I’ve held a fascination with games throughout my life, and so it’s no surprise that I’ve spent a good chunk of my professional career playing, thinking, and writing about them.
I’ve even made a couple myself. Tabletop games and not video games, but still fully functional (well, mostly functional) and full of interesting mechanics. I’ve never attempted to make a roguelike, though.
Welcome to the Tower
Given my deep fascination with the genre, I’ve been starting to think that it’s time to have a go myself. This is mostly so I can better understand how games are made, but I also quite like the idea of learning a new skill.
Enter the new roguelike: Descent from Arkov’s Tower. This CRT-filtered fantasy RPG is not only a traditional, retro-style roguelike, but it also provides a framework that lets players build their own adventures.
When I saw a Reddit post discussing the project, my interest was instantly piqued. Could this be a way for me to take my first steps toward making my own roguelike? I reached out to the game’s creator, Manuel aka Saturn91, to find out more.
Descent from Arkov’s Tower Interview
Manuel was kind enough to talk me through the game and his hopes for what it might become, and as I’m basically his target audience, it quickly became clear that we were going to work together in some capacity.
To start things off, we’ve put together a short Q&A to introduce the project, however, I strongly suspect that we’ll be back with a deeper exploration of what can be done with this most intriguing new game-turned-engine.
Hi Manuel. Thanks for taking the time to tell us about your game. Let’s start with the obvious question: what is your game?
Descent from Arkov’s Tower is a dungeon crawler made with Löve, a game framework using Lua. It’s a turn-based, classical roguelike with retro pixel art. The game focuses on modding, and at its core, it’s essentially a roguelike engine that allows players to easily modify or create their own content.
How did you come up with the idea?
To be honest, I’ve always been fascinated by randomly generating dungeons and game worlds. This project is a more achievable, stripped-down version of my dream game—essentially what Dwarf Fortress’s adventure mode is today. A massive, randomly generated world where even the monsters, characters, and their history are created dynamically. That goal was too ambitious (for now?), so I decided to focus on making a dungeon-crawling roguelike.
Originally, I thought I could complete it in about six months. But as of the planned release date in October, it will have taken two years and one month to complete! The project started small, but as time went on, I grew more attached to it and realized it could become my first commercial release. At that point, I knew a generic roguelike wouldn’t stand out in the crowded market — as you cover every month on your great website! <3 The first unique idea was to have players descend a tower instead of exploring a traditional dungeon. But I knew I needed more.
As I developed the game, I appreciated how easy it was to create new content using Lua (especially with Löve). The game became incredibly moddable. After experimenting for a while, I had the ambitious idea to make the game “the one very easily moddable roguelike” for people who always dreamed of creating their own roguelike. From then on, that was my primary focus. What emerged was an easy-to-mod game that essentially turned into a roguelike engine.
Descent from Arkov’s Tower Prologue
There’s a prologue currently available. What is included, and what can you do with it?
Gameplay-wise the prologue is very close to the full release but it includes only half of the levels of the full release. It also gives you a preview of how the full version can be modded. There’s no Steam Workshop for sharing mods with friends yet, and mods only allow you to change graphics and config files. So you can tweak existing entities, but you can’t add entirely new ones. For example, you can change how a bat looks, how strong it is, and what items it can drop, but you can’t create a brand-new monster like a werewolf. The same goes for items — you can modify existing ones, but you can’t create new ones from scratch.
You’ve mentioned that your game – especially the full version – is highly moddable, can you give us some examples?
Sure, here are a few simple examples:
- Learn how game developers program games Start the game, navigate to the Mod menu, and click “New Mod.” Use the handy dropdown option “Open in Explorer,” and you’ll find a folder containing all the source files (including code, graphics and audio files) for Descent from Arkov’s Tower’s levels. Reading through these files, you’ll notice that most are straightforward. You might even discover some hidden secrets within the game!
- Bring your pixel art into a game If you’re a pixel artist and have always dreamed of seeing your work in a game, Descent from Arkov’s Tower makes it easy. Just press the “New Mod” button in the Mod Menu, which will generate a folder with all the existing art for the default game levels. You can replace the images by painting over the 16×16 pixel art tilesets. Repaint the monsters, level tiles, NPCs, items, and more. Once you enable the mod and start the game, you’ll see your art in action!
- Add a new potion As described earlier, you can create a new mod, inspect how existing potions are made, and create pixel art for a new one. Copy an existing potion in the ItemConfig file, adjust its stats, assign it to a loot table for a specific level, enable the mod, and explore the level you’ve modified. Can you find your new item? Slightly more advanced and including some light coding you could also think of an entirely new Status effect for your potion and implement it yourself.
- Start learning to code Each new mod includes all the programming files needed to define how enemies move and attack, how levels are generated, how items and status effects behave, and much more. By examining and tweaking these files, you can easily grasp some basic programming concepts as you play.
- Share your mods easily via the Steam Workshop I aimed to make it simple to upload your mods to the Steam Workshop, so you can share them with the world, get feedback, and contribute to the game’s community. You can also download mods from other players, which can completely replace the original game’s story and levels.
When does the full game launch, and on what platforms? The game is set to release on October 31, 2024. It will be available on Windows, Linux (including Steam Deck), and macOS.
Thanks, Manuel!
I’ll close things out by directing you to Descent from Arkov’s Tower on Steam, so you can head over and do the whole wishlisting thing.
