Design Treatment : The Dungeon

Our company is based on one simple theory: Games can be fun and profitable without utilizing the most cutting edge high priced video cards and graphics. Our game The Dungeon, is a text only based massivly multiplayer RPG game. The game is marketed to vision impared people and also people who interests include reading and writing. (budding authors and the likes)

Game Play and Look:
The current project involves a simple text engine that would allow players to create a very complex character with around 30 diffrent attributes such as strenth, wisdon, dexterity, and etc. These characters would enter a dungeon maze to try to fulfil the edict sent out by the king. The point of the game is to allow all the gameplay of a regular online RPG but offer it in a format that can be experianced by the blind and vision impared. Players are incouraged to write and submit there own rooms which would be then evaluated and potentially become part of the adventure. This game is meant to promote reading and writing as well as an online adventure.

Development Spec

Game Play:
The game play is very similar to the MUDs of the past, however the current version is played through email. A text only email is sent to your gameplay email address, then you respond to the email with your move in the subject line. A limited amount of moves per day are allowed and a second email address is used to talk to other players. Players enter a room which is a text description of the surroundings, this descriptiuon changes as other players manipulate the environment and drop or pick up items. The game requires a great deal of cooperation as the difficulty is very high, and players must band together if they hope to suceed.

The controls are fairly simple:
All of the gameplay is done with text command submitted through email. Commands may be as simple as 'move north', or 'attack the monster', to more complex 'custom' commands that are read by admins and then processed manually.

The Marketing:
-The Blind
-Vision Impared
-Writers
-Anyone interested in fantasy reading

Tech Info
The game is a text shuffling engine that makes what I call polymorphic descriptions of the rooms. This is essentially a way of saying that the room descriptions itself changes based on the events that take place.
The game is written in Visual C++ and is pure windows code, however rooms can be submitted by writers using a text only 'script' that can be converted by the program into the room file format. Requirements for playing are very low, thus almost anyone with a computer can play.

The minimum play requrements are:

Any computer with email access

The minimum room building requirements:

386 PC or higher
Windows 95 or higher
10 megs of HD space
4 megs of ram
A mouse