, the player is not necessarily bound to a certain archetype/playstyle. However if you sprinkle your EXP all over your character sheet you will very likely end up as a jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none.

• Enemy Infighting: This is a nice detail I introduced in the AI a while ago. Enemies actually belong to "factions". Certain factions don't like each other much and as a result they'll fight each other whenever they meet (it's also the code base for a "Charm" spell - as seen in Dark Messiah).

• Dynamic Encounters: Enemy spawns in Monomyth are bound to resting at certain checkpoints within the world. This activates the respawn mechanism, which is slowly (not necessarily all at once) replenishing monster spawns, spawning traps throughout the map and even unique monsters. The monster spawns themself will feature variations, so there might be a single monster spawning, several monsters, or maybe even a patrol.
  (For the lack of a better word) Metroidvania-styled world layout: Of course this game is one big dungeon crawler and to a certain extent it is separated into different areas or "floors" if you will. However, areas are strongly interconnected and finding for example a passage in one area might lead you to an unexplored part of another area. It is definitely not the "clearing out all monsters and moving on" type of level design. I want the areas to be more creative than that. My main goal here is to marry the horseshoe level design principle of e.g. Dark Souls with the extensive level design of Thief. Which is quite a challenge, since the horseshoe principle is very much opposed to Looking Glass' more open design principle. The solution so far is to practice the horseshoe principle as a connector between areas, while the areas themself remain more open. So in a sense it is a lot like Ultima Underworld, except instead of stairs connecting areas you basically have a separate area that acts as a hub, which slowly opens more and more, the further you progress through the game.
  Outdoor areas: While being a dungeon crawler, Monomyth will also feature outdoor areas. I thought that might be interesting.

• High-tech medieval setting: This is probably the thing Thief had the biggest impact on. Monomyth is set in a medieval fantasy world. However primitive electronics and steam powered machines are very common. Dungeons are filled with pipes and electronic lights, castles are full with gears and mechanisms, enemies range from savage to what could be considered high-tech.

• Deadly environments: This was a lot of "fun" in King's Field 4 (except for the invisible lava field right in the beginning). In Monomyth environments are quite hazardous. There is hot steam coming from leaking pipes, there are chambers filled with poisonous gas, electrical hazards, pitch black caves with steep cliffs and traps. Lot's of traps. So you always have to be on guard.

I hope I can get out the greenlight trailer till about the 15th of May (as you know the clock is ticking on that one). I'll use this thread to update you on the development, answer questions and take feedback.
You can also follow me on twitter if you want: https://twitter.com/rattower

Thanks for reading!