I Made A Dungeon Crawler In 30 Days

How and why I made my first-ever video game in just 1 month.
#IndieDev #RPG #DungeonCrawler
Play The Necromancer's Tower and download my dungeon crawler asset pack here: brendan-lh.itch.io/​
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[@TheCrawl]

Hey everyone! Here's a link to the game and the asset pack! They're both included in the same bundle: the-crawl.itch.io/the-necromancers-tower Thanks for all the support!

[@Desphexian]

I just love the whole DRPG genre is coming back.

[@temmy9]

You might get a kick out of a very old crawler for the 8 bit trs-80 colour computer called "dungeons of daggorath". Instead of normal stats, it includes a unique heartbeat mechanic. The higher the heartbeat, the more vulnerable you are to attack, and you can be stressed and frightened to the point where you faint and are made defenseless.

[@battlegeekplus]

Bought it when it came out and played a bit (l’ll finish it one day). Extremely impressed that you did this in only 30 days and learning your creation process and how you implemented things from Wizardry, DQ, and Phantasy Star was fascinating to hear. Gonna try to finish this when I get the time and looking forward to your next game for sure!

[@shanedunn8932]

Working "backwards" from art assets to everything else - Holy hell. I'm trying this next project. I get caught up into the details way too much. O_O Great video!

[@Treekyboi]

I'm excited for Sci-fi game. Hopefully youll draw some inspiration from the aesthetic of Megaman Legends dungeons. Something about those "eye spheres" (I hope you know what I'm talking about) in the walls always gave the dungeons such mystical yet futuristic vibes.

[@TheCrawl]

Brother, I have some good news for you.

[@thegreatestcait]

This was a really helpful video. I've been tossing around the idea of putting together a dungeon crawler like this for some time now, maybe I'll have to try what you did!

[@TheSkullKlownTSK]

I'm making my own RPG game on RPG Maker Fes for the 3DS, Its just a prototype. I haven't it yet. Its been 4years now that I been making my game.

[@_Huskydomi]

I love the whole simple black and white design, it really does make the art pop, this video really inspired to create my dungeon crawler (probably text based) called creature & carts set in Victorian inspired setting with the train cracks being connected together as the dungeon, keep up the good work, earned yourself a subscriber

[@elahem6940]

Love the channel, very excited to get home from work and get the game!

[@Scarcheeze]

what you did is inspiring sir, it seems like I want to make a DRPG horror game too.

[@rocketshipevan]

Congratulations! Very cool! I think it is incredibly important to put time constraints for all the different aspects of a project, this prevents agonizing over every small creative decision and instead you get something very pure. Perfect is the enemy of Progress.

[@Ashenbubs]

I loved this, and playing this game!! This is really inspirational mate. Thank you for the advice and the taking the time to discuss this, it’s super positive! Maybe I’ll task myself this year to get a personal project done and make myself happy!

[@TheCrawl]

Thanks, buddy :) Keep me posted on any projects you spin up! I'd love to help in any way I can, even if you just need someone to brainstorm ideas with!

[@mischa3343]

Damn this is awesome, grats again on fulfilling a childhood dream! Love hearing your process and self-reflections, along with how giving yourself a timeline made you focus on nailing the core aspects of your game and getting it done. Studying other games' level curves makes so much sense. Bug-testing is a %@#$! Good on you for powering through.

[@TheCrawl]

Thanks, Mischa! Yeah studying the power and levelling curves in other games was really helpful. Honestly it was the part I was most worried about going into the dev process, but having those guidelines helped a lot.

[@thehubbleton]

This is inspiring AF. Great video.

[@Wayneisboss]

This was a really interesting look at the behind the scenes ideas that go into working on a game! Kinda takes me back to that mentality I had when taking a game dev course in college lol Something about just...having an idea and running with it, watching it evolve into a real thing in front of you and taking its own form

[@TheCrawl]

Thanks, Wayne! Yeah there's a unique joy to letting a thing just be what it "wants" to as you're making it.

[@ZowiChan]

Great video! As someone who wants to make a DRPG but has never made a single game before, I found your video very inspiring and interesting. It’s impressive what you achieved to create in only 30 days. I’ll definitely check The Necromancer’s Tower and the other videos on your channel. Good luck for your sci-fi RPG!

[@TheCrawl]

I'm glad this video helped! Thanks for the kind words and the support :) And good luck on your project! I'd love to check it out someday.

[@HPRshredder]

Is that Bomberman HERO OST I hear in the background.👌😮‍💨 Excellent video. Also very instructive for new and first-time devs; and great advice in general to put extra emphasis on *finishing* a game, and being *okay* with it not being perfect. Great stuff, man.

[@TheCrawl]

I literally chose the bgm specifically for you haha

[@Laghagua]

I listened to your Video multiple times. It gives me so much valuable tipps to finally be more successful in putting my own ideas to life. It really gives me the motivation i need, so i still keep watching it over and over. Sadly i can't buy your game due to not having a credit card or pay pal right now, but maybe this will change - then i will gladly try it out! : ) I really can ralate to many problems like having problems with decisions due to so many options. Also my fantasy goes nuts and i come up with many to complex ideas for my knowledge to implement them. Thats why i get frustrastrated and stop mostly what i have so far. or i get an other idea which sounds more appealing to me and i complete start something new. The time limit option really speaks to me. I guess that also can keep me concentrated and eliminate my indecision. Also it keep me away from getting to detailed and lost on the way. like you my most fum will possibly be to decide the level layout and do the artsy stuff like pictures, npcs and enemies (I plan to do just pics for them). So doingthem befor planning the whole game with it systems is something that i will do as well. : ) Again thankies for all that big tipps and tricks and thoughts you share!!! I hopefully also will have a selfmade dungeon crawler some day :D

[@MO-bo2du]

Really interesting game & video. Appreciate your passion for DRPGs, which I share. Also watched your Wizardry video from 6 mos ago, great stuff!! Liked & subbed. Cheers!

[@YourFriendJacob]

Amazing video as always! I love this deep dive and you should be incredibly proud of what you've created with The Necromancer's Tower. Seeing that you did all of this in about a month? I'm incredibly impressed!

[@TheCrawl]

Thanks, man. That really means a lot. It's still kinda surreal to think I made a game at all, and part of why I made this video was to make sure I have something I can go back to and remind myself that I completed a project like that.

[@YourFriendJacob]

@@TheCrawl I think it's great that you did that and this video definitely is a really cool reminder. I could easily come back to this video and watch it again months down the line and still enjoy it for many reasons. For starters, I like seeing good people succeed and you've totally succeeded with making this game and getting it out there. Second, seeing the connections you make in the creative process with games from within and outside the genre you're creating in is always so cool to me. The Metroid II bit was great and now I wanna fire up AM2R again lol. Finally, your words on the importance of finishing something is an evergreen piece of knowledge. I get into loops of being almost allergic to finishing things. Distractions, doubt, and waves of too many ideas at once - it can hinder the end goal and even derail the process of creating as a whole. Bringing that up in the way you did is motivating and applies well to gamedev but beyond it as well. Great job all-around!

[@z.s.7992]

Its because you are a lover of games making games for other lovers of games ...and im here for it

[@gordonfenn7373]

Great job! 🎉🎃

[@BoltofShadow17]

Idk if you will read this but I want to say that this has put me at ease and not overthink my own project as much, thank you for that.

[@TheCrawl]

I’m glad to hear that! I wish you the best on your project!

[@cragland94]

cool video :). i didnt know you could make 1st person games in rpg maker

[@TheCrawl]

Yeah! All you need is a plugin called MV3D. Here's a link if you're interested: forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?threads/mv3d-3d-rendering-for-rmmv-with-babylon-js.114971/

[@baff7979]

I love that you put out a Mac build of this! I will buy it today. I see that someone else couldn't get it to run on their M2 mac, hopefully it will work on mine. I was a gamer back in the 70s, but my world was completely blown away when my step father introduced me to Wiz3 in 1983. My first sci-fi drpg was Alternate Reality: The City in 1985. It kind of broke my brain a bit when sci-fi started showing up in Wizardry and the M&M games in the 90s. I look forward to playing your sci-fi drpg when you get it done. Hopefully it won't take as long as Cleve Blakemore's 20+ year magnum opus!

[@baff7979]

Sadly, it won't run on my M2 mac. I guess it will only run on Intel based macs.

[@TheCrawl]

Well, shoot. Good to know. I will look into it and if I am able to update it to run on M.2 chips, I will let you know!

[@baff7979]

@@TheCrawl Cool. It is a problem with a ton of the older mac games on steam not being able to run on the M1/2/3 macs. If it is easy for you to fix with a new build, great. If not, then it isn't the end of the world.

[@kalaherty]

Interesting stuff. I only started following your work about a week or two ago. I found you since I’ve been sitting around playing King’s Field 2 and Shin Megami Tensai (which puts the Wizardry series on my “to play"-list) . Glad to see you did a video on the game you released. This is probably an odd thing to comment, but I just wanted to say from my limited experience, I would disagree that the coding usually comes before the assets when doing solo dev. I would say designing the loose specifics of the systems you’ll later be coding should be jotted down before creating assets, but if you don’t have at least some placeholder assets before you start coding; you’ll probably loose steam when you have to keep stopping the coding process to rig together some place holders to test things out. I’d like to imagine what you described is a bit more common, because whenever I start a project with the coding side, it’s much more of a rocky development than when I sit down and produce enough assets for at least a small chunk of the final product. Great stuff and I’ve been enjoying your channel :)

[@TheCrawl]

It's definitely different for solo developers, but I guess I meant creation of all final assets without any accompanying mechanics or systems in place. Almost all the other solo devs I know go back and forth between coding and asset creation as they go, but I didn't have the time for multiple art passes and had to do it all at once.

[@Cuprite1024]

I really should do something like this. I've done fangame jams before, but setting a time limit for myself like this might be a good way to actually finish something for once.

[@TheCrawl]

It was a huge help! I plan on doing another sometime in 2024, this time with a slightly longer time limit.

[@Cuprite1024]

@@TheCrawl Ye! Seeing how this one turned out in one month, I'm sure a slightly longer time limit would make for something pretty good. :) If I end up doing something similar, I might make my limit something like 2 months/60 days. The other things I've done have been either 1 or 3 months, so 2 seems like a good one to go with.

[@snuffcassette7555]

This video inspired me to go look at RPG Maker MV, i saw it was on sale for 85% and then i saw it wouldn't run on my computers because it was no longer compatible... cry ;-;

[@TheCrawl]

Oh noooo! Is the new version, MZ, compatible?

[@snuffcassette7555]

@@TheCrawl I think so but it's also like £20 more expensive ;-;, gonna try and look into unity instead

[@snuffcassette7555]

@@TheCrawlupdate: i finally got MZ on sale!! currently making my first rpg (doing a v simple, dragon quest type game to get a grip on making a game), i also got the 3D plugin to work and start making first person dungeons, looking forward to making my own dungeon crawl soon

[@soratheorangejuicemascot5809]

When will we see dungeon crawler rpg tier list?

[@HPRshredder]

Asking the real questions

[@soratheorangejuicemascot5809]

@@HPRshredder most dungeon crawler rpg are barely mentioned in any rpg tier list I have seen.

[@TheCrawl]

Yeah, true. I have the recommendations at the end of my Wizardry video, but a tier list ranking would be fun. I will look into this!

[@MatthewBereti]

I want to make a DND style game that runs like this.

[@TheCrawl]

It's really not that hard! There are even plugins for RPGMaker that modify the skill systems to work more like D&D.

[@StiffAftermath]

I just saw your pitch for a metroid-like DRPG. Kinda really hope you are still jonesing for that game! I’d say, make a metroid prime derelict level as a DRPG demake, and see how the mood hits ya. Also, this may help: Pick a theme, like “clock”, “gears”, and build art according to that main theme. Ask yourself “what makes me like Metroid Prime so much”.

[@TheCrawl]

I am still working away at it! I am taking my time on it, so it might be a few weeks/months before I'm ready to show the next progress--but it'll happen!

[@niconicoseri]

This video inspired me to try my hand at making one of these. I've been experimenting with MV3D but I can't get it to avoid the camera from turning while moving (for example, when holding a diagonal direction). Did you find a workaround for that? I've noticed there aren't any corridors wider than one square.

[@TheCrawl]

If I’m understanding the issue correctly, it sounds like it could be an error in your plugin parameters. Make sure turn and strafe are set to different buttons/key bindings. For example I have strafing set to A/D keys and turning on Q/E.

[@phylactery60]

Hey there! I recently purchased The Necromancer's Tower and I'm really enjoying it so far! I love the old school aesthetic and presentation, and I'm especially impressed that this was made with RPG Maker MV3D. I've been working on a MV3D project and was wondering how you were able to configure the plugin to create what appears to be larger, but fewer walkable tiles and a wider field of view?

[@TheCrawl]

Hello! Thanks for checking out the game :) to answer your questions: You can edit the FOV in the MV3D plugin parameters. I can't remember how far down in the settings they are, but if you just open the plugin manager and check MV3D's settings, it should be there (it's possible it's only in the premium version, which is the one I use. For the tiles, they're just a custom tileset I made by pasting my sprites over one of the existing RMMV tilesets. I didn't change anything about the plugin or use other plugins for it. Let me know if you have any other questions, I'd be happy to answer them!

[@phylactery60]

@@TheCrawl Thank you for the quick reply! I'm thinking it could be the plugin's camera settings causing my issues, so I lowered the camera, then decreased the wall height, and the perspective completely changed! Rooms seem more open and halls seem less narrow. I'd love to know your exact camera, wall height, and fov settings if you'd be willing to share because they are so spot on, but I totally understand if not. Thanks again!

[@TheCrawl]

Ah, right-I set the camera about 0.3 further back from the center of the tile so that you can step onto the same tile as a chest, enemy, door, etc, and still see the object’s sprite in front of you. Edit: also the wall height is just 1 tile. Normally MV3D sets the walls to 2 by default. And the FOV is 90

[@phylactery60]

@@TheCrawl Wow! I never would've thought to set the camera back a little. Just one small tweak makes such a huge difference! I updated my current settings to 1 wall height, 90 fov, and 0.3 camera distance, but it still felt just a little off. So, I set the camera height to 0.5 and player movement to 1/2 speed and I think it's a match! Thank you very much for all your help! :)

[@Kerdukie]

Oh, found your game :D

[@TheCrawl]

Ah, perfect! I replied to your other comment just now before I saw this one. Glad you checked it out!

[@ty-xq7bl]

Im making one myself but trying to modernize it. To be honest I like the party building aspect of DRPGs but hate the first person view, so I plan to make it topdown.

[@AshleyRiot]

Sounds like Brandish

[@ElCombateGaming]

Hey! I want to ask you a technical question about making MV3D work with the black and white tiles.. are your floor tiles flickering in the distance? I noticed you have a pretty close fog, and figured you might be having the same issue as me lol

[@TheCrawl]

I haven't noticed this issue. Have you tried adjusting the cell load distance? I kept the load distance pretty average and made the fog super close and kept the fog pure black. EDIT: Also, the aggressive fog was to emulate the feel of old-school DRPGs and give an oppressive dungeon atmosphere.

[@ElCombateGaming]

@@TheCrawl thanks for the reply, I’m glad to see you weren’t having the same issue as me cause it’s pretty maddening lol, I have tried adjusting the cell load distance yet. I’ll give that a try! Congratulations on releasing your game btw, it looks great and I absolutely love your channel!

[@rufty5729]

What are the names of the indie games shown from 17:22? I would like to check them out. :-)

[@DagothAndFriends]

May I ask what plugins you used? I am currently trying to make my own drpg in rpg maker mv, but I don't know exactly where to start

[@TheCrawl]

Sure! For this the main plug-in I used is called MV3D by Cutie Virus. There is also a version for RPGMaker MZ. That’s how I was able to to the 3D dungeons, fog of war, etc. Gav’s Encounter Bar for the random encounter meter on the bottom right, and some Yanfly plugins for the shops and items. I also used some smaller plugins for specific features, like making an alternative Gameover event, but otherwise everything was done with standard event functions!

[@DagothAndFriends]

@TheCrawl Hello again (I hope I'm not being too bothersome), but I have one question about MV3D. I have it bought it, but how do you go make the camera first person. Other than that, I basically have everything sorted out. Thanks

[@KCuahtemoc]

At first I was like, wow 30 days from scratch!...then I see it's RPG maker using scripts and default systems, then it became more believeable.

[@TheCrawl]

Maybe one day I'll be good enough at an engine like Godot or Unity and can pull that off haha. I've mentioned this in other videos, but my projects tend to be art projects since it's fun to see my illustrations and pixel art in an interactive form.

[@KCuahtemoc]

@@TheCrawl Ahh gotcha. It's still an impressive feat to make something and get it done especially in such a short time frame. Didn't mean to make my comment sound as dismissive as it does. I really digged the art style and the sorta minimalism look of the dungeon itself!

[@chrismoon2961]

Is there a guide to make drpgs in rpg maker? I wasn't even aware you could make wizardry like games with that program.

[@TheCrawl]

The MV3D guide shows you how to make 3D maps and use the first-person camera, if that's what you mean. As far as the mechanics and systems go, you make all that in RPGMaker's normal tools or with other third-party plugins.

[@chrismoon2961]

@@TheCrawlI can see there are plenty of MV3D tutorials but a video explaining a little about how you specifically made a wizardry style game would be awesome!

[@lucasbaker4556]

What is the game at 17:36? I love the art style!

[@TheCrawl]

Islands of the Caliph :) store.steampowered.com/app/1845670/Islands_of_the_Caliph/

[@JustAnotherAndreas]

@@TheCrawl What are the other games that you show there?

[@entityunknown2]

Omg its ice king

[@TheCrawl]

someone else pointed this out and I will never be able to unsee it lol. It also means I should probably watch Adventure Time some day lol

[@david55200]

You can do this with tchat GPT in 2 days...

[@TheCrawl]

Lol

[@david55200]

@@TheCrawl i m actually develloping a dungeon crawler with tchat GPT, i have 7 month of work. Moving characters is nothing to do and my movement look very better than your :)

[@TheCrawl]

That’s awesome! I’m glad it’s working for you. When this video came out, using chat gpt to code wasn’t really a thing yet. Anyway! I hope the code base doesn’t break or become too unwieldy, that seems to be the biggest issue when coding with gpt. Personally, I like learning the skills and making things precisely the way I want, so using LLMs or content generators just doesn’t interest me.

[@deadlock_problem]

Only people with literally lukewarm iq use GPT for development. Any serious devs throws that into the trash because they don't need GPT to regurgitate some shitty patched together code it stole from github.

[@tuonas.]

I started making a necromancy based dungeon craeler about a week ago, i guess necromancer dungeon crawlers arent uncommon