Hi there, I wanted to talk a bit about my upcoming RPG, Minerva Labyrinth, if it's OK! It's a traditional-style dungeon crawler in the Wizardry / The Bard's Tale / Experience vein. It takes place in a mid-sized city in the southeastern USA, a few decades from now, and casts you as a squad of neophyte magical warriors who must defend the city from a demonic horde called the Hate.
Some background: I've been trying to make an RPG like this for a number of years, though my last major attempt collapsed from overscoping and poor technical design. In 2020 I tried again, but started small this time. I joined a two-month RPG game jam and released a small, bare-bones dungeon crawler called Tower of Metal using Unity. It's fairly crude, but I am still pretty pleased with what I managed to do in only two months. That project formed the basis for this one, which I started on in early 2021.
I made slow but mostly-steady progress until Unity blew itself up at the end of 2023. After flailing for a bit, I decided to convert it to Godot, but this was stressful and overwhelming, and I had to take a break before completing the migration. Unfortunately, I then had to take an even longer break for health reasons, but I ultimately finished the conversion, threw Unity in the trash, and moved forward with finishing the game.
As of now, it is almost done, and I have a demo out on Steam and Itch. I'm trying hard to have the final game ready to release this year.
I'm a part-time solo developer with no artistic or musical skills to speak of, and I do pretty much everything myself, so I work slowly and don't produce anything attention-grabbing. I'm making the game that I need to make, though. I can't really do it any other way. ML is a huge step above ToM in size, complexity, and quality, which is why it's taking years instead of months. I hope that it will also be a step towards making even better and (maybe) bigger RPGs in the future.
Here is a modest trailer!
Some background: I've been trying to make an RPG like this for a number of years, though my last major attempt collapsed from overscoping and poor technical design. In 2020 I tried again, but started small this time. I joined a two-month RPG game jam and released a small, bare-bones dungeon crawler called Tower of Metal using Unity. It's fairly crude, but I am still pretty pleased with what I managed to do in only two months. That project formed the basis for this one, which I started on in early 2021.
I made slow but mostly-steady progress until Unity blew itself up at the end of 2023. After flailing for a bit, I decided to convert it to Godot, but this was stressful and overwhelming, and I had to take a break before completing the migration. Unfortunately, I then had to take an even longer break for health reasons, but I ultimately finished the conversion, threw Unity in the trash, and moved forward with finishing the game.
As of now, it is almost done, and I have a demo out on Steam and Itch. I'm trying hard to have the final game ready to release this year.
I'm a part-time solo developer with no artistic or musical skills to speak of, and I do pretty much everything myself, so I work slowly and don't produce anything attention-grabbing. I'm making the game that I need to make, though. I can't really do it any other way. ML is a huge step above ToM in size, complexity, and quality, which is why it's taking years instead of months. I hope that it will also be a step towards making even better and (maybe) bigger RPGs in the future.
Here is a modest trailer!