The Python Temple

Hello Everyone! This morning I woke up motivated to release an old project. So, after a few minor tweaks and a new Git-Hub Repository, The Python Temple is available to download for the first time. Therefore, if your interest is piqued by this article, you can download it here.

A quick summary, The Python Temple is a text-based dungeon crawler set in the high fantasy world of Amphibula (not to be confused), where players can create their champions and brave the depths of The Python Temple. But beware, the temple guards its gold jealously, and many brave adventurers have met an untimely death within its walls.

The game opens with a title screen, giving the player multiple self-explanatory options. Once they've selected New Game, the story begins. User's then name their character, choose a class, then begin exploring the Temple. While exploring, the terminal showing a rough layout of the dungeon, and waits for user input. Combat begins when a hero encounters a monster, and loot is randomly generated and equipped when found. The game ends when the player either dies, runs away, or kills the final boss.

Development began in early July 2021 with my father suggesting the idea of text-based RPG over dinner one evening; intrigued by the idea, I quickly got to work. Initially, what would become The Python Temple began as The Python Nebula, a story-focused Sci-Fi RPG, where players would take on the role of a swashbuckling captain exploring unknown planets, recruiting interesting characters, and fighting rouge Von-Noman probes. Heavily inspired by Mass Effect (or Star Trek), an integral part of the game would have revolved around handling difficult moral quandaries, but the rapidly approaching deadline quickly changed the course of development.

The project then morphed into Escaping the PY Labs. Heavily inspired by Half-Life, players would roleplay as a faculty member in a secret government base during an alien invasion of sorts. The basic systems used in the final project began implementation at this point, such as player creation, inventory system, user input, and map generation. Unfortunately, the enemy design wasn't coming together, and I decided on switching themes for the last time. A few remnants of this point in development even made it to the final release, such as the joke class Janitor and the default name of the player-character Gordon.

This finally gets us to The Python Temple, with development ending July 28th, 2021. Looking back at the project years later, I feel it still holds up. While the program itself isn't doing anything novel, the UI looks quite nice, and the gameplay is fun. Yet the syntax needs some work, along with the writing, but overall I'm pretty proud of how it turned out. I might even make a spiritual successor in the future using one of the other discussed themes.

A fun side note, this game may have my first developed Easter Egg. To help those with a skill issue, I added a sneaky little option to let players break the game. By giving your character the name QWERTY and giving him the janitor class, you'll enter the game with 1000 health instead of the average 12.

Thank you for reading my article, and if you have any interest in playing the game, once again, it can be found here.