Doom Crawlers

Table of Contents

• Intro
• Why?
• How?
• State of things
• Plans
• Outro

Intro

I'm making an online multiplayer card game. It's called Doom Crawlers. Some days ago I posted my first video about it. I plan to make these on a somewhat regular basis, spotlighting different aspects of the game.

This game is a significant update of the game I made about 8 years ago, Battle of Cards, which was inspired by Donsol, which, in turn, was made after Scoundrel. And an important part here played Reverend Rory Philstrom, who introduced the cooperative mode to my version of the game.

I understand that without the actual gameplay, this won't be taken as seriously, but I just need to share something from behind-the-scenes, or it feels like I'm throwing all my work into the void.

Why?

The one big reason to start it was a huge shift in the IT market. And I guess in the market in general. It's close to impossible to land a job now. I didn't see it making sense to persist trying to penetrate this AI-first protected community of 10x more efficient people. During one of the interviews with an HR manager, they asked me why I didn't make the game as a product, to which I found some excuses, like not wanting to be a subject to user's demands, etc. But really it was just a lack of time and mental capacity. When you have a day-to-day job and a family it's pretty hard to squeeze in anything else there. So the idea was always there, but I just couldn't afford to devote to it. And now, when I had all the time in the world, and after that great question from that HR, I finally could do it.

But that was a one-time event that threw me towards this idea. You can't go on only on inertia. If you have a look at my website, you can see that I'm a creative person. I like making stuff, experimenting. And I like it a lot. From the money-first perspective, it can actually get in the way. Because the thirst for experiments can make you lose time and speed and thus money. So I was doing it in my free time, with my own tiny projects or whatever those are. The daily job was a place where I had to deliver quickly and the way the CEOs wanted it. I didn't mind it and still don't. Those who make decisions pay money to doers, so they do things they are told to do and the way they are told. It's a shitty contract, but it's hard to argue with it when you simply need to survive.

And now finally I could do what I liked and how I liked. Things I do have finally started to make sense to me, started to be meaningful, started to to bring a feeling of fulfilment. And especially in this landscape of the exponential spread of enshittification in almost every area of people's lives. Everything is becoming worse in real time and c-suits are proud to jump into this AI-hallucinated world of insane profits making the lives of everybody significantly shittier along the way. I want to bring something good here, something of good quality, something with care for people and for product. I want to have fun living and making what I like, and I want people to have fun playing this game. It will be pleasing to the eye and technically well-made. It will be a tiny bastion of trying to bring something good to this world of increasingly reversed moral principles and common sense.

How?

This part is pretty naive and full of hope instead of planning. Planning is there only on the implementation side: technical and design parts are looking good. The marketing side is almost non-existent. My hope is that I make good stuff, people like it and support me. I continue delivering the good stuff. Sounds naive, but that's the best I can do here.

State of things

Right now, the game is playable, technically. UI-wise, the title screen is there, but the rest is in a state just good enough for testing.

• There is an authentication system with the email/password flow
• There are user settings
  • Usual stuff, like changing password
  • You can choose whether you want to be visible in the high score list
  • You can hide your identity, so people you play with see some auto-generated one-time stuff instead of your real user data
• There are three game modes:
  • Single player
  • Cooperative
  • Player vs Player
• There is a high score list

Because it's a browser-based game, I couldn't put the game logic on the user side. It can be manipulated easily. So the browser only sends the card which you want to use to make the turn, the validation and computations happen on the server side. Considering this, unfortunately, right now you have to be online to play. I would gladly move towards a downloadable game that you can play whenever you want, but I don't see this possible without moving to a compiled version. And for this, I just don't have resources right now.

Plans

Here's what I plan to implement or have a vague idea about:

• Availability
  • Single player mode available for everyone for free
  • Multiplayer mode available for free once a day, unlimited for subscribers
  • Have a monthly subscription for 2 euros, 3 euros will give some bonus in-game content, like additional card back designs or avatar facial features. Something to show the "premium" state, but nothing that affects the game logic
• Motivational stuff for keeping the playing streak. So, if you play every day, there are going to be some perks added to your hero
• Add special abilities to some enemies. So they will also have perks or will be able to negate heroes' perks
• Add heroes' weapon speciality. Every hero will have a special weapon, so while they wield it, they will have an active perk
• FAST multiplayer mode. Players will have a minute to make a turn. In the PvP mode, the game will consider the inactive player a loser. In coop, I think it makes sense to gradually kill the inactive player and prevent them from being resurrected
• Chat with predefined emotions/emojis/signs, so people can communicate without having to type anything. It gives speed and removes the headache of dealing with user-generated content
• Avatar generator. There will be predefined facial features to select from, so people will be able to personalise their heroes. Again, no user-uploaded images to avoid issues with any weird content
• Achievements. Different milestones or events will trigger achievements. Same as the streak thing, to give people more reasons to keep playing
• Allow people to invite others by their usernames. Right now, you can only match randomly
• The item above actually made me think that the random match should also take into account people's experience/time they spent in the game
• Update the game log, so the events are grouped by turns
• Allow resurrections in the coop mode, so people will be able to revive their companions, sacrificing some of their health points
• Make the minimal attack power to be 1 instead of 0. Feels more natural. Hitting someone with a fist still does some damage
• Improve the prize for winning the game. Currently, people only get their HP number or HP number + the last health restore card if they played it with full health. There's an unused card in the deck, an ace. And it has the value of 14. I'm thinking about using it as some sort of treasure

Outro

So this is it. If you like what you read and saw, it would be great if you decided to spread the word or support me. I'm moving forward and would like to keep doing it, to have fun, to see people having fun with the game, maybe even to build some sort of a community and keep making the game better together.

Peace!