Hello there:

Over the past few months I have been designing a web browser-based RPG in PHP on Linux. Since I am a programmer by training, the technical side of it is fairly trivial to do. However, my own circle of friends (who  currently comprise virtually the entire user base) are all fairly similar to myself in their ideas of what a game should be. In particular, they tend to share my sense of humor; considering I have peppered the game with this same sense of humor, I am curious as to whether the game could actually have a broader appeal.

I am interested in people who would enjoy playtesting the game. I feel the basic feel of it is sound enough for such a test, but am desirous of discovering a few things about the game. To wit:

1: Any rough edges which should be smoothed over, either technically or gamewise.

2: Balancing issues; I am unsure if the early dungeon levels are of a proper difficulty.

3: Ideas for feature extensions--the system is highly modular, from a programming perspective, and so many changes can be made that even preserve the game ruleset retroactively.

4: Bugs. Gotta find those pesky things and squash them.

At the moment, it is more of a traditional hack-and-slash game, closer to NetHack in atmosphere than anything else I can think of, though highly dissimilar technologically of course. The "RP" in "RPG" is coming along more slowly, for two reasons: first, I'm rather fond of the game in its current mindless playability for wasting a bit of time here and there similarly to games I played when younger like "Mordor: the Depths of Dejenol" and its ilk, secondly because inventing a generic plot system for the database schema is proving to be a royal pain-in-the-patootie. So, for the moment, such considerations are far from my mind.

If anyone would be interested in playtesting, the website address is http://www.chronotos.com/dgcrawl/. Logins are free and anonymous (I like the idea of keeping the thing free, and am trying to figure out if an ad-support model is worthwhile; currently I am testing out Google's AdSense program on it), and I have set up a very basic forums system on the site for feature requests and bug reports. I intend to watch both those forums and the forums here for any suggestions and comments. Player death currently has no detrimental effect; it only prints a message and refills health and mana bars. Dying a thousand times while trying to fix bugs is far too annoying, so I shall create a suitable penalty for death after I receive sufficient feedback on the game in its current state.

Thanks in advance!
~Randall