Dungeon Automata Key Art
Image: Medium-Rare Games, Kakehashi Games & Raw Fury

While I didn't get to go myself (although I'd have loved to), those who attended Japanese industry event BitSummit earlier this year had no shortage of praise for a quirky little dungeon crawler, named Algolemeth at the time. A classic Wizardry-inspired fantasy RPG where you don't play as the adventuring party. No, you play as their programmer. Now set to be published by Raw Fury and retitled to Dungeon Automata (which I think is a much weaker name), you can try it for yourself now, as a demo just popped up on Steam as part of the Steam Programming Fest that kicked off today.

When I say that you don't control the party at all in this game, I really mean it. Your party has two sets of AI rules to follow. Firstly, a navigation routine that determines how they explore the dungeon, and when they retreat so as not to drop their hard-gotten loot on the way out. Secondly, each of your four robotic party members has their own internal logic flowchart, which they'll follow on a loop through each fight. And by default, they'll die pretty quickly. Despite some gorgeous sprite art making them look cool and capable, they're only as smart as what you put in their heads.

Your party starts out knowing nothing more than 'attack enemy with the highest HP', with your healer not knowing how to do anything useful. Each run of the dungeon, your party will bring back additional AI nodes to either make your party smarter or make you richer when you sell them, letting you trade up for better nodes. Healer just bashing stuff with their staff? Create a basic flow-chart where they check if any party member is under 50% HP, and then heal as needed, or attack an enemy if nobody is hurt. Make sure to program your wizard to conserve MP until the boss, and not waste fireballs on finishing off nearly-dead goblins.

It's an immediately compelling loop (maybe I'm programming myself, too...), and I'm really interested to see how far they go with the concept. Even in the demo, I found my flow-chart space a little constrained, and while it looks like that can be expanded over time, I'm wondering if real sicko stuff is possible, creating genuinely smart, reactive AI in time. Just as a quick digression, this isn't the first game to have you programming your way to RPG success. Funnily enough, a Touhou fangame beat Dungeon Automata to the punch with some pretty intricate flowcharts possible, but this one commits more to the bit.

They really do lean into the goofy programming concept in all things here. You're working your way through the Tower of Corruption, the dungeon built by the villainous Null Pointer, which has driven all the world's golems glitchy. It's an old-school kind of charming, and that's echoed in the fantastic FM synth soundtrack, coming from legendary chiptune artist Yuzo Koshiro, best known for his work on the Streets of Rage series. Although this isn't his first dungeon crawl either, he brought a shockingly high-energy soundtrack (sounding less Dungeon Synth and more Dungeon Rave at times) to the Sega CD version of Eye of the Beholder.

So yeah, cool sprites, great jams, fun concept, and you can play it right now. Grab the Dungeon Automata demo on Steam now and wishlist it if you dig it. Also check out the Steam Programming Fest, with nice discounts available on stuff like the classic Opus Magnum and the recently released Hackhub.

Oh, and if you're hankering for more grid-based dungeon crawling, we've got a whole Genre Intro on those!