Design overview

A social dungeon exploring game
Explore dungeon instances in real time with friends. Split up to gather all the treasure quickly, and then team up against the enemy leader. Take full control of four heroes and choose their actions every round of battle! Your skills will develop naturally as you make use of them. Teach your friends new combat techniques and trade item recipes for your vendors. Collect all the riches you can and make your own home world truly unique. Enjoy it all through a classic console rpg interface.

Game start
The new player will start at the center of a small town. The town advisor will tell the player about random monsters in the lower levels of the mine, and requests help dealing with the menace. The player will also be invited to invest in the town and help plan it’s growth. Local crafting shopkeepers will offer poor quality equipment, and the local skill trainers won’t have much to teach. As the player explores deeper into the mine, the crafters will offer better quality equipment, and more experienced trainers will be attracted to the area. Players may lend discovered equipment to shopkeepers so they can learn from it’s design.

All small towns should have a bottomless pit
The local dungeon will start with ten predesigned levels which will introduce dungeon features to the player. Levels eleven and beyond will be randomly generated, with one enemy stronghold per ten levels. Deeper strongholds will have a higher chance of encompassing multiple dungeon levels. Levels are marked as discovered on first entrance, and will attract NPC adventurers. When the dungeon level is fully mapped it will be considered explored, and miners will start searching for valuable minerals. Monster spawn points will become visible to the player, which must be destroyed to claim the dungeon level as conquered. Once the level is conquered an underground society can be established, which will continue to receive small waves of attacks from dungeon creatures. Conquering several consecutive levels will increase the security for enclosed levels. A teleporter will be activated upon discovery every tenth level. These may be used to travel between home town and back. They may also be set as a respawn point if the party perishes.

The more the merrier
Cooperative gaming can be activated any time the character is at peace, and friends are available to join. Parties may choose to allow all players to independently control four characters, or a single party can be formed with characters from each player, allowing one person complete control of movement. This mode can be switched when all players agree. In the single party version an alternate character will be sent along for each character slot. This character can be tagged in at the start of any round. Characters will bond with other characters they battle with frequently, enabling combination attacks on switch. Familiar characters will also receive a bonus for fighting as a team when they are both active in battle. Combo partners will receive a request to abort currently selected action and execute the combo. Alternates can make a long range attack every third round.

The fun stuff
Characters will have the following actions available in combat. All characters on the front line will have access to a Fight command. Characters may also choose to Defend themselves or a party member for one full round. A character may only choose one general type of skill to have access to per battle ie. special attacks, spells, prayers, psionic abilities. Combo attacks between all characters will be placed into one menu. Characters will be able to use any item in their inventory in combat, and it will take one round to complete. Certain items which trigger skills, like bandages, may take longer to complete. Each character may run from combat independently.

Ruin someone’s day
Players may duel each other at a public coliseum. They may battle for fame alone, or each player can offer a wager. Players may also hold tournaments, once their city is well enough advanced. Players will also have the option of playing on PVP maps. PVP maps will offer greater rewards, but they are public maps and if you are defeated in a PVP battle you will lose one random item. The defending party will always revert to their status before the battle, and will be protected for three minutes. If the protected player attacks any other player he will lose this protection. PVP duels are sacred, and optional rules may be set if all parties agree. Surprise attacks like backstab will still be carried out before any other actions are taken, immediately after the duel conditions are agreed.

Technical
Game client will be developed in HTML, CSS, and javascript. The only requirement will be a fully updated browser. CSS transforms and translations will be used to create a responsive and authentic console feel. CSS also has the advantage of hardware acceleration on many new handheld devices. Client Server Connection will be through websockets, allowing players to play together in real time. Websockets are much faster than ajax or full page loads, because of their always on state.