I've been tinkering with programming, and in particular, game dev for years now. I've created countless prototypes, testing out key mechanics but never really building anything close to finished let alone polished enough for release.
This year I have decided to change that.
Whilst working on a project my mind got to wondering how simple it would be to create a turn-based combat game using the Dungeons & Dragons 5E rules. Y'know what I mean - rolling a D20 for initiative, then rolling dice for hit and attack, picking types of attack, etc. Whilst prototyping something very rudimentary using ASCII characters as player and enemy placeholders, I really started getting stuck into the concept and Gor's Tale was born!
This is only a working title at the moment really, but I kinda like it. I have already upgraded the ASCII art to proper sprites and have decided to give the game a Sega Master System feel, so I'm using the original SMS screen resolution and colour palette. I will probably provide both keyboard and mouse input options as I am building this game using the PhaserJS framework meaning the game is HTML5 & Javascript and will run in a browser.
My early sprite work is basic as I am no artist, and Gor himself (an Orc with a club) is simple but usable. Currently I have a Giant Rat sprite as the placeholder for all my enemies, but that will change soon.
I'm using JSON to hold the D&D style stat blocks for all "actors" in the game and will be aiming to generally apply the same kind of logic to combat as is observed in the 5e rulebooks.
I'll post here from time to time about my progress with this but also following me on X and BlueSky to see smaller updates (and rants probably!) too.
You can find Gwarak Games on those platforms and more, here:
https://x.com/GwarakGames
https://bsky.app/profile/gwarakgames.bsky.social
https://gwarakgames.itch.io/
