DarkLight Dungeon Released, Interview

Independent developer ZoellerSoft has today released an old-school-style dungeon crawler entitled DarkLight Dungeon. Head over to the official website to check it out, or read this interview with Jesse Zoeller over on Tales of the Rampant Coyote to get more info.

RC: You mention that only a fraction of the spells can be bought most must be found. Is it the same case for items? To what uses can you put all your ill-gotten gold in the game?

JZ: There are over 200 items in the dungeon, only a small handful are offered in the store at the beginning of the game. Early on in the game you will be spending gold on some of the initial store items, potions, the seer and the initial spells taught in the village. Latter on in the game you will continue to invest money into health and mana potions, but permnament stat potions become available, and they are not cheap.

RC: Aging: This is a feature I was never too fond of in older games, I’ll confess. It seems that it’s either a major pain, or it’s so easy to bypass at higher levels that it’s really not an impediment. What role does aging play in Darklight Dungeon? Now, let’s say I’m almost at the end of the game, but then I suddenly hit an age threshold where I’m no longer capable of winning the game (becoming too weak or dying of old age). Am I screwed at this point? Do I have no choice but to start over again from scratch?

JZ: The main reason aging was implemented into DarkLight Dungeon was to give the players another thing to be cautious about in the dungeon. If you brute force your way through the dungeon you are going to die a lot and that is going to age you. Also there are monsters in the dungeon that can age your player, giving the player a reason to want to kill off that monster in the group before another, some traps on treasure chest may also age the player. Now I did make sure there is a balance to this. First there are potions that can be found in the dungeon that remove one year of age and another that removes five years of age. Secondly, it would be pretty difficult to die of old age in DarkLight Dungeon and if you do, you will lose your current experience and 10 years of age will be removed from your character.