For many Dungeon & Dragons players, worldbuilding is the best part of a campaign. Maps, cities, and dungeon planning are intrinsic to the game, not only for gameplay purposes but for immersion as well. Dungeon Masters often feel a lot of pressure to create expansive worlds, stories, and fun player experiences, but can likewise be limited by resources. For those looking to create new worlds, two-dimensional paper maps are often difficult to translate into a truly imaginable context for the players, and 3D models can be enormously expensive. As such, DMs can instead turn to digital renditions to aid in their creation of new worlds and campaigns.
Indie game Tiny Glade is an upcoming sandbox game featuring the construction of castles and their surrounding landscapes. Though it is not meant for large-scale worldbuilding, Tiny Glade‘s focus on small details and calm gameplay make it an excellent resource for Dungeon Masters looking to create environments for a campaign. Dungeons & Dragons is reliant on the interaction of players with the world they occupy, and Tiny Glade provides a soothing experience for DMs to create immersive locations with ease.
Tiny Glade Focuses on the Small Details
Tiny Glade is not an expansive game, but its thoughtful inclusion of small, yet important, architectural and landscape-based details sets it apart from many other games of the same genre. If a road is built that intersects with a wall, an arch will automatically appear in its path. The landscape organically responds to the player’s choices, making for satisfying, yet realistic, structures and scenery. For many DMs, this can be a particularly rewarding feature, as it helps create an authentic-feeling world for their players without inconvenience or time wasted. Additionally, details such as realistic-looking stone and brickwork in place of a single texture add to the immersion of the world players of Tiny Glade can create.
The Game Is Meant to Be a Peaceful Escape
Tiny Glade allows players to create unique custom landscapes without prerequisites such as quests or storylines. Further, there are no resources to collect in-game or enemies to fight off, so players begin building straight away. Tiny Glade‘s small team of developers has stressed that they seek to create a peaceful and calm environment for creators, so the inclusion of features such as a night and day option is there only for immersion.
The landscape will also respond accordingly to building choices — ivy will grow on arches, fireflies appear at night, and even the grass surrounding castles will have butterflies in it which are interacted with via the game’s cursor. This allows all creations to feel realistically interactive for a campaign’s players. Tiny Glade is not meant to be stressful or complicated — rather its goal is to foster an environment where players can feel calm and safe while creating any number of distinct locations.
Though it is a small game, Tiny Glade represents a unique opportunity for worldbuilders to create structures and environments without stressful mechanics and gameplay. Customizable materials, interactive land, and a lack of mandatory prerequisites make the game an excellent resource for DMs who want a visual component for campaigns outside paper maps or pricey and time-consuming models.
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