Mops & Mobs: A Sweeping Dungeon Novel

Showcase In Development
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We’re currently developing Mops & Mobs, a visual novel in a dungeon crawler setting. You’re a regular guy or gal applying for the janitor job in a mismanaged dungeon, and along the way you meet and greet its various inhabitants like a sentient gelatinous cube or a bunch of giant rats.

The gameplay consists of exploring, talking and dungeon decorating, and more is coming. Overall we’re inspired by old-school dungeon crawlers, so the movement is constricted to a grid and 90° rotation. We have a slightly outdated demo on itch and Steam:

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We will most likely update the demo soon-ish, but higher priority is getting the story of the full game together.

Mops & Mobs will be our first “bigger” game in Godot, after using Unity for over 12 years.

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The demo of Mops & Mobs was finally updated on itch (and Steam too). It contains a new gameplay mechanic - the combat! We decided to implement a card game that represents fighting in the dungeon (and sometimes just cleaning a room).

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The rules of the cards are based on an older jam project of ours (as it was kind of popular). We hope it adds a bit of variety to our dungeon crawler slash visual novel. Overall I’m happy how easily Godot lets me mix the 2D card game with the actual 3D game.

Everything is still WIP of course.

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The art style is soo cool!!!

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Good luck with the game!

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Oh wow this looks great. Big fan of the overall aesthetic of this.

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Nice art

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Agreed

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We created a new trailer - which, when watched directly after the teaser in the first post, shows a bit of our progress. Still, much to do, but thanks to Godot it’s (mostly) a joy :wink:

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Card games are not my thing, sorry, but great job nonetheless !

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I love the art style of the characters in particular, very recognizable and sweet! Reminds me of the sweet-and-sinister artwork of Dicey Dungeons :slight_smile:

As far as I understand, the player explores a dungeon and talks to characters, sometimes solves puzzles and sometimes engages in conflict, resolved with a card game… is that about right? Is card collection / deck management a large part of the game, and is it intended to be somewhat challenging, or more about casually being told a story with game elements?

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Thanks!

The reason the card game doesn’t take a big part in the trailer is that it’s also not a big part in the game. While we’re still working on it, especially when it comes to actually integrating it into the gameplay and story, the card battles will not be very challenging - it’s more like playing some friendly game with your coworkers.

The main part of Mops & Mobs is the adventure game aspect. That means the deck building is something that happens on the way, during the plot; and should a player be stuck at some fight, it will be easy to retrieve new cards for your deck. (Let’s hope this works out. ;))

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That sounds nice and relaxed - in my opinion the best state to be in while enjoying a story :slight_smile:

I only just realized there’s a demo, I’ll be checking that out! Incredibly, “There was a problem communicating with the Steam servers” at the moment, so it’ll have to wait a little.

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The demo is also on itch.io!

In any case we need to update the demo soon-ish, as a lot of people get stuck with one of the puzzles.

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I love the style of the game, textures of the environment are amazing! :pinched_fingers:

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I played the demo on itch.io, great fun! I got stuck after the symbols puzzle, as I couldn’t find the key for the grate in the kitchen. I may have put 20-or-so minutes into just that one step, so it wasn’t for lack of trying.
Below are the notes I took while playing.

Love the music and character designs, very cute and likeable :slight_smile: Coherent style and theme, and pretty distinct too. Even recently, I’ve paid for games with less character than this.

Good text, well written, nice and compact.

I like the card game - simple, easy to understand, but still allows for interesting problem-solving.

have you considered / tried having the camera follow the mouse cursor to some degree? Holding RMB felt a little clunky, and I missed some things that were low in frame on first pass

Related to that - is the six-button UI element at the bottom of the screen necessary? It gets in the way of some objects that are low in the frame. If it’s for touch interfaces, it could be optional, or touch input could be gestures

Maybe raise the spoken text, so it’s closer to the speaking character. I found myself looking down at the text box rather than at the fantastic (and animated no less) characters, and I feel they’re the stars of the show. If the game is intended to be voiced in the future, that would alleviate this to some degree

The font is a bit thin, aliased, and often italic, not necessarily the best for reading. Maybe take font inspiration from similar games you love

It would be nice with number keys = pick up card, ie 1 to pick up card in slot 1. Like Slay the Spire, and probably many others

Possible feature - holdable candelabra that casts light and shows the hidden symbols (and other light-related mechanics later I’m sure). Putting / taking down lamps in deco mode can get a little tedious

“Broken lever to deeper dungeon” quest is somewhat unintuitive, I felt stuck trying to find the secret room, then to understand what the blueprint is for, and I never found the kitchen grate key. The quest log could be more helpful / hinty / direct with that quest

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Thanks a lot for playing - and the extensive feedback! This is very useful!

I won’t get into everything, as some things are taste, some things we’ll just discuss internally. In any case, there definitely will be UX improvements later on, and the six buttons at the bottom will be optional; they’re just a big part of the homage to the dungeon crawler genre.

Voice acting would be cool, but probably too expensive for us. I also don’t know how we could move the text box up without obstructing too much of the characters.

A torch or candelabra that the player can carry would indeed be useful, but somehow make the whole lighting puzzle mechanic a bit superfluous. Right now we don’t have any further light-related gameplay or puzzles later on, anyway.

I will write you about your problems with the quest in the demo per DM, if that’s okay.

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No problem, I like playing and thinking about games, and I don’t mind typing either. In fact, it reminded me of my former job, but without the budgets, the schedules, and EA.

It’s a little sad that the player is most likely looking down when all those lovely character expressions / animations are happening… just off the top of my head, you could have the text beside the character, have the text scroll by horizontally on a strip, or put speech in actual speech bubbles. I certainly wouldn’t write it off as impossible :slight_smile:
I feel like the characters are the most important aspect of your game, at least from my player perspective. However you go about it, give them all the love and polish you can :slight_smile:

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