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A personal custom DLC for red hook studio's roguelite Darkest Dungeon
Context
A solo project focused on documentation, analysis and system creation
My tasks
- Analyse the base game
- Designing a new custom character
- Designing custom characters' relative content
- Designing a new biome and its content
- Designing new bosses
The character
To have a good start, I had to condense the content and the intention behind each character.
So I started using websites and searching ingame to collect informations such as stats, skills, role, strength and weaknesses.
With the compilation of the informations in Excel and using a sorter, I could make a new character, filling an empty spot or compensing a lack of an archetype (such as front-placing character).
Like all other characters in the game, I had to give it its "trinkets", unique accessories which can change the way the character is played.
After listing and analyzing all the trinkets (both the general ones, usable by all, and the specific ones, usable by only one character), and how they can change the playstyle, I made the new ones.
For the "Affliction" or when the character received too much stress when exploring, I had two choices.
I could reinforce its strengths too an excess or I could reverse, provoking confusion to the player.
After reflexion, I kept the second one, avoiding possible balancing issues with the first one and adding an important emotional impact to the player as well as changing the pace of the fight, bringing more confusion in the tricky scenario.
To finish the concept, I made a mockup on Photoshop to have a preview of the character in game.
The biome
For the biome part, as the content is much larger than just for a character, the condensing part was longer and needed more investigations.
The process needed a deepdive in the dungeon's procedural generation system and how the difficulty is settled (battles, ambushes, traps, etc). Darkest Companion, a fanmade tool helping players preparing their adventures, gives a lot of insight on the specificities of each biome.
Using the design I created for the character gived me guidelines to create a coherent biome in both gameplay intention and scenario.
The biome isn't empty and each enemies have their own stats, capacities and interaction with its allies. The fandom of the game gives a lot of information on every enemies the player will encounter
As each biome represent a story linked with the Ancestor (the narrator in the game) and his seek of power, I had to create an interesting setting explaining the bosses and the biome and develop the lore while staying coherent with the main story.
A biome is full of interactable with various effects, both positive and negative.
Creating new ones to surprise the player needed a listing of all interactable, their position in the game, their rarity and a comparison in terms of behavior.
After the listing is done, I was able to design original interactables with new effect and keeping a balance between traps and positive interactables.
Darkest companion is really helpful in this part, giving the percentage of the outcomes as well as the "cured" effects.
Bonus
Visuals
Custom character full document
Custom biome full document
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