Big Boss Dungeon

Big Boss Dungeon is a retro-style reverse dungeon crawler strategy game where you get to play as the bad guy for once.

In our interpretation of the 2023 GMTK Game Jam theme, “Roles Reversed,” we took the classic Rogue-lite or dungeon crawler and reversed the player’s typical objective: in Big Boss Dungeon, players get to be the “big bad” by strategically placing minions and traps to defeat the hero. But, just like any dungeon, it isn’t as easy as you might think! The hero can choose to pick up power-ups that are randomly placed on the map.  

How to Play:

Look at the map to see where to place your minions and traps to stop the hero. Deploy your minions and traps by clicking and dragging them into the rooms of your choice. But think carefully: there are power-up items that the hero can pick up that will help them defeat your minions, and you can only put one resource in each room. 

• Hero and minion health are displayed on the bottom of the screen
• Hover over power-ups, enemies, and traps to see their stats 
• Traps will debuff the Hero’s stats, while power-ups (sword, shield, and heart) will buff them; power-ups are randomly placed in the map for the hero to pick up 
• You cannot put resources in the start room
• Your hero will win if they defeat 5 rooms
• Damage and defense are determined by “dice rolls.” For example, a D8 + 2 will roll an eight-sided die and add two to the result. A 3D6 - 1  will roll one die and subtract one but then apply 3 attacks

Developer's Notes:

• We managed to only make one level (making more than one would require fixing bugs!)
• Combat is quite swingy, so the same strategy may give different results
• Only designed to work with a mouse

This is our second time making a game, and we had a lot of fun doing it. We really appreciate your support and critiques. 

This game was created in 48 hours for the 2023 GMTK Game Jam.

Credits:

Game design by Hani Dawood, Brendan Fallon, and Nicole Dingle

Programming by Hani Dawood and Brendan Fallon

Visual design by Nicole Dingle

Music and sound design by Jaime Dingle

Special thanks to the G-ScalE Lab at McMaster University