A theme and a name

The world was doomed, onslaught by demons coming from the deepest levels of Hell. The Heavens fell, and all seemed lost. But heroes, renegades and wanderers came out of their recluse, and finally restored peace on the world.
However, this was not the end. Lured by greed, and the promise of ever stronger powers, some of them continued to roam the world, slowly turning their glorious quest into a scavenger hunt, falling into madness.
All things come to an end. The most valiant join the Heavens, while the vile go to Hell. But for the Fallen, who succumbed to their greed, a last chance is offered. Will they be able to vanquish their thirst of power, or will they fall even more?

One of the things that contributed to The Five Orbs' failure was the lack of a theme. The game was purely a mechanic, and while interesting, it lacked background to guide the characters' appearance, their skills, or even the justification of why they wanted to fight at all.
I am very much on the mechanics side. I'm deeply convinced that this is what ultimately makes a good game. But while I don't think it is mandatory for a good game to have a strong theme, it clearly helps federate the design decisions. Apart from purely abstract games, all successful titles have a recognizable theme. Angry Birds would be different if it weren't about birds wanted to get revenge on green pigs.

So I went to look for a theme that would fit my hack'n'slash.

Something that always nagged me in games like Diablo was how long you spent simply farming for stuff. Doing the same routes (sometime even the same enemy - I'm looking at you, Diablo 2's Mephisto) again and again in the hope to find a better piece of equipment, that will in turn makes your farming easier. It's an endless cycle, just for the sake of getting the better gear.

At some point, there is a distinction between what you want to do, and what you like to do. This has been exacerbated in Zynga's games, which forced you to come every so often check on your account, lest you lost your crops or your small fish. In hack'n'slash, the push is slightly different (there are no mechanics integrated specifically to make you need to come back regularly), but the drive for having a better gear is sometimes enough to spend hundreds of hours seemingly doing nothing.

And here I had my theme. Dead heroes from the Diablo series that have been overcome by greed are given a chance to repent. Will you stop the game once you cleared the story ("saving" the soul of your character), or will you fall back into this pursuit for equipment?

This "Dungeon of Greed" is a test - will you pass?

Of course, this has to translate into some meaningful mechanics to be relevant. I used happiness points as an example in an earlier article. They could be used to describe how "addicted" your character is. The more you play to find loot, the less happy your character. And of course, some items and skills will be reserved for "happy" warriors.
But if you play less, you don't grow as powerful (both in terms of gold and loot), which is why many players will probably choose to forsake the redemption of their soul to go item hunting;

I am still at the beginning of the design, and trying to put together a very basic version of the game to iterate on. All these things related to the "greed" will come into play into quite some time, and will probably still evolve a lot.

Until then, I'll keep you posted!