Unfair Dungeon News

[p]Holidays, vacation, and a foray back into color randomization have left me a bit distracted since the last Nuzcraft Newsletter. Even so, I'm happy to talk through the latest features coming to Unfair Dungeon![/p][p]Wishlist Unfair Dungeon Today![/p][p][/p][p]Clicking on Quadrated Sprites[/p][h2]Prestige[/h2][p]One of the ways I want to expand the footprint of this silly random game is to encourage players to chain together runs. After completing a game, returning with the Coin of Rehtaeh, you can flip it for a chance to "prestige". The game starts over and you lose all your upgrades, but you keep your items and earn some currency to spend on items for more permanent upgrades. I'm intending to include some achievements + unlockable skins for prestiging.[/p][p][/p][p]Accepting the Coin's Judgement[/p][h2]Shopping & Items[/h2][p]Prestiging will let you earn currency to spend at the merchant. This was an intense feature to develop because I needed to rewrite much of the that pathing functionality to allow for a branching path to the merchant. It is important to me that the the game doesn't force the player to engage with the shop, they will need to go out of their way to interact with it.[/p][p]Items are intended to directly affect the player to make the next run faster/easier. The most straightforward example is a 'lucky' ring that makes it 5% easier to move the chosen direction. Purchasing the ring is a permanent buff, and raises the floor on which the XP-purchased upgrades draw from. The run, and every prestiged run after, will go faster and feel easier. There is a lot of design space open for interesting item effects.[/p][p][/p][p]Demonstrating a Shop & Item Effects[/p][h2]Quadrated Sprites & Juice[/h2][p]I'd been musing for a while about 2-color sprites divided vertically down the middle. The Oh No, More Goblins tileset is designed to be 1-bit, but MRMO's art has a couple examples of bigger sprites with the left and right halfs colored differently. To try this out, I built out a simple shader to let me split the sprite into quarters for detailed colorization.[/p][p][/p][p]Quadrating Shader Controls[/p][p]Since my game is leaning on big sprite sizes (36x36 mostly), the quadrations look really nice. So far I've spent some time setting it up with the environment tiles and I think they give the game a very nice vibe, adding detail without changing the spritesheet or palette. I also spent some time making things clickable with a little squashing and some particles. That little bit of juice goes a long way![/p][p][/p][p]Clicking on Quadrated Sprites[/p][p]Thank you so much for reading! I'm hopeful this burst of creative energy will sustain me and you'll get an update in March. My next 2 major efforts will be a UI overhaul and a project re-planning session to help me prioritize what I should be working on.[/p][p]- nuzcraft[/p]

[p]Unfair Dungeon is a cruel and simple movement clicker coming to PC in 2026 and it was born from the 72-hour Ludum Dare jam in October, 2025.[/p][p]Play the original web version on itch.io and wishlist on Steam.[/p][p][/p][p]Unfair Dungeon Screenshot[/p][hr][/hr][h2]September: Kicking Kobolds and One-Hour Prism Games[/h2][p]In September 2025, I released Kicking Kobolds v0.03 and wanted to take a break before the PrismRL engine v1.0 released. To practice prototyping with PrismRL, I ran a couple 1-hr jams using previous Ludum Dare themes.[/p]

• [p]Depths: a game about falling down holes and eating snacks. I'm really proud of this one. Developed in ~2.5 hrs total.[/p]
• [p]Tiny Creatures: a game about shepherding sheeple and protecting them from woflies. This did not get finished. The multi-tile hero caused a lot of debugging that halted quick iterations.[/p]

[hr][/hr][h2]Unfair Flips & the Move to Godot[/h2][p]Somewhere between the 1hr jams & the beginning of October, Unfair Flips hit my radar and it really clicked with me. I enjoyed the minimalist depth of just flipping a coin, and it reminded me of a random walk, a pathing algorithm that randomly picks a direction. This was the start of Unfair Dungeon. Before the LD jam even started, I started planning. Even if the idea didn't fit the jam theme, it was a game I wanted to make. It was at this time that I begrudgingly switched from PrismRL to Godot.[/p]

• [p]Love2D doesn't have HTML export support for the pre-release version that PrismRL uses[/p]
• [p]Mouse controls and buttons in PrismRL were going to be new for me[/p]

[p] Godot was going to be a powerhouse to allow me to move quickly and the web builds would be critical for getting people to actually play. [/p][p][/p][hr][/hr][h2]Ludum Dare 58: Collector[/h2][p]The Collector theme was a bit of a stretch for my idea, but I went on anyway. Instead of having the player walk 10 steps, I'd have them walk 5 steps, collect something, then return. The Coin of Rehtaeh is a nod to the Amulet of Yendor and Heather Flowers, the creator of Unfair Flips. I named the game Random Walk.[/p][p]I submitted the game, and I was really happy with how it turned out. During playtesting, a 6-year-old child cried in frustration, which I thought was a hilarious anectdote. Bluesky got ahold of it and a bunch of people gave it a try. It was so fun to see and hear people talking about playing a game I made. Heather Flowers even saw it, played it, and mentioned it in an interview![/p][p]With all kinds of good and kind feedback, I was excited for the Ludum Dare results to come out. I was very, very disappointed to not even break the top 50% of submitted jam games. I knew the game was frustrating (it was meant to be!), but I underestimated how much that might affect how people voted.[/p][hr][/hr][h2]Steam Launch[/h2][p]With lots of good feedback and a solid foundation, I decided to make it official and launch on Steam! I did a crash course in game marketing, wrote store text, designed assets, and reached out to an artist for capsule art (not complete yet). I also changed the name to Unfair Dungeon. The Steam page went live just a few days after the jam results came out. Wishlist now!![/p][p]It's surreal to have page on Steam. I'm having a really good time.[/p][hr][/hr][h2]Looking ahead...[/h2][p]I want to push deeper into the dungeon crawler theme. The random movement needs some juice, and I think the game can be better with some features and flavor.[/p]

• [p]Walls & Obstacles that can affect movement odds[/p]
• [p]A prestige mechanic (reset + reward)[/p]
• [p]Backtracking & branching paths[/p]
• [p]New procedural environments[/p]

[p] I want the game to feel like an adventure without losing the core "beat the odds" tenacity. [/p][p][/p][hr][/hr][h2]Bonus!!![/h2][p]Seriously, go wishlist the game!![/p][p]For any math nerds out there, I did some very fun monte carlo simulations in python to help with balancing the web version. Unfair Flips has a few sections where it's very hard to level up your coin, which is absolutely the most valuable upgrade you can get. Because of that, a normal Unfair Flips run is something like 1-2K flips (I could be wrong). Random walk was balanced so that a playthrough is closer to 300-400 steps. Backtracking and stuff will force me to rebalance and I'm looking forward to setting up more monte carlo simulations. They are so fun and useful![/p][p]Finally, please subscribe to this RSS feed on my website if you want to keep up on my Game Dev Adventures, or subscribe to my newsletter. Thanks![/p]