Solo indie developer RedEmber is doing their best to bring back the Dungeon Crawling genre to gaming, and with a unique flair at that. For the past two years, the dev has been creating what they call a top-down dungeon-crawler with commitment-based combat called Good Night, Knight.
From whats been posted on the development blog, the game focuses on the adventures of a Knight in a Dungeon, and some of the odd things they run into. Good Night, Knight’s unique focus on giving players many different options to handle a situation, be it through combat, stealth, or even NPC interaction, results in a lot of interesting situations not usually seen in games in the genre (and is more reminiscent of an actual game of D&D).
One example comes in the form of a run in with a quaint spider. Instead of initiating combat, the eight-legged arachnoid introduces the knight to their home, aka their web. As the spider begins to talk about all the nice buggies they catch for dinner, the player has the choice of stepping on the web, resulting in a warning from the spider and consequences if they are disobeyed.
Good Night, Knight’s implements a unique eavesdropping system that adds a layer of depth as well. Using a speed reading tool known as Spritz, the text dialogue in the game renders and plays much quicker than the eye can usually read. Yet it works well from what has been shown so far, saving time and allowing the game not to pause while NPC conversations/actions happen in a non-cluttered way.
While most Dungeon Crawlers and Rogue-like games tend to focus on the gameplay element known as permadeath, Good Night, Knight’s campaign focuses on treasure gotten instead of treasure lost.
As of now, there is no release date for the game. RedEmber has stated on their Tumblr Dev Blog – which is updated frequently – that they are preparing a demo that, hopefully, won’t take too long from now, but that they want it to be as smooth as possible before releasing it.
