Ludomancy

Almost all games rely on spatial navigation with a small set of verbs for moving through a space. They then populate the game’s space with all sorts of interesting, complex elements that provide the game with richness. This is fine-it works well. But game designers are stuck in this approach-they just can’t see beyond spatial navigation. Why does every game on the market have to have a map? What’s so all-encompassing about spatial reasoning?

Last year I was bored at home, recovering from an unexpected illness, when I decided I wanted to at least start developing a small RPG. I did that several times before, always failing when having to do the massive level design typical of a classic RPG. Not to mention the amount of art maps need.

Since laziness is one of creativity’s booster (the other one is desperation), I came up with a way to avoid most of the grudgery of level design: to take away spatial navigation completely.

Hunter RPG has all the elements of an RPG like questing, leveling, fighting and looting. But your character is not at a particular location at any time. You are not anywhere, you don’t walk anywhere. The game is about revealing opportunities.

Jonathan Blow described it as a sort of Progress Quest but with actual choices during GDC ‘06 Experimental Gameplay Sessions.

Even though the demo is just a concept, I’m sure a full-fledged RPG could be developed with Hunter’s mechanics. If you can’t imagine how an RPG could be done without any concept of space, get the Hunter RPG Demo.

17 Comments so far

Such a great game I once came up with the concept of a first person game without spatial navigation. It was a game where you are guided with sounds instead of images. Little did I know that that kind of game already exists: they are games for the vision impaired. I think your system is far better

Nice! I’ve been waiting to play it for a while because I was curious about the gameplay. The gameplay works great and the thing that amazed me the most was that the feeling of playing an RPG is still there.

I just came across this game recently. It may be the ultimate casual game in some ways. It runs easily with lots of other things going, the player sets the pace, and there’s nothing substantial lost if one has to turn it off. Have you considered expanding it or including a quest editor? I’d play it endlessly if new quests were available.

Hi Sofs!

Actually, if you are patient enough, I think I’ve found a way to make Hunter RPG much better from a gameplay point of view, without losing the characteristics you mention.

I will probably pick it up again in the upcoming months (I am working on another small game right now). It will be announced in the blog.

Thank you very much for your feedback!

I LOVED this game. Definitely great work on your part. Keep it up, I’d love to see a final, shining game that keeps me interested for hours (or at least a half hour.)

Thanks Fenix

I hope to get some inspiration to work on it sometime.

This is a great concept. I just spent a good hour tinkering with the demo. Love it. The gameplay works amazingly well. It’s looking rather nice too.

As far as I can remember I was always annoyed by the complex maze-like maps found in most of the rpgs. Playing this made me realize that fact to the full extent. The lack of the spatial scheme is well… greatly liberating.

Please do develop this further. It has a lot, and I mean *a lot* of potential and I can clearly see the full game in there.

Something might happen in a not-so-distant future about this game…

Hey man great stuff!

The mechanics in this game are a charm. Great fun to play, and I didn’t miss anything that wasn’t there, in terms of gameplay.

I love looting and treasure hunting, so the main thing that would make this a full-fledged playing experience would be the existence of coherent content.

As a demo it rocks! Go for it.

Thanks, Kalindo!

That’s a neat little game. There’s another group of unorthodox game creators here: http://liladreams.creatrixgames.com/ Give them a look, I think you’ll like them.

omg i was just playing this and i love it….its so old school kinda feeling but i still feel like its an rpg 10/10

Is there a full game to download? Or maybe I’m missing something. There were two Arena quests, and then Lucifer. That’s it. Is the game supposed to continue after killing Lucifer?

ur my hero. can i steal ur idea?

this game is real fun. it will dominate on kongregate, i bet, considering the success of The Monster’s Den series there. a game that “sacrificed” graphics but still uses spacial consideration, both in combat and nagivation… i think a complete game using this idea would do rly well.

So good. So, so, so enjoyable. Anything further on this concept would make me love you forever.

I found two glitches in the demo. 1. Spell get weaker when you train it, if you get the spell lv20 or higher, you won’t be able to cast the spell because it glitch up. I think the spell casting time should always be the same but with more levels, more better spells (healing, attack up, speed up, ect.)

The other glitch is after I kill the boss on the 3rd quest, I don’t get send back to the town. I had like $4400 and I was unable to train anything.

Also let players redo the quests after they do the last one. It pretty boring if you train just to sit in town.

It a great game and between the fact that the spell get weaker when it is trained and the fact the game ends so quickly I forgot to say how great it was.

This is the only game where you know what to do without a help menu and you have fun unlike those zero-player games. I like how you show that even this game can have puzzles by having that 3rd quest.

It a great game and would love to see more of it.

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An RPG without space: Hunter RPG

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