In Super Dungeon Maker, an early-access indie game from Firechick, you develop dungeons full of monsters, traps, puzzles, and more. One type of Door available in the game, the Monster Door, allows you to create rooms that lock players in until all the monsters have been defeated.
Players have already come up with dozens of ways to build creative Monster Rooms that combine all the elements available to them in the dungeon builder. In this article, we're touching on some of the ones that you should keep in mind while building yours. While these tips are specifically catered to rooms built with Monster Doors, they'd also be applicable to almost any kind of room that included enemies.
7 Hide Monsters In The Grass
The Grass decoration is a great way to hide lots of things in Super Dungeon Maker. They might be positive, like a Heart or a Key, but they could also be some enemies that your player will have to defeat. A great way to keep your players on their toes in a Monster Room is to place plenty of Grass inside.
Think about it: the fear of the unknown is one of the most effective tools that a horror movie can use to spook viewers. While it won't be on quite the same level in your dungeon, it will put the player on edge to have the Monster Doors slam closed and to not know where their enemies are hiding. Green enemies work particularly well for this since they're even harder to spot, as you can see in the examples above. The right-hand image from a dungeon by in-game user Brosinity, which uses a Slug. The left-hand image from a dungeon by in-game user Soulmarine, which uses Eyeballed Cacti.
6 Combine Long- And Short-Range Monsters
If you're not thinking too hard about how you put together a Monster Room, it can be tempting to set up the environment and then just haphazardly add a bunch of the same monster type in there. However, even something as simple as picking one long-range monster type and one short-range monster type can make a world of difference to how your room feels.
In the above example from in-game user Nitox's dungeon, the room combines a bunch of Slimes (short-range) with a single Piranha Plant (long-range). As it takes a long time to get through the Slimes, who keep slinking inside their shells, the Piranha Plant is a constant annoyance. It makes it so much more satisfying when you finally take it out!
5 Require Creative Tool Use
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In the image above from a dungeon by in-game user Nitox, the player is faced with a few Eyeballed Cacti and a Spinning Statue. Earlier in the dungeon, the player received the Shield. By setting up the dungeon this way, Nitox forces the player to carefully navigate across several pits, intermittently using the Shield to block the Spinning Statue's attacks and finally reach the chest, containing the Feathers which are needed to progress.
While the above example doesn't use Monster Doors, it easily could by just making the Spinning Statue into another long-distance attacker, like a Piranha Plant. Setups like this one force the player to think on their toes and perform excellent platforming and problem-solving, rather than just hacking and slashing their way through a room full of monsters.
4 Don't Forget About Traps
When setting up a Monster Room, don't forget to add traps into the mix!
First of all, traps make it more challenging to defeat the monster the first time a player travels through that room.
Second, if the player ever needs to backtrack through that Monster Room, it won't feel mindless because they'll still have to navigate around the traps that remain (like in the picture above, from a dungeon by in-game user Nitox).
Third, if the player has to backtrack through that Monster Room after acquiring an ability like the Feathers, which makes the traps easier to navigate, they'll get an excellent sense of progression by seeing how far they've come!
3 Hide Bonus Hearts
If your Monster Room is particularly big, like the one featured above from a dungeon by in-game user Nitox, you should consider placing Hearts nearby for players to recover. The more monsters there are, the more likely that (no matter how good they are) the player won't be able to avoid taking a few hits. They will thank you unendingly if you place Hearts for them to use to recover, rather than forcing them to restart the whole thing.
There are lots of ways to do this, of course. You could…
- place the Hearts out in the open.
- hide the Hearts in Grass (barely a step down from placing them in the open, since the player will probably cut Grass anyway as they fight).
- hide the Hearts in Chests (a little tougher – they'll have to be sought out, and the player won't know what's coming in advance).
- hide the Hearts in Pots (much tougher – the player needs to coordinate picking up the Pot, throwing it, and running to grab what was inside, all while dealing with enemies).
How cruel or kind you want to be is entirely your own prerogative.
2 Add Dangerous Borders
When you create a monster room, one thing that might annoy you is that the player can kind of get through it by mindlessly hacking and slashing their enemies, even after all the work you put into it. In order to get your players to think about their actions more, consider adding dangerous borders to a room.
In the above example from a dungeon by in-game user Soulmarine, the walls are lined with Pit Floors. While facing the numerous Spiders in this room, the player has to navigate the area carefully because a wrong step could send them over the edge. This is only made more challenging by Soulmarine's choice of enemy – the Spider – which jumps around the player haphazardly! You could achieve the same effect with other tools, if you aren't a fan of pits, like Floor Spike Traps.
1 Test Your Own Monster Rooms
This tip might seem obvious, but you'd be surprised how many players upload their dungeons without thoroughly testing their Monster Rooms. Some things to keep in mind:
- Test the room more than once.
- Determine what is frustrating for you that might impact the players' positive experiences with the dungeon.
- Ensure you've given the player the needed tools.
- Consider whether the fight was too long or too short.
- Look for bugs (since it is an early-access game, after all) and how you can help fix them, if possible.
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