Tom's Mom's Basement

​A wacky, random dungeon crawler where you play as Tom, a boy tasked with getting sugar for his mom’s coffee from the basement. Battle through procedurally generated floors, fight bosses and gather items and scale forever to find the sweet sweet sugar! Battle enemies with multiple weapons that become more powerful over time!

Play it now here: https://thebruceswain.itch.io/toms-moms-basement

Inspired by precedents like the Binding of Isaac, Enter the Gungeon and Risk of Rain, the game aims to provide a fresh take on the roguelike genre.

The Process

The game’s goal was to allow the player to scale forever. I accomplished this by creating items that increase the player’s stats incrementally and randomly. Every time the player picks up an item it changes them player in a unique way.

This is my first experiment into roguelike games, something I’ve been wanting to create for as long as I’ve done game design. I wanted to make it as “me” as possible. To do this I avoided using any assets that would typically be done by other team members or found online. Everything from the sprites to the animations to the sound is mine.

I am primarily a systems designer, focused on code over the other aspects that go into creating a game. Despite this, I found delving into art, animation and sound incredibly fun and challenging. Having to juggle all of the different workflows and make them work in tandem proved to be demanding yet rewarding.

I hope to continue refining the game by adding content such as new enemies, weapons and items in the near future. I feel that with a little more refinement and love that this game could be a unique, strange, new entry into the roguelike genre.