The Depths of Durangrar: A Dungeon Crawler...in the dark
Created by Creative Cove Games
The Depths of Durangrar is an asymmetrical dungeon crawler that's played in the dark. Play as explorers who use LEDs to light up only what's in front of them in a modular maze that's different in every game. Or play as the monster who has a night vision camcorder and can see all the explorers and the whole maze.
Latest Updates from Our Project:
April Update Part 1
over 6 years ago
– Thu, Apr 12, 2018 at 01:19:50 AM
Thank you everyone for your outpouring of support. I will keep at it and chipping away at it until I find a good solution.
I haven’t been able to find enough of the original night vision goggles to supply all of the games so it looks like I’ll have to go with an alternative. If you wish to buy some yourself, you can find it under the name “Spy Gear Ultimate Night Vision Goggles”. I’ve ordered some in the past via amazon here.
I used a similar one in my early prototype testing. The drawback was that it was larger and heavier than the night vision goggles so it could get tiring holding it during the game and wasn't so easy positioning the screen in such a way to make it easy to see the board and move pieces.
I've also purchased a similar night vision webcam like the one below.
The drawback of this one was that there was a slight lag between the camera and the image received on my phone. Also, without an external battery, the on board battery only lasted about 10 minutes. I think it was designed to be connected all the time to a car charger. I also want to avoid having players download a 3rd party app to play the game and that raises a lot of additional concerns. First, because I didn't develop the app, I don't know if it'll work for all phones. Then, with all the privacy concerns and app permissions, I wouldn't want to force someone to use an app they don't fully trust to play the game. The ultimate night vision goggles were a really good solution as they didn't require an app and were a standalone toy.
I’ve tested out the blue filter with red light and it’s shown some promise. It took a few filters to find the right one. The one that filtered out the red light well was a very dark blue filter used in a lot of stage lighting called 181 Congo Blue Gel filter. It filtered out the red light fairly well so I can’t see the maze with the blue lenses on but can see the maze very easily in the red light.
Monster player's view under the red light
Red light filtered through the blue gel filter
The explorer's view through the blue lenses
The pictures above are as close as I can get to what it feels like when I look through the lenses. What's interesting is the exposure settings on my camera sometimes picks up enough of the red light that it's able to see the maze but even after 5 minutes, my eyes never adjust enough to see it.
There’s quite a bit of tweaking necessary before this is a good solution though. The most important is deciding how the glasses should be incorporated into gameplay, whether explorers only put on the glasses when it’s the monster’s turn or the entire gameplay. If it’s the entire gameplay, the yellow and green LED used to represent the demolitionist and knight pieces are dimmed significantly with the blue lenses compared to the white LED used for the scout giving that player an unfair advantage. But this can be solved by giving everyone a white LED. I may also just use the ones used to keep the player screens illuminated as they are slightly brighter and counteract the blue lenses better. So far I like how they look so far but I’d like to test more to make sure they work will in gameplay.
Other slight tweaks will also be necessary. The pieces of gold scattered throughout the maze are a bit too reflective and can be seen shimmering at some angles with the red light through the blue lenses. While thematically cool, I think it goes against the desired mechanic of finding the gold in the maze through exploration rather than knowing it’s there early on. Most likely, I’ll need to use a diffuser on the red flashlight to scatter the light better.
Another issue is that under the red light, the yellow cubes and purple cubes both appear the same color under the right light for the monster. This is most likely fix will be finding a different shaped token to replace the purple cube.
Comparison of the gold tokens under white light and red light
Other than that and some changes in color, I think this can be a good solution to replacing the night vision goggles. I will keep you updated as development proceeds. Thank you for your support!
March Update
over 6 years ago
– Thu, Mar 29, 2018 at 01:07:27 AM
Hello!
The sampling process is taking longer than I originally planned but is progressing. However, I got hit with a much more serious issue last week. I had contacted Spin Master sporadically about ordering the night vision goggles since I got the sales account. Last week I received a reply to find out that they have discontinued the product line and there are no more night vision goggles available in their inventory. It appears that they have been phasing the product out over the last year. It’s not economically viable for them to restart the line, even if I were to place a bulk order for 1000. Right now, I’m trying to see if it’s possible I could license the design and try to find another manufacturer on my own. Also, I am contacting as many resellers who may still have some in stock but it is looking grim. As far as I can tell, there is a little over 200 units available from various redistributors and toy store outlets.
An alternative to these night vision goggles are the dash cams and phone attachment cameras I had looked at earlier on in the design of the game but they still have the same issues I had with them in design. Either the image quality was too poor to use, the battery life was too short for the game, or the image would be zoomed too close up to be practical. Looking back, it would have been far less risky if I had tried to expedite the night vision goggles earlier last year and put them in storage but I had considered that the storage costs may eat heavily into the funds set aside for manufacturing and delivery. Also, storage does not always guarantee the NV goggles would be safe from mold or pests or water damage. To my great regret, I had not considered the possibility the product line would be discontinued.
Another alternative would be to design the night vision goggles myself following this guide my friend had sent me last year. http://www.instructables.com/id/3D-Printed-Digital-Night-Vision-The-OpenScope/. However, that would also lead to significant delays along with possible quality issues given I am only a novice at electrical design which would be a significant risk that was not outlined when I launched the kickstarter. Furthermore, it looks like the item cost alone would add up to about $100 a piece.
Moving forward, the ideal situation for me is to find enough of the original night vision goggles that I intended to use from redistributors and be able to include that. If I am not able to, I’m not sure how I would move forward with the game. As it stands, financially, I have enough saved up now from my day job to replace what I have spent already. This setback I think falls on me entirely. It was my responsibility to plan well and mitigate risks but I had always thought running out of money was the biggest threat to successfully delivering the game. I don’t believe any of you should pay for my failure to deliver. I sincerely hope it does not come to this, but should I not find a solution, I promise to refund everyone’s pledge in full.
February Update
over 6 years ago
– Wed, Feb 28, 2018 at 12:47:17 AM
Hello!
I’m sorry to have forgotten to post the picture of the heater device when it was finished the week after the last update. Once I finished the heater device, I had to get all the artwork proofs ready for the manufacturer.
Below is a picture of the heater device after it was finished.
I've got seven heat guns all lined up next to each other and close enough that enough of the heat covers in between each gun as well to heat the entire paper. The final thermal paper roll will be 544 mm wide so I needed seven heat guns to cover at least that distance.
I’ve heated enough thermal paper beforehand and sent that express to the manufacturer so hopefully that will get to them soon and they can begin with producing the initial pilot sample of the game.
And below is some of the artwork for game.
Dual Dial for keeping track of the knight's stats
Dual Dial for keeping track of the monster stats
Player screen used as a quick reference guide and to hide player stats from others.
Game Box Cover
Game Box Back
There's some more smaller proofs (token and die art) but they're automatically blown up in the update and the quality is drastically reduced. No CSI enhancing here sadly.
Lastly, I’d like to give a shout-out to backer Fredrik from Sweden. He’s taken the time to read the instruction booklet released earlier and sending me a really thorough questionnaire and list of either typos or ambiguous statements. The rulebook is still not quite final as I need to replace some of the artwork due to copyright concerns. I used some open source icons but I need to read the fine print if I’m allowed to use those for commercial uses but to stay on schedule, I submitted the file early to the manufacturer to see the instruction booklet quality and color appearance.
January Update
almost 7 years ago
– Tue, Jan 23, 2018 at 04:07:20 PM
I’ve gotten approval from Wingo Manufacturing on the design on the new heater. My daytime job has been busy for the month of January but I’m almost about done wrapping up the building the device and should be able to post pictures next week. Wingo has received the quality samples I had of PCBs for the initial quality check build. Meanwhile I’ve gotten a quote for a lead time of 10 days to produce the full 8000 PCBs for the game (Each game has 3 PCBs for the character bases and 5 PCBs for the clip on lights on the character screens and the box lid where players will roll the dice). I’ll be holding off on ordering these until two weeks before Wingo begins full production at Wingo’s request to save on storage space. It will reduce the risk of something happening to them while they are in storage.
I’ve also received the full quantity of 3D printed parts from Voodoo manufacturing. On an initial quality check, all the pieces have come out really well. The pieces all fit together and look clean and free of the usual strands that sometimes comes with 3D printed parts. I’ll be checking them more thoroughly through the month of February before I send them to Wingo.
Lastly, the brass masters to be used for the metal casted miniatures have arrived from Shapeways and look good and casting will start soon.
December Update
almost 7 years ago
– Sun, Dec 24, 2017 at 07:54:23 PM
Hello!
It's been a busy month! We've got the sales account open with Spin Master to order the night vision goggles finally and are moving forward with that. They were only willing to ship to a US address so I had to change up my shipping plans. Now the night vision goggles will be packaged with the game together by Quartermaster Logistics in the US rather than I had originally planned where they'd be shipped to China and packaged by Wingo Manufacturing. Quartermaster Logistics already has established partnerships in the EU so although the games will all be packaged in the US together, the logistics for shipping to the EU should also flow smoothly. I'm very happy to be working with Quartermaster logistics as they've been very responsive and knowledgeable and have had experience with many other Kickstarter campaigns.
I've completed printing 1000 C-wands and the character bases from Voodoo Manufacturing have been shipped and are due to arrive Dec 29th. I'm awaiting a shipment of LEDs from Evil Mad Scientist LLC. due to arrive the first week of January and then I'll have all the parts to begin mass production of the circuit boards for the light up miniatures.
I'm very happy to be finally reaching this point of gearing up for manufacturing and delivery. Thank you everyone for being so patient and supportive this past year. I wish you all a very Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year!
