[WARNING SPOILER] Dungeon Haven & knowledge-based game like Animal Well (go play it before reading this).

Dungeon haven is a dungeon crawler x knowledge-based game made during a 50h game jam. This post is created to talk about the concept of knowledge in video games and what is interesting about it.

First, a knowledge-based game is, as the name said, a game where you need to obtain knowledge about their rules. The player will have to explore and understand these rules to be able to progress in the game. There is multiple example of this type of game nowadays, like : outer wilds, tunic, fear & hunger, rain world, animal well...

For me, the most interesting knowledge-based game are those who play with your own knowledge of an object or mechanic to hide other mechanics. The game that use it perfectly is "Animal Well", all objects & mechanics that you obtain is mandatory for your adventure. It plays with your knowledge of how an object is use in real life like the bubble wand, but we are in a video game so why are character cannot walk on the bubbles ? It will always be a wouh effect for the players.

So, in Dungeon haven, we wanted to add a similar concept. To do that, we started by choosing a game category that everyone knows. A dungeon crawler game seamed to be the best choice with the limited time we had during the game jam (simple controls, not much interaction). Then, we sliced what is the gameplay of a dungeon crawler : there is case by case movements, turn-based fight  & a dungeon. We decided to delete the turn-based game because their is no surprise of how it works and we wanted to work on the dungeon exploration basis. Finally, we thought that it will be cool if we could get out of the map, clip out of the map. Naturally, we needed a mechanic that can push us out of the wall, and the idea of the sword that push us when we hit a wall is what we had. As we are in a dungeon there is no strange behavior to have small path where we can go and clip. Moreover, we designed the dungeon to be infinite to let the player think there is a way to escape the loop. It was our way to create it.

Last thing : do not forget to put hint for the mechanics to the player, it can be very frustrating to not understand and have zero information.