I came across a game made by the guys who made RuneScape called Melvore Idle. It is basically RuneScape, but without the actual in-game graphics. It’s just a series of menus and you take actions and stuff based on whatever you are doing at the time. You have your spellbook, and inventory, and can fight mosters and explore and stuff. Really looks like a neat experience.

It got me thinking that maybe I am approaching this whole creating a new version of Castle of the Winds all wrong. I previously had this thought about Planets: The Exploration of Space, but what if instead of trying to create the game world and everything I just narrow it down and go with the most minimal mechanics possible?

The dungeon would basically just be a sub-window in the main window that shows what is in each direction. Well, even that would require more dungeon generation knowledge. Maybe I could just make an RNG and every time you “move” in the dungeon it would make a random event happen. Like you could run into a monster, or find a chest, or hit a trap, or find the stairs to the lower dungeon. That way I wouldn’t technically have to generate a dungeon. Have them exit the dungeon would be interesting though, would probably have to just put something in there where if you are on like level 5 you have a button to go up to level 4, and if you have already found the stairs the button to go to level 6 would be available.

Something to think about. This seems significantly more do-able than remaking the whole game, plus I could do it either in Visual Studio or in PHP or something.