Paint By Monsters - First Look

After a few years of focusing on game development contracts, I'm really excited to be working on my own original game design again. The game is called Paint By Monsters, and it takes its inspiration from the Horde Survival ("Vampire Survivor-like") games that have shown up all over the place. There's also more than a dash of tabletop and computer roleplaying games in there, and as you'll hear later, I'm taking inspiration anywhere I can find it. 

It's still early days, but I've been enjoying the process so much I can't help but want to show it around and see if it excites anyone else as well. The initial pitch I had for myself for this game was "reverse horde survival", and I think the current prototype shows that basic concept off to great effect, but I have a couple of big features planned that I think will really give PBM a very different feel, and hopefully some tactical depth beyond "Put them monsters down right fast!". 

The first planned feature I'm excited about is multi-level rooms and, more generally, Lair Building. Remember the Dungeon Keeper games? Well imagine the stripped-down, fast, frenetic, roguelite version of that style of gameplay. More specifically, over time you'll unlock  access to room features - balconies, chandeliers, trap doors, and so on - as well as lair expansions, giving you the opportunity to deal with much stronger opponents by forcing them through multiple gauntlets' worth of challenges, traps, and monster-filled death rooms. FUN!

The second feature I'm looking forward to previewing soon is Brush Strokes. These will, again, be upgrades that you can unlock and then use during the course of a game, and each one will come with a special buff that gets stronger the more tightly your stroke fits the "ideal". Imagine, for example, laying down a perfectly straight line of Skeleton Archers, and as a result of your skill gaining a 5-second double attack speed for the whole group! I like to think of this somewhere between the trays of monsters you use for some wargames and the magic wards used to defend against demons in Peter V Brett's amazing Demon Cycle books.