14 DAY TRIAL // Popup Dungeon is an upcoming roguelike dungeon crawler that aims to bring a papercraft board game world to life, and that will allow its players to create any weapon, ability of character that they can imagine.
The game is currently undergoing a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter, and developer Triple.B.Title aims to release the upcoming game for PC, Mac and Linux.
Its main hook is the ample customization options, alongside the charming papercraft visuals that make the game feel like a virtual board game. Its makers describe Popup Dungeon to be "as vast as your imagination," stating that players can jump right in with premade characters, weapons and abilities or create their own from scratch.
The actual gameplay will be familiar to roguelike fans, with permanent death, quick gains and procedurally generated dungeons, and will involve tactical turn-based combat, complete with the option to play cooperatively either in hotseat mode or online.
Players will be able to dungeon crawl either alone or with a party, and will face variable challenges that they can pre-program depending on their schedule, from single-seaters to infinite descents.
Users will also be awarded charms after a run, which will give each character a permanent gain, and which can be collected and combined for various effects.
Creation is a big part of Popup Dungeon, and a key gameplay elements that will assure its replayability. Users will be able to modify every aspect of their heroes, starting from their look and theme music down to individual weapons and abilities, by making use of an extensive library of existing assets or importing their own and making something truly unique.
There is no auto-attack in Popup Dungeon, and weapons are the main source of power, which can boosts abilities, from a short-range slash attack and a long-range snipe to heals. Players will be able to earn weapons by defeating enemies and looting chests, and even purchase them from the vending machines scattered throughout the dungeons.
Making cool new abilities is one of the most fun aspects of the game, and the construction tool will take care of numbers and balancing, allowing players to go wild and without worrying about whether they'll break the actual gameplay.
With a simple interface, players will be able to customize the name and look of an ability, and then choose from hundreds of possible effects, add experience points, set an activation cost, range and area of effect parameters, and even add negative effects or positive conditions to enhance a spell's potency.
Players will be able to import any custom picture of their favorite hero or villain and then the game will automatically generate a papercraft cutout avatar that they can use during their adventures, complete with a super simple character system that relies on three main stats.
Users will be able to also create enemies and then share their creations and compare them with other players' using the Steam Workshop, allowing access to a near-inexhaustible source of new content to enjoy.