Monsters' Den: Godfall - now on Kickstarter!

I’m excitedly terrified to announce that my next game, Monsters’ Den: Godfall, is now on Kickstarter!

Monsters’ Den is a long running series of dungeon-crawling RPGs which up until now have been (genuinely) free to play on the web. This new game is targeted at Steam, and is considerably more expansive than any before. Getting this game done has been an epic saga in itself, and I’m finally close but I just don’t have the money to see it through. Please take a look and let me know what you think!

Features:

[ul]
[li]A turn-based role playing game focused on dungeon crawling and advancement.
[/li][li]Found and manage a Mercenary Company. Maintain a roster of heroes, upgrade your keep and adopt doctrines for universal bonuses.
[/li][li]Take direct control of a party of up to four adventurers to lead on missions.
[/li][li]Battle groups of enemies in turn-based tactical combat.
[/li][li]Procedurally generated dungeons, loot and missions.
[/li][li]Overland travel- visit new cities and dungeons, search ruins and find hidden places of interest.
[/li][li]Improved character advancement means increased freedom to personalize your team of heroes.
[/li][li]Hundreds of unique items that can be customized with enchantments.
[/li][li]More than 100 enemy types, each with unique skills requiring different tactical approaches.
[/li][li]Random dungeon modifiers add new wrinkles to each mission.
[/li][li]Story missions uncover the mysteries of the Godfall.
[/li][/ul]

Screenshots:

For some reason, I totally missed the other version/thread and haven’t seen Monsters’ Den before, but this looks to be right up my alley. My wife has also been enjoying similar games a great deal lately so thanks for the heads-up on the kickstarter. Good luck!

Backed and shared on twitter. I’ve always enjoyed your Monster Den games Garin, so I’m more than happy to kick in for this.

I backed this as well. I don’t understand why this type of game isn’t more prevalent, since its an awesome idea!

Can I ask what the extra money is for, or is that stated somewhere in the kickstarter? (At work, so time is precious here :-) )

From the Kickstarter page

So far the project has been funded out of my own pocket. Unfortunately, I’m no longer in a position to pay for the game to reach a finished state.

If successful, the bulk of the Kickstarter funds will go towards paying my team. Some of the things I still need to fund:

New dungeon tilesets
Artwork for many new items, weapons and armor
Additional creatures
New visual effects for spells and skills
More encounter artwork
Sound effects
Music
A smaller portion of the budget will go towards helping to cover my own personal expenses so that I can focus on the project. I don’t need to draw a full salary thanks to my understanding partner.

I really enjoyed the Monsters’ Den games, exciting to see how this turns out. I backed. Good luck garin!

Garin, now that I’ve read the kickstarter page a couple times, I have to say that I really like the sound of the additional strategic layers you’re adding to the game. Creating your company and maintaining a keep, running multiple parties and establishing doctrines. It all sounds really cool and kicks the game up a notch from just the random dungeons.

Being a huge fan of the garrisons in WoW(and duty officers in Star Trek Online), I love the idea of controlling one party and sending the others out on various missions. Will there be a hard limit to how big your company can grow, and how many parties you can have or will it be based on the games economy and how well you can manage the company? Once you have multiple parties running, will you be able to swap members and items out from one to another, or are they locked into the party they start in?

I really appreciate the support so far, thanks!

All characters belong to a party, and additional parties can be fielded as the company level increases. So the same mechanic is a cap both on the number of parties and the total number of characters in the company.

Any time the active party returns to the Keep you can freely swap members between parties (or simply make a different party the active one). There is some value in having experienced characters running side missions, as the level and gear quality of the party does modify its effectiveness.

Cool, thanks for the explanation.

I have loved being a mercenary commander ever since Jagged Alliance captured my heart. I realize this isn’t trying to be a fantasy JA, but backed!

I backed this the instant I saw garin post in another thread. I owe him for the countless hours I spent in the earlier games if nothing else.

In as well. I remember playing a lot of Monsters Den back in the day. I hope it all goes well for you!

Chris Woods

In at Beta Access level.

Any recommendation on which version I should start with if I have never played one before and wanted to try out a currently available Monsters’ Den game? Where is the preferred location to play them from?

Thanks!

I think the game idea is great but two things I don’t really like very much:

  1. Lack of animations. Moving through the dungeon, your avatar looks like he floating or skating on ice. And attacking/fighting just looks weird without any movement, swinging swords, firing bows, etc. It’s too minimalist for me.
  2. The interface needs “medievalizing”. It looks too modern.

Thanks for your support!

Chronicles is the most recent, and the one that most resembles Godfall in presentation. The best place to play it is here. If you sign in they do cloud storage of your saved game.

Some diehards still prefer Book of Dread, which is simpler and even rougher-looking. The most up-to-date version is here.

This is fair enough. I honestly expected it to be a bigger sticking point, but very little of the feedback I hear mentions it.

I really don’t care about animations. Most of the time when used in these types of games the animations, unless very short, are more annoying than anything.

And I am completely sick of medieval interfaces. In the rush to make it look authentically fantasy any usability is destroyed. I much prefer a clean, functional interface.

You can of course have your cake and eat it too with both animations and the interface, but we rarely do.

Looks cool, surprised I had never heard about this. In for $9!

This is the second time a significant word/phrase from an RPG/campaign setting I’m writing has cropped up on Qt3, and each time, it mildly freaks me out, although at least in this case, I call the major plot arc in my world the “Godsfall” since there was more than one! (the other case was Spaceward, Ho!, which is the tentative name for my Fate Core-based, Star Control-inspired scifi-comedy game, but is also apparently the name of a play-by-post boardgame thing people are running?).

In any case, thanks for the mild hear attack (MY IDEASSSSS!!!) and best of luck in the campaign!

Man, this looks really good! I’m tempted to back this, which I almost never do (Pillars of Eternity was the only thing I ever backed before). Good luck in the campaign, I really want this to succeed!!