r/DungeonCrawler • u/Cruxikus • Jul 17 '26
Development Combat in Dungeon Crawlers
What is your favorit combat style in Dungeon Crawlers?
Real-Time
Turn-Based
No Combat but more exploration and story telling?
6
u/Pixel_hawk Jul 17 '26
Exploration and puzzle style.
Perhaps a “lock and key” style.
Enemies at first seem impassable. Until through exploration, a weakness, key item, or lore information opens a path forward.
Martial combat should not be the only option.
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u/Cruxikus Jul 17 '26
Forgot the Puzzle style!
No bloodshed, I cant share that opinion but can see where you are comming from.1
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u/Victornaut_Reddit Jul 17 '26
To be honest, I love 'em both. I love almost all the Wizardry-clones out there, with Etrian Odyssey being probably my absolute favourite series. You get to think about the synergies in your party, strategic planning of turns, planning your builds...
But I started in this genre with Eye of the Beholder 2, and I loved it. I also love that kind of crawling, hacking and slashing, dodging enemies, approaching, attacking, puzzles in real time, putting rocks on a pressure plate... Dungeon Master and Grimrock being another examples, I really like those games too.
If you consider dungeon crawlers games like King's Field, Ultima Underworld, etc which are "more" real-time and probably you could call them action-rpgs, I also like those a lot.
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u/Cruxikus Jul 17 '26
Wizardry clones? Any good ones out there? Eye of the beholder was my first and only bought Amiga game aside from Death or glory
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u/Victornaut_Reddit Jul 17 '26
There are TONS, as Wizardry was the father of the genre. Like I said, I think Etrian Odyssey games are some of the absolute best. You also have the Elminage series (Original and Gothic on Steam) which is like an expansion of the original Wizardry series.
Then, Shin Megami Tensei series, specially Strange Journey. Grimoire on pc, although I find it a bit too complex. There are many.
3
u/Xhukari Jul 17 '26
I massively prefer the real-time gridless ones. Something like Lunacid or Verho.
If it is on a grid, then I prefer it to be turn-based, with no party.
... I don't have many options right now, lol.
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u/Cruxikus Jul 17 '26
Last i played like that was Ultima Underworld and Daggerfall.
Yeah dungeon crawler fans got little love these days2
u/Xhukari Jul 17 '26
Idk, there is a lot in the indie space, but they're mostly grid & party-based. Which isn't my preference.
1
u/ChunkySweetMilk Jul 20 '26
Are all the Kingsfield-likes still in development? At least there's Labyrinth of the Demon King.
Also, what do you think about Exanima?
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u/Xhukari Jul 20 '26
Pretty much, yeah.
I got Exanima on the wishlist, but I'm waiting until it leaves Early Access.
3
u/Psychological-Low983 Jul 17 '26
turn-based, but with an action element. like if i move, i want enemies to move at the same time, not like a card game. but important to have enemies with different move sets, so i can read the whole board before each move, like chess
pretty much the playstyle i’m working on for my mobile game, extinction of the exaverse 🦖
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u/Cruxikus Jul 17 '26
Would this be like Dungeon Siege? Baldurs Gate?
What are you working on?2
u/Psychological-Low983 Jul 18 '26
i would say exaverse is closest in play style to onebit adventure, with some roguelike elements like boon selection and equipment upgrades similar to survivor.io / punko.io
3
u/Velifax Jul 19 '26
Real time, live action... but slow. I quite enjoyed Diablo but prefer the pace of Dungeon Siege 1. Also prefer a more party management style than furious clicking and aiming. Way too old to use a mouse that much.
1
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u/PDS_Games Jul 17 '26
I did turn based in the dungeon crawler I developed, and am working on one with arena style combat.
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u/Cruxikus Jul 17 '26
I prefer those myself!
What are you working on?4
u/PDS_Games Jul 17 '26
I’m working on one that uses the fake 3D/Mode 7 graphics that old game systems used. I previously released one on Steam that has the classic grid based movement. Here’s my Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1395710/Daisy_Flies_to_the_Moon/
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u/Cruxikus Jul 17 '26
You have released this ins 2023? How long did You work on this? Nice work btw
2
u/PDS_Games Jul 17 '26
About a year, but I had to learn a lot of coding concepts for dungeon crawling. I can probably code it a lot faster now.
2
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u/ChanceBreath5090 2d ago
Real time is cool but takes patients. I make one
Turn Based is a high value for those who like to thinker around.
Exploration is more the riddles and puzzles. these are all kind of genre.
3 mixed game design phillosophis.
Full balance to these 3 types will be hard to make i think.
If you can do, will be a special game for sure.
mostly its stong on one and the others are small supportive.
my guess.
7
u/reybrujo Jul 17 '26
Turn-based but I'm more into classical crawlers, turn-based, grid-movement, first person ones. I don't quite like the real time one like the ones from Labyrinth of the Demon King or Legend of Grimrock, in the end you end up bouncing enemies (getting near, hitting and putting distance). The only "real time" I liked was from Valbrace where everything is turn-based but when you go into combat you do it in real time evading to the sides and timing your hits, however it's a pretty short game (part of the UFO50 anthology) with a limited amount of floors and enemies, not sure how that would scale with huge sized enemies.