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Curse Of Plunder is a 2D Top-Down Lovcraftian Dungeon-Crawler Extraction game built around crafting, and high-stakes resource management
Players enter increasingly dangerous dungeons, gather materials and loot, craft equipment, and decide how much are they willing to risk before extracting.

In this Year Long student project, I was the Game Designer & Producer, responsible for the game's systems, mechanics, level design, balancing, documentation, and overall design direction.
This was our final project at Tiltan, developed by a multidisciplinary team.

FULL GDD

Itch page soon!

Into The Design

Problem 01 - How Do You Make Looting Feel Unsafe?

I wanted to combine the exploration and combat of a dungeon crawler with the risk and resource management of an extraction game.
Moonlighter was my closest reference, but its combat and looting are largely separated into distinct phases. You fight, and then you loot, risk-free.

Arc Raiders creates this tension naturally through the unpredictability of other players. I needed to recreate that uncertainty in a single-player environment.

Solution A - A Timer

My first solution was a room timer. It created urgency, but not meaningful decision making.
The timer told players when to stop, rather than making them evaluate the risk of continuing.

I replaced the timer with a persistent Threat system. The longer players remain in a room, the more dangerous it becomes. Loot interactions, traps, and other events can also introduce new enemies.

Solution B - Threat

The Result

Threat, enemy spawning, traps, and loot interactions prevent the room from settling into a simple clear → loot rhythm. Players can create openings to loot, but safety is never guaranteed.
Looting after clearing a room raises threat immensely, incentivising players to loot while clearing.

Looting became a risk the player chooses to take, rather than a risk-free phase.

PROBLEM 02 - HOW DO YOU MAKE EXTRACTION FEEL Meaningful in a single player game?

Extraction games create tension through commitment. Bringing something valuable into a run should change what you can accomplish and what you stand to lose.

But in a single-player game, there is no human opponent creating that pressure. Simply making crafted weapons stronger would turn extraction into craft → equip → numbers go up.

I wanted bringing an item into a run to create a meaningful gameplay commitment.

Solution A — Make Gear More Powerful

Solution B — Make Equipment a Commitment

Starting out with only a sword, allowing players to bring in a gun that would unlock a whole new control for them, firing with right-click.

Make crafted equipment stronger and give each weapon its own mechanic.

This added variety, but the decision remained fundamentally about gaining power. The weapon was still an upgrade.

The Result

DESIGN PILLAR - COMMITMENT
I established Commitment as a core design pillar: bringing an item into a run should give the player something powerful while increasing what they stand to lose.

The pistol became an entire combat system. It introduced a new ranged attack, could stagger dangerous ranged enemies, and became especially valuable in later levels. But ammunition could only be restored through the third sword attack, an attack that locks the player in place and cannot be cancelled with a dodge.

Bringing a gun wasn't simply choosing more power. It changed how the player fought, what risks they took, and what they were willing to lose.

PROBLEM 03 - HOW DO YOU MAKE DIFFICULTY FEEL GRADUAL IN AN EXTRACTION GAME?

Solution A - Few Extractions & Stronger Enemies

Solution B - Change the Space

Make a few extraction points within the level, after each, increase enemy numbers and introduce stronger variants ending with the boss room.

This creates an obvious difficulty curve, but risks making the level like obvious stop points with inflated numbers rather than a deliberate choice, and making strong players have to go through easy challanges to start a new run.

Make a Second level, designed significantly more compact, while introducing more dangerous enemy types.

The tighter spaces force players to navigate around threats rather than simply clearing large rooms. Ranged enemies become much more dangerous because positioning and line-of-sight matter more.

The first level gives players room to learn the combat system. Large rooms, weaker enemies, and gradual introduction of ranged threats that also allow players who lost it all to reclaim power.

The second level deliberately removes that safety.
Tighter rooms, denser encounters, and two new ranged enemies force players to:

Position, pull enemies, create openings, and decide when it is safe to loot.
The difficulty therefore comes from how the player navigates the space.

Extraction creates a difficult progression problem: failure has to matter, but repeated failure cannot feel exhausting.

I needed to teach the combat, let players recover from mistakes, and provide enough resources to progress,
but also design within the scope a deliberate escalation that the player can choose to undertake.

With low production scope, I needed to create that progression through encounter composition, level design, and player choice rather than simply adding more enemies or increasing their stats.

The Result

Next Up!

Design that serves Fantasy - 5 Month Student Project

ANOTHER LAYER OF COMMITMENT

The second level gives players another choice: extract early, or push toward the boss for better rewards. But reaching the boss doesn't end the risk!
Defeating it still leaves the player with the journey back to extraction, which is on the opposite side.

Choose How Much to Risk

Each tentacle can be defeated for the same amount of boss materials as the boss himself, but doing so extends the fight and increases the damage taken before extraction.

Killing only the boss drops the same amount as one tentacle while instantly ending the fight and killing all other tentacles right away.

The boss therefore isn't simply a final encounter. It becomes one last commitment before the player has to make it home.