NekoIncardine
Level: Master Delver
Rank Points: 127
Registered: 08-23-2005
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I'm pretty sure a lot of the people here at the CaravelNet Forum are fans of more general gaming, especially quirkier stuff. So I figured it would be interesting to see what weird ideas we could get by crossing other games out there with DROD.

I'm not doing any of these with intent to create; I merely want to exercise my mind a bit and this sounds like an interesting subject.

That said, here are three ideas of DROD-and-other-game crossings:

1) DRODamari Damacy - Turn-based Katamari? Beethro starts with a Katamari as large as he is, and swings around it (rather than it swinging around him) to avoid enemies and get them to touch the ball and get stuck to the ball. The more enemies get stuck to the ball, the larger it gets, allowing you to grab original types at the expense of mobility through the dungeon. Special 'collectors' allow you to get a fresh Katamari and gain points - exponentially, of course, so there's encouragement to get as large a ball as possible.

2) Metal Gear DROD - Metal Gear Solid is sneaking action incarnate. Metal Gear Ac!d for PSP has shown that turn-based Metal Gear can work. But why all the unnessesary cards for weapons, armor, etc.? Beethro Budkin only needs ONE weapon for HIS sneaking missions. Much more badass than this Snake fellow, no?

This variant is traditional Beethro-and-sword DROD in terms of control scheme (meaning it's more like the MSX Metal Gear 1 and 2 than the Solid series), but throws in three BIG differences:
- Enemies normally move along scripted paths (patrols) instead of their simpler AI patterns. Beethro can use this to his advantage, passing rooms without getting chased.
- Enemies can only chase Beethro if they can see him. Enemies only see Beethro if he's within a conic field of vision of a certain length - the length varies with the environment, though. (For example purposes we won't account for hearing.) When any enemies see him, an ALERT mode starts, and a spawn timer appears. When a spawn timer is showing (whether due to ALERT mode or due to Roach Queens and the like), if one enemy can see Beethro, ALL enemies can and will behave more like they do in normal DROD. The spawn timer will only go down if Beethro is out of sight (obviously, this means dungeon designs should have places to hide). If the spawn timer runs out, the enemies will return to their patrols.
- Enemies with bows (or guns, or whatever). If they see Beethro, they'll start aiming, and will shoot after five turns unless Beethro gets something (including another enemy) between him and the shooting enemy. A visible timer appears over their heads to help Beethro time his moves.

(Obviously, this idea wouldn't work so well with certain enemies like Wraithlings.)

3) DROD: The Space Shooter! (I just looked through my games and this seemed an idea.) Turn-based top-down "space shooter" in the vein of old games like Gradius - except, of course, turn based in DROD style. Beethro's sword is always aimed 'up' (and no, it doesn't shoot bullets. However, 'upgrades' can make it longer maybe?), and enemies move in pre-defined patterns, droppping varied 'falling' objects (also in pre-defined patterns) which make Beethro's life more interesting as he tries to avoid said objects while striking as many foes as possible.

Anyone else up for doing writing exercises like this? The three key rules:
1) It's Beethro, just because it can be.
2) Control schemes should be nice and simple, like DROD is.
3) Keep it turn-based (many games where it SEEMS that real-time is critical can actually work fairly well in turn-based too with some thought). The goal is to take games and DRODify them, after all.

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The secret to using a sword is that you hit people with the sharp end and then they die.

J.L.
Level: Delver
Rank Points: 38
Registered: 06-17-2003
IP: Logged

How about a beat'em up in the style of Golden Axe? It could be a chance for Beethro to show off some fancier sword moves than turning and side-stepping. Combos, too. Naturally, it would have to have lots of roaches as basic baddies. Maybe multiple selectable characters, each with their own unique weapon, stats, and magic. Beethro's magic, of course, would include invisibility (monsters do not attack him until he's within striking range, expires after a certain amount of time), and mimic (projects a clone of Beethro onto the screen that follows your controls, expires when the clone takes lethal damage).

Here's another one!

DRODKeeper:
Each level is a DROD room, and you have a limited number of greckles to use to hire monsters and place walls, traps, and other objects in the room. You also have an avatar that must be placed somewhere in the room, somewhere safe but still allows you to leave. Once you're done designing the room, a number of armed delvers will enter the room and attempt to smite you and your monsters. If you designed the room well, you and your monsters will be able to "remove" all of the delvers while still allowing a path that allows you to leave the room. Later levels will feature the smiters, the smitemasters, and eventually, the feared legendary smitemasters, all of which have increasing better AI.

DDR - Drod Drod Revolution:
An arcade game where you use a huge plastic sword to strike plastic orbs to the beat of LKA's original DROD music. Bonus: The platform you stand on to play the game would be red, and once the game is over and you stand off of it, the platform drops like a trapdoor. It rises again once the next player inserts $1.

Znirk
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 613
Registered: 07-28-2005
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Grand Theft Beethro. Same as DROD, but upstairs: instead of smiting monsters, you attack the inhabitants of Dugandy and make off with their ox carts ... which invariably explode after a few minutes' careless use. (I KNEW I'd seen the little-yellow-man-in-overhead-perspective somewhere before!)

Beethrobotropolis: As an alternative to fighting the roaches, you have the option to enter one of them and let it carry you through the danger ... but only if you manage to make it do what you want by rewiring its neurons.

DROD Nemesis. An strange and atmospheric point-and-click adventure game in pre-rendered 3D whose incomprehensible alchemy-related puzzles have nothing to do with dungeon extermination, but it has a few King Dugan jokes tacked on so it could be sold as belonging to the renowned DROD franchise.

trick
Level: Legendary Smitemaster
Rank Points: 2580
Registered: 04-12-2003
IP: Logged

The Eighth Guest
As a mysterious visitor in an even more mysterious dungeon built by the yet more mysterious (not to mention rather creepy) toy-maker Duganff, plagued by nightmarish visions of past events that would have been better off unseen, you have to carve your way through puzzle after spooky puzzle all around the crypt as the horrible story of what really happened all those years ago unfolds! Even if you survive the loneliness downstairs*, can you make it out alive ?

* Heh heh.

Oyst
You don't know who you are, where you came from, or what you are doing here. You don't even know your name. Stranded on a small island all alone, your only company are the mysterious buildings and machinery, and, of course, the overwhelming quantity of books in the library, filled to the brim with subtle hints about the place, and some of which seem to use rather high-tech paper. Only armed with your sword, your task is to wade through orb puzzle after orb puzzle as you admire the beautiful scenery and hope that somehow, this will help you get back wherever it was you came from. The ending has not yet been smitten! *

* Okay, so Myst isn't simply switch puzzles... I'm a great fan of the series, actually.

Super Budkin Bros
Dugan is at it again! The Unhygienic King has kidnapped the Princess (which seems a rather strange thing to to, since he is, after all, her father, but he has kidnapped her nonetheless), and Beethro and his largely unheard of and mostly ignored brother, Deethro, has to take on world after sidescrolling world filled with platformific baddies to rescue her from the greasy fingers of the King, and save the world while they're at it! If the baddies touch you, you are history (and bad one, at that), so better make sure your sword hits everything else first! To help you on your way is various poisonous plant life, which you can devour to magically learn such abilities as invisibility, spontaneous self-cloning, and grilling!

- Gerry

krammer
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 904
Registered: 02-12-2003
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Goblings
Goblings are a race of cute yet suicidally dim goblins with blue hair. You are provided with a limited set of tools with which to guide as many as possible over the hazardous terrain to the exit in a specified time. Set your goblings to climb, give them wraith's wings, dig, build trapdoors over pits, act as walls or turn them into bombs with lit fuses! For those addicted, Goblings 2: The Empire is also available.

Prince of Dugandy
Dugan's advisor Baffar has captured the princess and thrown Beethro into the dungeons! You have just 60 spawn cycles to escape from your cell and find your way out of this labyrinth to rescue her. Complicated orb locks and hidden trapdoors are everywhere - as well as lots of Smitemasters looking to practice their technique...

Pacthro
Guide Pacthro round the maze, collecting lovely greckles - but watch out for those ghostly roaches. Collect the Delver's Sword and the tables will be reversed for a while - but that won't last for ever. A simple and addictive classic.


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+++ Divide by Cucumber Error +++ Please Reinstall Universe and Reboot +++

"Oook!"

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[Last edited by krammer at 10-17-2005 11:02 PM]

J.L.
Level: Delver
Rank Points: 38
Registered: 06-17-2003
IP: Logged

DRODworld: Dabe's Droddyssey:
Takes place 150 years after the events of KDD. Beethro's once humble Roasted Roach Grill has expanded and become a culinary empire. Beethro's descendants own the company, and wraithwings and evil eyes, two delicacies, have almost become endangered species. Spiders have been driven to extinction (or maybe they're just hiding, it can be hard to tell), and the workers at the Budkin factories and farms are mostly goblin slaves. The story starts at a roach farm (cue an overweight Budkin yelling at a bunch of Queens, LAY EGGS FASTER!!!). A floor waxer goblin named Dabe overhears an executive meeting, and learns that the farm is soon going to produce, in addition to Roach Roasts, Goblin Grub! You must escape from the farm, find a means of gaining powers, then return and free your goblin brothers, and maybe even take the Budkins down a notch on the food scale! Gameplay consists mostly of sneaking around, cowering, and running away from pointy objects. Though on occasion, you get to stab a Budkin in the back as your buddy distracts him.

NekoIncardine
Level: Master Delver
Rank Points: 127
Registered: 08-23-2005
IP: Logged

Aww. Not much discussion of how to actually get the DROD turn-based puzzle-hefty feel into the games.

That said, I didn't expect some of the ideas I saw. o_o;

Of course, down in the Anything forum there's my idea of DRODTris; which is more like DRODeos. I'm not going to repost that here, though..

____________________________
The secret to using a sword is that you hit people with the sharp end and then they die.

Cascade
Level: Delver
Rank Points: 46
Registered: 05-28-2005
IP: Logged

Great topic idea!

DROOM: One day, Beethro gets home from a bit of recreational delving (just to keep his hand in, you know) to find that the Roasted Roach is simply gone. All that remains is a smoking crater and a strange pentegram...
Starting with only a Really Big Sword and working his way up through the Snotgun, Wubba Launcher and finally the Big Fraggin Glaive 2000, Beethro must power his way through a horde of daemon-touched monsters in order to confront the arch-daemon lord responsible for abducting his niche eatery...

DROD VII: The Black Gate: As the result of a horrible miscalculation, Beethro is summoned in place of the Avatar to save the beleaguered nation of Brittania. Representing the Virtues of Gluttony, Mercenary and Sword-Choppery, Beethro must destroy all the tar in Brittania in order to open The Black Gate...

Super Budkino Kart: Beethro, Halph, Goblins, Roaches and Wubbas all compete to become the greatest Kart racer of them all! Each displaying their own unique driving style (goblins corner better, wubbas like to chase other drivers but get stuck on hairpin corners...), the whacky characters fight it out around the track with the aid of powerups like Mimic (give yourself a wingman), Invisibility (Whaha! Where did that bomb come from?!) and Bombs to slow down their competitors.

Some great ideas from the other posters too...

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"Does a cow have Buddha nature?"

stigant
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1182
Registered: 08-19-2004
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The Trials of Werthro

I was actually thinking of a game like this on the day that Trials of Werlin was mentioned. Basically, Werthro would have to conquer rooms similar to what Beethro conquers in DROD. Werthro would have a staff instead of a sword and his staff would only stun monsters temporarily instead of slaying them. He would have to use spells to finish the monsters off. But he would also have defensive spells in addition to offensive spells. For example, he might be able to summon a shield which would cover part of his flank (say, his left side around to his back side). He would have to collect spell points around the room, or possibly generate some number of spell points over some number of moves (ex: every 5 moves he gets a free spell point). I was also toying with the idea of picking up different types of spell components that would be required for different spells. Or having to move in a certain combination of moves in order to cast certain spells (ex: shield might require you to turn left, move backwards and then turn right, sort of like a waving your wand in a certain figure to cast a spell).

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