Of all the games on the horizon, the one I may be most looking forward to Let's Build a Dungeon. It's a sim from Springloaded, makers of Let's Build a Zoo and the upcoming RollerCoaster Tycoon Wonderworks, and the premise is one we've all mulled at one point or another: what if I could make my own videogame?
And in Let's Build a Dungeon, you can. Dig dungeons, populate them with monsters and traps and loot, design quests, and watch simulated players play your game. You'll even be able to let real players play the game you make.
But there's also the simulation surrounding the game you're building. The development studio you've founded. The devs you hire. You'll have to deal with investors, finances, the public, the press (like me!), crunch, gaming conventions, hackers, and even text messages from your mom.
There's a lot going on in this sim. Like, a lot, a lot. During a recent preview and interview with Springloaded founder and Let's Build a Dungeon lead developer James Barnard, here's what leapt out at me as being the most a lot among the lot.
"We have, like, 700 [fictional] games or something, and the list keeps on getting longer."
Let's Build a Dungeon lead developer and Springloaded founder
Let's Build a Dungeon simulates Steam's backend and sites like SteamSpy where you can see your game alongside the competition. Lots of competition: Springloaded has invented hundreds of fictional (and unplayable, sadly) games to populate your reality.
"We have all these games, which obviously our concept artist, poor guy, he spent his his whole life drawing these things."
And look, there's even an advert for a gaming show. A computer gaming show. That's a great idea for an event! Someone should do that for real.
"You can see sort of how your game is doing with the wishlists and things like that. The objective is to get into events, and if you do, you get massive number of impressions. So we really use the impressions, click through rate, conversions, wishlists, and all of that stuff feeds into the chart."
"When you go from CGA to VGA, you have to upgrade some of your computers, and then the size of everything expands and becomes bigger, so suddenly you need more hard drive space because all your assets are now high resolution."
The fictional game you're making in Let's Build a Dungeon runs on fictional hardware, and as your game gets bigger, it takes up more space. Time is passing, too, meaning there are advances in PC hardware as well as your game's required specs, and that's reflected in the sim.
"We drew every single component of every computer, so there's about 150 components that we drew from, and it goes through the history of computing."
You won't just see a difference, you'll hear one. The soundtrack of the game will change based on the audio card your simulated computer is using.
Buying plane tickets and booking hotels for your devs to attend game showcases is a "ridiculous minigame" that even simulates layovers
"Once [your employees] head off to the [showcase], you get to pick who's going to go to the event, and then they aren't working, so they won't appear in your design board. If I send these two people to an event, they're going to disappear for three days and and, you know, fuck up my schedule.
"The flights kind of curve up in price as you get closer to the day, but then sometimes there'll be a bargain right at the end if they've got too many seats to sell, and the same for the hotel. So if you wait till the last minute, you sort of take this risk of: Am I going to spend too much?
"We calculate where you started your company and where the event is. We actually calculate the distance and how long it takes and we do the stopovers in the right cities, so where your office is, is gonna impact you. So if you get EGX Rezzed, it's just down the road for you, if you pick London."
Remember Cyberleek? That could happen to you
"This is some super nerd who's basically hacked your computer. Oh no, he's been following your investors' flights around the world, and he's decided that you are making an MMO, and he's looked at your financials and the other guy's financials, and then he holds you to ransom.
"He's either going to leak the game, or he's or he's going to convince you to put him in the game. There's lots of different outcomes."
Your mum sends you pie recipes and cat videos
"Your mum calls you. Have you eaten? And then she tries to make you eat different food, and gives you desktop screenshots and things for rewards.
"And this conversation, for example, you can get a song, you can get like different desktop images to cheer you up because she wants you to be encouraged in your daily life.
"One of the other things she gives you is a pie, and then she sends you the recipe for the pie, and then you get inspired, and you add a the ability for your designers to come up with a pie recipe, and then you get a pie that you can put in the game, and the players can eat, and you can adjust all that kind of stuff."
By the way, if all of this game dev studio simulation stuff isn't your thing and you just want to use Let's Build a Dungeon to design your own game, you can do that too! There's a campaign mode, build mode, creative mode, or just play the games created by other players.
Let's Build a Dungeon is coming to early access in February. There's a demo you can try in the meantime.
