Review Fix Exclusive: Inside ’Shadowcrawl’

Review Fix chats with Alexander Osuna, lead dev for “Shadowcrawl” and founder of Wicked Cake Games, who discusses the awesome retro dungeon crawler and why you must check it out.

Review Fix: How was this game born?

Alexander Osuna: A decade ago I used to create ASCII rogue-likes in the windows console for me and my friends. Upset with the high degree of luck based elements and stagnant design in modern and classic rogue-likes I decided to try and create something more strategy oriented. I devised three classes designed to take advantage of the geometry of maze environments in different ways. Each one had a classic niche, knights in the doorways, engineers in halls or corners, and rogues on the wall or at a distance, but then I learned I could combine elements of these to create modular geometric niches.

For example, certain perks from the rogue combined with skills from the Engineer created something that, if able to trick its enemies into wandering near cover, can perform 8 simultaneous stealth kills. I spent years off and on perfecting the bizarre mathematical beauty that popped out of the engine while having my friends play it. Many years later when work got too busy to focus on bigger side projects I turned to the large community of android rogue-likes to kill my spare time only to find all the stagnant design elements I had previously disliked, as a result I felt I had no choice but to revive Shadowcrawl.

Review Fix: What games inspired this one?

Osuna: Shadowcrawl is the result of nearly three decades of gaming inspiration. Much of the influence comes from late 80’s dungeon crawlers that I have been playing since I was 2. Games like Gauntlet, Wizardry, Fatal Labyrinth, Rogue and Zork, these were not like other reflex based games at the time. They required me to think very hard, every action counted, and mistakes were punished severely.

Diablo is one of the more obvious influences in Shadowcrawl as well, when it first came out in 1996 it managed to capture everything about the classic crawlers that made them great while somehow being able to still feel fresh and appeal to more modern gaming sensibilities of the time.

In order to do the same thing as Diablo, and make sure my game did feel mechanically dated I drew a huge amount of influence from Dark Souls. Dark Souls managed to stay fresh, stay accessible, create tiered difficulty, and create non-linear gameplay all just by creating powerful stylistic differences between each playable character. They also very much understood how they were creating pressure on the player and how to play with that emotion effectively. You will find all of these things and more in Shadowcrawl.

Review Fix: Lets talk about the art. What inspired that?

Osuna: I wanted the game to look retro, while not looking like any particular existing game. Although the Diablo influences in Shadowcrawl shine through more brightly than others, my aim was to make it hard to tell where one influence ended and another began. By employing a unique retro style I could keep people from quickly making strong correlations to one particular game. However, I did think of Fatal Labyrinth and Gauntlet II as models for what I wanted visually. I immediately turned to the truly amazing online open game art community and found some great starting points for my style.

Review Fix: What has development been like?

Osuna: Well much of the core mechanic development happened gradually over the years, but expanding those elements while maintaining balance, and keeping the game from quickly becoming stale took some work. The core elements were balanced without items to keep luck out of the design so integrating items was not easy. I modeled the items in each level like a deck of cards and balanced them accordingly, I even at one point considered making items a card based element which might have been an effective gimmick, but I did not want to stray too far from my vision of a classic rogue-like. As a result of this balance, every level supplies you with enough gear to choose between several of your character’s existing play styles right off the bat so you never lose just because you got the wrong loot drops.

Review Fix: With all the competition on the mobile market and in the indies now, how difficult was it for you guys to try and make something that stood out?

Osuna: Luckily there is a large rogue-like community both online and already on the App market, these people know how to find and recognize quality content and Shadowcrawl will quickly join the ranks of some of their favorites. While this audience is niched, passionate people like to talk about their passions. With its high accessibility, our promise of a multi-generational gaming classic, and the support of the community, Shadowcrawl has attracted a small following of highly devoted and knowledgeable gamers, and hopefully they will help it get the exposure ad recognition it deserves.

Review Fix: Bottom line, why must someone play this game?

Osuna: If you are a life-long fan of classic gaming then Shadowcrawl is your chance to finally play that new classic your inner child has been waiting decades for, and if you started gaming after the year 2000 then Shadowcrawl is here to create the next generation of classic gaming enthusiasts and carry on one of gaming’s oldest traditions. Hopefully through maintaining a mix of classic and modern gameplay sensibilities coupled with a sensory experience stylized for a classic retro feel, I can help gamers new and old experience the joy I felt that triggered a lifelong passion.

Review Fix: How do you want this game to be remembered?

Osuna: Shadowcrawl has always been for myself and my friends but if no one plays it I will be crushed, simply because it is a game that deserves to be played. I made this game because there does not exist something presently on the market that satisfied my urge for a classic rogue-like revival. As such I want Shadowcrawl to be remembered for the fresh elements it has brought to the genre, for the mathematical beauty I worked so hard to imbed in it and as a multi-generational gaming experience. I want it to be the game that brings back the classic free-turn based rogue-like instead of the loosely labeled rogue-lite.

Review Fix: What are your goals for this game?

Osuna: My main goal for Shadowcrawl was to create a highly strategic, well balanced, classic rogue-like experience that I could enjoy playing for hours to relive my favorite moments throughout all of gaming history. Beyond that I just wish to share something I feel strongly about in hopes that my passion will spread to others and introduce them to lifelong interests they never knew they had. I feel like classic rogue likes are disappearing not from lack of interest, but from lack of a varied market to compete with the heavily varied rogue-lite market.

Review Fix: What’s next?

Osuna: Beyond planned regular content updates, you may have noticed there are many Lovecraft references in the game. As I expand on the world of Shadowcrawl through future installments I intend to work my way backwards through gothic literature into the influences that drove Lovecraft’s writing, there are even already a few references to Mana-Yood-Sushai, the prototype of the popular Azathoth. I will probably emulate other gameplay styles that impacted me heavily as well, my 3D artist never stops suggesting something modeled after Shadow of the Colossus, what better setting to fight Gods that dwarf even the Lovecraft Pantheon?

Review Fix: Anything else you want to say?

Osuna: Beyond all of the gameplay elements, I employed a new style of procedural dungeon generation that I felt was worth mentioning. I linked the random seed of each dungeon heavily with the name of the dungeon so that if two dungeons have the same name, they will be the same dungeon, with the same enemy placements, exits to other dungeons, and loot drops. As a result, Shadowcrawl’s inter-dimensional dungeon, the NEXUS, is an unchanging infinite continuum of static levels. Your current difficulty level even creates parallel reality versions of dungeons to where the similarities between them from difficulty to difficulty are very bizarre considering how different they play.