GamesSimLive your fantasy of being a game dev in this sim where you build an MMO, manage your team and investors, and even play your own gameWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
GamesSimLive your fantasy of being a game dev in this sim where you build an MMO, manage your team and investors, and even play your own gameWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
(Image credit: Springloaded)
Ever fantasize about making your own game? Probably. Ever fantasize about making your own game while running a development studio, managing your employees, balancing your budget, crunching to meet deadlines, getting angry texts from your studio’s investors, and dealing with data breaches? Maybe not.
Let’s Build a Dungeon Announce Trailer | Game Dev Simulator | Steam | Xbox - YouTubeWatch On
Let’s Build a Dungeon Announce Trailer | Game Dev Simulator | Steam | Xbox - YouTube
Let’s Build a Dungeon Announce Trailer | Game Dev Simulator | Steam | Xbox - YouTube
“Recruit staff, rent an office, manage project deadlines, negotiate with shareholders, pitch to publishers for investment and undertake many more crucial tasks,” Springloaded announced today. “Take the company from a scrappy indie studio to a development powerhouse in a humorous but true-to-life take on the current games industry.”
The type of game you create in Let’s Build a Dungeon is up to you, and can be anything from “a monster-catching RPG” to “a cozy farming simulator.” There’s even fishing, so yes, I am absolutely going to create a fishing MMO when this sim comes out. The really cool thing is you can do more than just build the game and watch simulated players enjoy it: you can dive in and play it yourself.
I got to try a brief demo of Let’s Build a Dungeon this week and it gave me a pretty tantalizing taste of running my own development studio. I began with an empty game world and used random generation to create a chunky continent for my MMO. Then I placed a few buildings of the sort you might find in a fantasy RPG: a bakery, a cartography office, a farm, plus some decorations like lamp posts and fences. But there’s nothing for heroes to do without quests, so I added my first one: a merchant’s cellar has been infested with giant rats and they need your help. Yep, that’s early-game quest-giving 101.
(Image credit: Springloaded)
Then, abruptly, I got a text message from my virtual boss. Oh, right! This isn’t just a game design simulator, it’s a gamedevsimulator. I left the dungeon behind and found myself looking at my virtual desktop with folders labeled “Org Chart” and “Dev Tools” and icons for a web browser, a calendar, and other utilities. As much fun as it is to play around with building towns and dungeons and placing monsters and treasure chests, there’s a whole lot more to deal with in Let’s Build a Dungeon.
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(Image credit: Springloaded)
But I did get to see more of Let’s Build a Dungeon in a meeting with game director and CEO of Springloaded James Barnard, and what I saw extends far, far beyond the short demo I played. At one point Barnard was showing me the simulated digital games marketplace my MMO I will appear in, which is based pretty faithfully on Steam.
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It’s not just my studio and game that’s simulated, but all my customers, too. We could look at an individual players' data: what country they live in, how long they’ve been playing, and what quests they’ve completed. I could see their address, their name, and even their itty bitty simulated credit card number they paid for the game with. In Let’s Build a Dungeon you can pay for a system to encrypt those credit card numbers just in case of a data breach… or to save money you can choose not to and hope for the best. Point is, you can get hacked and your users' data can be stolen. Let’s Build a Dungeon goes pretty deep.
If you played Springloaded’s last sim, Let’s Build a Zoo, you’re aware there are several ways to be an evil zoo manager, liketurning your spare zoo animals into food and productsfor extra profit. The potential for evil isn’t quite as graphic in Let’s Build a Dungeon, but it’s definitely there, and in ways that mirror the real games industry pretty closely. “There are many meaningful (and sometimes ethical…) choices to make,” says Springloaded. “Players can choose to force extended working hours to meet deadlines, or ignore investor pressure to protect the development team.”
Want to make a game in this game about making a game? Yeah, me too. Big time. There’s no release date yet for Let’s Build a Dungeon, but interested players can sign up for a beta onthe official site, and here’s its page onSteam.
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Square Enix launches new anti-harassment policy to protect its employees and partners from abusive fans
The Sims begins its 25th anniversary celebration next week with a Behind The Sims episode of news and announcements
Path of Exile 2 numberlord spends 16 straight days killing rare monsters to prove that a stat that makes loot better makes better loot
Palestinian developer raises more than $200,000 to make Dreams on a Pillow, a game about the horrors of the 1948 Nakba
Piranha Games will lay off employees after Mechwarrior 5: Clans ‘performed below projections’
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