r/Dejenol

Hi everyone,

This is probably the one subreddit where I don't have to explain what Mordor: The Depths of Dejenol is. I've loved it since I was a kid, and it's one of those games that genuinely shaped how I think about RPGs: the guilds, the alignment system, charming monsters into your party, and that endless, addictive grind down into the dungeon. I've come back to it again and again over the years, and it never really left me.

These days I'm a professional developer, but this project isn't about that. It started as a personal experiment in a different way of building software: a project implemented entirely with the help of AI, from the code to the art to the music. I figured the best way to really test that idea was to take on something I cared about deeply, so I set out to faithfully remake Mordor in a modern engine (Godot), targeting desktop and mobile.

Repo: https://github.com/matteo-prosperi/DungeonsOfDejremake

I've tried hard to stay true to the original's formulas and content rather than reinventing them. Every mechanic traces back to the original game as the source of truth. That said, I did make some deliberate quality-of-life changes:

• Single hero with AI-driven companions instead of a fixed party, plus optional local couch co-op for two players.
• No aging, gold is auto-banked, and death sends you back to town instead of leaving a corpse to recover.
• Full controller support alongside keyboard/mouse and touch, with a phone-friendly layout for mobile.
• A 2D top-down map with paperdoll monster art, rather than the original's first-person corridors.

A few notes the people here will care about: it redistributes no original game content. All art, music, and sound are original AI-generated replacements, and you bring your own copy of the game (the data is extracted locally on your device). To play the full content (all 15 levels) you'll need the full retail game, still purchasable from Decklin's Domain. If you'd rather use the original artwork and sound effects, you can extract those from your own copy and toggle them on in the settings. It's entirely non-commercial.

I'll be honest and acknowledge that AI-generated art and AI-assisted coding are contentious topics, and I understand why people feel strongly. For me personally, it's simply that I never would have had the skill or the time to build this otherwise. It would have stayed a wish, like it has for years. I hope folks will receive it graciously, or simply ignore it, whichever they prefer.

This is a one-person hobby project, made out of love for Mordor. I'd be honored to hear what this community in particular thinks.