BellHop StudiosReception devlog · Part 1 of 6
A game you could only watch
Reception started as a game with no buttons. You watched a party wander a dungeon and that was it.
The idea
On 26 July 2026 we set out the concept: a gacha game built on turn-based RPGs. You collect heroes and send them out in parties of four, but you don't steer them. The party walks tile by tile toward an exit on a one-second tick. Each of the four directions starts at a 25% chance, then shifts with walls, water, enemies, treasure, and the leader's personality and sight.
The first build was held to just that simulation and a debug view: no menus, no gacha, no combat. It was called Dungeon Runners, and it took about an hour that morning:
- A seeded test dungeon, 100 by 100 tiles: one start tile, three exits, clusters of wall, water and air, and enemy and treasure tiles.
- A placeholder party moving as one token by weighted rolls. Sight came in three box sizes (3, 4 or 5 tiles square), personality came from 25 natures, and tiles the party had already visited were penalised.
- A random new leader if the leader went down, a readout of the live direction weights, and 9 tests.
There was no input at all. You watched the token roll, wander and finish when it stepped onto an exit.
The parts donor
Reception wasn't our first try at this idea. An earlier prototype ran from late April to early May 2026: a desktop vertical slice with menus, party setup, gear, two dungeons gated by Gear Score, and initiative combat. We didn't continue it, but we raided it. On 27 and 28 July its 20-hero roster, classes, skills, leader abilities, gear, turn structure and damage formulas moved into the new game. Its Gear Score gates and its four gear slots (head, hands, pants and feet) are still in Reception today.
Ten days, day by day
- An ending. A tether pulling the party toward the nearest exit after 30 moves (later a forced shortest path after 500 ticks), walls generated at 30% density with a guaranteed path, and stuck parties removed.
- A cast and a crowd. Four classes and 20 heroes ported in, with Bran, Sera, Elara and Anwen as the starters. Water became walkable at two ticks a move. Two, then four parties shared one map, with a new party every 60 ticks, and 40 roaming monsters started hunting treasure, merging into groups of up to four and promoting from Common to Elite, Champion and Boss.
- Real fights. Six stats (HP, ATK, DEF, MAG, RES and LUK), the Rat as our first monster, and turn-based combat off the map with coin-toss initiative. Monsters now see, chase and hunt, and losers drop their treasure. Gear arrived too, with four slots and drop rarities of 60/25/12/3, plus four-against-four party fights.
- First art. A 32-pixel tileset, rat tier markers, and 20 hero portraits as party tokens.
- Gear Score. GS = 0.1 HP + 1 ATK + 1.5 DEF + 1.2 MAG + 1.5 RES + 0.5 LUK, with Boss growth capped at 250 GS.
- Abilities and menus. All 59 skills and abilities given working effects, a title screen, a results screen and the first sounds, plus a main menu, a Ready to Dive screen and four saved party presets.
- Gear rebuilt. 40 tiered items at GS 5, 10, 15 and 20, and LUK made to matter (crits, hunter damage and heals).
- Headless. The Rat Dungeon capped at 200 party GS with matchmaking in 25-GS bands, and the whole simulation running without graphics, ready to live on a server. 417 tests by then.
What we learned
Starting with a game you can't touch sounds backwards, but it forced the core to be interesting on its own. If a party wandering by itself wasn't fun to watch, no menu would save it. Everything since has been built on top of that walk.