[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]
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[/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, my 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]