Since LD starts at around 4 AM here in Denmark and I didn’t want to stay awake for 24 hours I went to sleep right after the theme was announced.

I was initially quite frustrated with the theme but inspiration hit me after about half an hour, and I wrote down my ideas on my tablet while lying in bed.

This is what I wrote down verbatim:

World’s Most Simple RPG

• No real story or dialog.
• All objectives presented as “requirements” and “reward”.
• Play on RPG stereotypes.
• Simple graphics (8 x 8 pixels)
• Quest types: Fetch, Slay, Escort, Guard
• Attributes: Strength(physical damage & health), Speed(movement & attack speed), Intelligence (magic damage & mana)
• NPCs: Quest Giver, Blacksmith, Alchemist, Wizard, General Goods Vendor, Generic (Says ‘Hi!’)
• Skill Trees: One for each attribute.
• Weapons: Swords, Daggers, Staffs
• Armor: Heavy, Light, Cloth

Basically the idea is to take the classic MMORPG elements and completely strip them down to their essentials.
For example, instead of a Quest NPC delivering some generic reason for giving you a quest such as: “Please help me, bandits have stolen my jewelry. Please bring it back to me and you can have my father’s old sword!” , you’ll just be presented with “Fetch <Jewelry> x5, Get <Sword> x1”.

I’m going to start working on some art now. I hope that I won’t spend more than 2 hours on that before I start programming. Once I’m finished with drawing some basic spritesheets and tilesets I’ll post them here and then move on to programming, drawing more art as I go along.

Also, I may at any point decide to cut out some of the features of that list as I was quite sleepy when I wrote it and I realize now that it might be a bit much for 40 hours of work.