One thing that everybody in the tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG) community can agree on is that finding the perfect map for your home-brewed one-shots, battles, and campaigns can be a pain to deal with. Especially if you are someone who likes to host their play sessions live for all to see. Sure, there are plenty of “good enough” and “close enough” options to choose from online, but even those who lack artistic abilities wish to create their own maps.

Luckily, we can now look to Briganti’s latest title on Steam called Dungeon Alchemist for all our map-making needs. This AI-powered map creator gives you full control over the scenery to set up maps of your own shapes, sizes, and needs. Even with it in early access, it is pretty full of useful build options and has already proven to be handy for my own campaign.

Gameplay

It’s odd to call this gameplay as this is more of a creative workspace type of title. When you first set up to create a map, you are given a rectangle full of grass and plant life. This is just a beginning piece though as you can easily expand past what is there.

First, it will have you build rooms and then place objects in it. This is its form of a tutorial and it is pretty ignorable as it doesn’t really put anything in your face. You have a handful of options with aspects such as abandoned places, chapel, tavern, and more, which each of those has a little sub-genre for specifics, such as storage, cell, hallway, and more. Once you pick the type of room or base area you need, simply click the mouse and drag until it is the size you want it to be. They have it built on a classic grid system, so it is really easy to work with.

Once you have your base, you can start choosing between all the other facets that make up the room. You have a large variety of objects to work with, all listed similarly to the room type with the initial choice and then the specifics. Placing objects is pretty simple and once you put it down, you can then turn it around to whatever direction you want it to face and adjust the size. There are prompt icons over objects once you click on them that make it easy to adjust.

Of course, don’t forget to look into the different floor and wall types, doorways, windows, and all the other little details that make buildings feel more realistic. The options of what you can use to create your maps reach all different aspects with there even being choices to put characters in the scene.

Expectations

This map-creator tool is bound to be a top-tier option for dungeon masters and others in the tabletop community. Moving the map I made over to Roll20 took little-to-no effort and I suspect players will see more maps made from this title soon. There are a lot of different things still to be added in order to really make anything you need, but the fact that they are so well set up already is pretty amazing.

They do need to look into adding a proper tutorial though. It seemed like going in I was just expected to be already of the creative mindset and that isn’t a good approach. While I was able to figure out what I was trying to create each time I got on this builder, there are others that would benefit from more instructions on how to utilize the system. Who knows, maybe I could have built even greater versions of the places I’ve crafted if there was a guide.

Verdict

Dungeon Alchemist is a dream title for tabletop players! It may be a bit short on supply and still in need of a lot more content added to it, but the concept and current execution of the map-creating title is impressively done. They recently added a winter update, but I would like to see more scenery options as well. If you are one who likes to make maps or simply could utilize a tool like this, then this is the title you want to get it on.

Dungeon Alchemist is currently available on Steam’s Early Access.