Five or So Questions with Steve Radabaugh on Dungeon Marauders

Tell me a little about Dungeon Marauders. What's exciting about it?

Dungeon Marauders is a dungeon delving digital card game for iPhone. A deck of cards represents your hero, and you go through short dungeons that are represented by five cards. You also get to create your own dungeon that people go through.

What I find exciting about Dungeon Marauders is that it's trying to focus on people challenging each other face to face. The only way to go directly to another person's dungeon is to scan the QR code from their phone. I've also taken that a step further to have special dungeons that companies can post at their booth at conventions as a Booth Beast.


What did you do to test Dungeon Marauders?

I started out by printing up some physical cards on my home printer and bringing the concept with me to Metatopia. I did a fair amount of ninja-playtesting there (There weren't any official events, just a handful of games with various people at the bar). After Metatopia, I knew that I had a solid concept. During development, I had a group of 25 or so testers that I frequently sent builds out to and solicited feedback from.


What was your inspiration for Dungeon Marauders?

It started out with the concept of a game that could be played at conventions. I wanted to make Booth Beasts that were QR codes that companies could put at their booth for an exclusive something. I was working with some other projects with QR codes, and had them on the brain. So I had the meta game kind of planned out before I had any actual game mechanics thought up. As far as the card game part of it, I'm not sure that I had a direct inspiration.


What suggestions would you have for people new to the app design industry?

Create the things that you want to have for yourself, don't create things just because you think that they'll make you rich. Also, keep your day job until you are making enough money to support yourself.


What's up next for you?

I'm actually really excited about the game that I did for GameChef, so I'm probably going to start doing more playtesting and development on that. I'm also going to start figuring out Dungeon Marauders as a physical card game. I'm hoping to playtests of both of those things over the summer and see where that takes me. I have some contract work lined up both in the RPG realm and in the app realm. Maybe when things quiet down I'll start working on that SHMUP game I've been wanting to make for years.