South African game developer Danny Day participated as a member of the judging panel at the Independent Games Festival (IGF) in California last week as award-winning creator of Desktop Dungeons.
Desktop Dungeons was awarded as the winner of the Excellence in Design category at the festival in 2011.
The award-winning version, open for free access on the company’s website since the creation of its prototype, has received 3.5 million downloads to date.
Speaking to HumanIPO, Day said: “Desktop Dungeons has been described by some as a quick-play puzzle roguelike.”
The roguelike gaming genre is based on the idea that there is only one life available. Thus when your character dies, you have to start over.
“Given how quick each session can be, that’s not the end of the world,” Day said.
Slaying of monsters, spell collection, secret discovering and idol worship are all part of the process in building up defences against the boss monster, waiting in every dungeon.
Day explains: “This all happens on a single screen, so every decision is meaningful and you’re never engaged in boring grinding or filler gameplay.
“It’s a hard game, but it’s also incredibly rewarding as you get better and better at playing it and can see that progress pushing you through harder and harder scenarios.”
Despite its achievements, the game is not considered “ready” to launch beyond beta version yet, which is updated weekly on Fridays with graphics, effects, and bug fixes.
Pre-ordering is however open via PayPal and awarded with access to a temporary beta version of the game.
The game was also exhibited at a number of conferences, including the Game Developers Conference, E3, Indiecade and AMAZE.
Day started his company, QCF Design, in 2007, a studio focused around designing games and systems.
QCF provided consultancy for various educational game projects and adver-games.
The company was also involved in a mathematical program by Nokia for Grade 10 schoolgirls in Mpumalanga, global social entrepreneurship games for The World Bank Institute and Microsoft Xbox 360 Dream-Build-Play are examples of the programmes it was involved in.
“I guess the major thing that makes us different is we simply make games. A lot. And we pay people at the beginning of the month,” Day says.
Sponsored by MicrosoftStudios, among others, the fifteenth annual IGF took place from March 25 to 29 in California this year.
