It is a little-known fact that when Mike Rimer was still in high school, he phoned Scott Miller to discuss publishing some of his personal games through Apogee, Scott's fledgling company. This was a time when the Apogee that published
Wolfenstein 3D was still known as "
Apogee Software"
. Arguably, the company became well-known to early PC game enthusiasts through Scott's KROZ series. Mike instantly fell in love with KINGDOM OF KROZ when he got to play a shareware version. The simple but engaging gameplay with its colorful ASCII labyrinths drew him in and influenced the fundamental style of game Mike wanted to make in the future.
Mike went on to learn how to program in Turbo Pascal and make a series of tile-based action adventure games with hand-crafted levels full of monsters, bleeps and bloops, and custom 80x25 retro goodness. You can still find a copy of THE 'MERICAN ADVENTURE out there if you want to see one of Mike's early efforts. So, Mike explained to Scott how he had some mad skillz and wanted to share his creations, and Scott was willing to take a look. Their fruitful discussion emboldened Mike to continue on this path of game development.
When Mike met DROD, it was love at first sight all over again. What a refreshing tile-based creation! A discrete entity that nevertheless facilitates infinite diversity in infinite combinations. And the rest is history!
...or, is the best still yet to come? Last year, Apogee/3D Realms released the KROZ games as freeware (including the Pascal source code -- "
Oh, goodie!"
, says the nerdy programmer with childish glee). Upon seeing this, the germ of an idea grew in Mike's nostalgia-laced brainwaves. Mike began looking up some old contacts, shooting off a few tentative e-mails, and making some calls. He decided to give it his all to make his childhood dream come true. Since then, there has been a lot of discussion and back-and-forth that has taken up most of the team's time as we temporarily changed our focus from usual development work on the DROD franchise.
Now, I apologize for the prolonged silence, but we had to keep tight lips. Finally, after months of keeping our initiative under wraps, we have an agreement and are at last able to share some information with you, our faithful fans. Several former employees of Apogee/3D Realms have gotten together to form a new development studio. They have some radical ideas and have investor approval to begin work on a great new title. The punchline here is that they want to
license the Deadly Rooms of Death IP for use in their new game. They say our material is some of the most original and promising in the industry, and they want an exclusive share. We're talking a seven-figure deal here!
It puts a smile on my face just thinking about what is coming. Work is now underway on the project (code name "
Eternal DROD"
). We are quite excited to be interacting with this team of professional, veteran game designers. There are some quite daring and innovative directions being taken in this project, both from the vantage of story-telling as well as game play and community interaction. They won't be translating over DROD game mechanics, but they will be using the unique canon, art style and flavor of DROD to provide an unorthdox backdrop to their up-and-coming world, which will surely get us noticed in a big way when the mainstream title hits. It will look and feel revolutionary.
There will be an official announcement made soon. Stay tuned to hear more news as things progress. Meanwhile, it's business as usual on the forum. The community has always been a huge part of the DROD experience, and you can always find some goodness there to come home to. When you see this big title come out, you can say you heard about it here first!
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RoboBob's Convention-Defying Topic Picks for April
Make Your Own Stupid Topic
http://forum.caravelgames.com/message.php?Action=NewMessage&BoardID=6
The best thing about being part of a niche audience for a niche game is that it turns out we're all a bunch of very similarly-minded people. Odds are good that if a particular topic interests you, that same topic is going to interest a bunch of everybody else on the forums as well. So share your interests with us! We won't bite!
Discuss a TV show. Tell us about your Pokemans. Invent and/or organize a forum game. Link to your favorite webcomic. Share your Steam/XBox/PSN IDs. Post your short story for proofreading. Anything! It doesn't matter! If you feel like an area of the forum is too stuffy or intimidating to post in, let me know via PM (RoboBob3000) and I will post a lolcat to get things moving again.
It's important to remember that even though we've gathered as a community around a game, we're not necessarily a community
for the game. We're a community for the community - Caravel just happened to be our hub. I'm constantly thrilled that I have a reliable sounding board made up of so many relatable people. It's awesome being able to share my ideas with you and it's similarly awesome when you share your ideas with me.
And I'm sorry I called your topic stupid.
The Single Greatest Topic of All Time
http://forum.caravelgames.com/viewtopic.php?TopicID=30685
This link goes to a topic that doesn't yet exist. Perhaps
you could be the one to create it?
If you happen to be the one who snags this topic ID, you'll earn a retroactive Illumination shout-out. So you'd better make it worthwhile. And none of you had better start spamming new topic threads or else you'll get me in trouble with the management.
Latest DROD 3.0 Holds
There haven't been any DROD RPG holds published for a while, but here are all of the DROD 3.0 holds published on CaravelNet since the last illumination:
Experimental Dungeon by mxvladi
NeverForth by Garlonuss
Deconstructed Dungeon by Jacob
Insane Puzzle by Black_Star
The Puzzle Catacombs by NoahT
Way Forward, an architectural compilation
The Deep Archives by TheGreenPhantom
Penwielder's Palace by Penwielder
Holding Dungeon by blorx1
Random Obsessive by BoyBlue
Cycles by BoyBlue
____________________________
Gandalf? Yes... That's what they used to call me.
Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
I am Gandalf the White.
And I come back to you now at the turn of the tide.
