I've just seen the following screen and I think the game looks very scary, even more frightening than today's horror games (maybe except Dead Space 1).



I don't know much about those games (Dungeon Crawlers?!) but it makes me want to create such a game (at least a prototype) myself.

What do you guys think, does such a game(play) and genre still have potential these days?
Obviously, you don't appeal to the masses but IMO as an indie you shouldn't even try to do that. Maybe a modern take on the concept could evolve into something interesting and it's rather easy to do with Gamestudio.

If you don't get lost in such a labyrinth, I think it has potential.
But just a labyrinth would be too stereotyped.
But that's just my opinion

The reason why I answer you are not these two stupid sentence above, but a video of a game. Maybe you know it, maybe not. It is a "remake" of such a game and I remembered it, when I saw your thread, maybe its interesting for you?

grimrock-video on youtube

Grimrock shows there is still potential in this gameplay.
Plus: since the mechanics are quite straigtforward, it should be easy to
implement in gamestudio.

I would still try to use more than one hight-level (like having an
2 hightlevels: upstars/downstairs)
Else the maps look really generic.
A second level gices you the option to have bridges as paths, wich makes navigating more interesting, and
give the gamedesign more options.
(Bridges, Trapdoors, attacks from above, levitating magic)

http://www.grimrock.net/

I'm confident there are many gamers out there that fully appreciate a similar title. And with today's processing power you could focus the remaining cpu power and available memory to some amazing feature that wouldn't have been possible in the earlier days, to grab the full attention.

Thank you guys. Seems like they did that with Grimrock - the game even has very nice visuals (except the object shadows).
Multiple height levels, bridges and the like sound good. As Joozey said, a new game would need a new big feature/ twist on the used gameplay formula, but right now I can't think of any (except write a decent water simulation and make the player be a creature that loves to move inside water (corridors)).
If anyone has an idea, feel free to post it.

It helps if you just start building the basic thing, and then as you go you think of awesome stuff .

Well I wrote a very basic system yesterday evening. But as long as I don't have a good (gameplay) idea, I probably won't continue it so I don't waste too much time on it.
Although I like to experiment with game(play) prototypes, I often think it's a better idea to think about it and visualize it in your head first. I don't say that you can know what is fun before you've actually programmed it, but I'm sure you can say what's not fun to play when you only hear or read the idea/ concept.

Procedural gameplay is fun . Let the dungeon evolve with the choices you make. Turn in a mossy path and the rest of the dungeon is potentially getting more mossy. Turn in a path with light emitting rock, and a variety of colours will present as you choose your paths. Make the monster evolve, and let the reward at the end depend on the final evolved cave... somehow.

That image is from "Lands of Lore", back in the day that was one of my most played games ever! If you are looking for more of these kind of games (for reference?) search for "Eye of the Beholder".

Would be awesome to see someone attempt this, I'd be following it with a close eye!

I feel I should point out the existance of the Etrian Odyssey-series, a kind of "revival" of that gameplay style for the DS.

It was pretty fun, actually! You drew the maps on the touchscreen and everything. Pretty neat. And it had the FOE-mechanic: Midbosses (also, real bosses) would walk around on the map - you could see them on (your self-drawn!) map. They'd take a step whenever you took one and for every round in battle, and could even join battles. So if you were battling random encounter-enemies, that midboss might join and force you to flee.

A pretty cool mechanic, actually!