I thought we could use our own general chat to talk shop without inadvertently self-promoting in other categories. So, how’s everyone doing today? What are you working on/thinking about?
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I’ll go first. I publish as Dustin Porta. I made the Paperbag Dungeon, a little puzzle game that Daniel was kind enough to review a few years back
Anyway, I’m usually writing fantasy books but in-between I work on little expansions for the game. I was excited to join when I saw the announcement. I’ve been slowly putting together the pieces for a narrative gamebook.
I’m very happy to see that Daniel is talking more and more about Game Crafter. They’ve been very good to me over the years. My little game actually sells quite well, so I hope they continue to grow.
I occasionally participate in BGG’s solitaire print and play contests. Highly recommend that community and when I do the next one I hope to open a parallel thread here to go along with my WIP thread for the contest.
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I just whipped up my playtest scenarios for my dungeon crawler game ive been working on.
Now im just going through my Book of Beasts (my monster manual), to see what enemies are pointless in having and can just be trimmed out. The way I created my enemies was just by going onto a website who sells stl files and made a stat block for each miniature for the most part.
some of which dont need to be in there at all. Like a soldier is practically the same as a town guardsman, which is the same as a spearman. All enemies in my game have a melee attack and then a ranged attack, so it doesnt matter what weapons the enemies have.
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I have not so many games in the pipeline. I more or less work only on my one big game Grimm World.
I recently released prototypes of my two upcoming mini-expansions. One of them turns the solo game into a two-player co-op game. Both expansions stays in their PnP version free for everyone. You will soon be able to play them also in the TTS mod.
Then I started a while ago working on the first big expansion, which includes a whole new region of the game world. Over 100 cards already done, but I always have over the summer a kind of small burnout. I hope I’ll find my motivation again in a month or two. It’s kind of the same every year. 
But I still used the time and wrote a few lyrics, some of which deepen the side stories or background stories of the main characters and NPCs, and which were turned into songs using AI. I really enjoyed that.
That’s pretty much all I’m doing right now.
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Ah, smart. See I’d probably err on the side of complexity and have far too many near identical enemies.
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Smart to focus in on one thing. It’s amazing horse much more you can accomplish when all your creativity goes to the same place.
Are the songs going into the game as flavor text or just a bonus thing fans can look up online?
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I wouldnt really call it Complexity having far too many enemies be identical or almost identical. To me its just reduntant and a waste of space in your book and peoples precious ink lol
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@DustyShelves: this thing is crazy big. I have so many excel sheet and word documents, that I do not lose the track of all the storylines need m full concentration on this 
All the stories of the songs are more or less also found in the game. But they’re sometimes scattered throughout the game. You get one piece of information during a quest and another piece when you help a specific person. But it’s possible that you won’t do or even notice one of these things during a playthrough.
And 3 of the songs tell the backstory of the 3 characters with more detail than I can fit on one side of a playing card.
So it is a nice Bonus if you listen to the songs, but Not necessary. All songs exists in a German and English version. I have to say, I do not know how good my translation is, because this was not quite easy. Yes, I used DeepL and Copilot for this, but it was still a lot afterwork and I do not know how good the lyrics are in the English version.
Sidenote: For the game texts and stories itself I do not use any AI. They are all based on my sick mind
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Currently working on a 1-4 player card game / light-RPG called Space Aces: Away Missions. I look forwards to play testing this one over the Winter and getting the balance right.
Also working on expanding my Space Aces: Wreck Runners dungeon crawler in derelict spaceships to eventually turn it into a box set with cool components and geomorph tiles and more comprehensive tools and minis and stuff.
And one day I will build my big “Deep Space 9 meets Babylon 5” setting expansion for the Space Aces: Voyages galaxy. Plenty to do!
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Same, I have never felt like using AI for writing because that’s the fun part for me. I don’t have songs in my games, but I also write fantasy novels, and I try to include one song or poem in each book.
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There are not in my games, but as a funny add-on. But cool, that you write poems or lyrics in your books. I saw this only in Tolkin before. But I have to admit, I don’t read many novels either, I usually only read specialist books and that doesn’t tend to include anything like this. 
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Hi all! I wanted to post about a game I’ve been working on and hoping to finish very soon. Im making it through the game crafter website I found thanks to Daniel. It will be called Void Realm
The game I’m making is a card based dungeon crawl. In similar style to Doom Pilgrim, so not sure if it qualifies as a dungeon crawl but I’m unsure what to consider it.
It will have 76 visitation cards that you can possibly have during your travel through the Realm. 13 possible Mementos that can be acquired. And 6 different Vessels (characters) to inhabit for your travels.
All of the artwork is hand drawn and every card is unique. I’ll attach some pictures. Thanks for looking!
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Gorgeous! Some killer greyscale throughout.
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Knocking the rough edges off Ziggurat: Viridian Shroud - a lone-wolf adventure I’ve been tinkering with these past few years. It’s your classic “reincarnated hero bound to an arcane quest at the nexus of worlds” sort of affair. Jungles, crypts, cultists, companions, cryptic urchins, and the occasional wrinkle in space-time - all the usual amenities.
Playtesting continues apace. Mostly by me. Mostly in my head. But the urchins seem pleased.
PS. You can bear witness to the current state of play here.
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Does anyone one know the email address for the dungeon dive YouTube. I was hoping to reach out to Daniel to possibly review my game in the near future.
I don’t know his e-mail, but you could send him here in the forum a DM or contact him via Facebook.
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Awesome, thank you! I’m new to the page so I wasn’t even aware you could dm people. I appreciate it!
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I think you must reach the first level here in the forum to DM people. But after some posts you reach really fast that level and then this option is available.
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Love the look of it. Do you draw pencil-on-paper or with tablet?
If you can make it available as a print and play, too, you should consider entering it into this year’s BGG solo print and play contest. I did it in 2021 and it was very good for me and my game. Good community, I made some friends I still talk to today, and you’d probably do well in the art category. 2025 Solitaire Print and Play Contest
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Nice stuff. Even at a glance you can tell it’s got some depth in the mechanics and the components all look very pleasing on the table.
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