So what is shadowcasting, and why are we putting it in our game? Basically, shadowcasting is a technique were you let objects in your level cast a shadow on everything behind it (from the light's perspective), rendering it invisible to the player.
The thing with topdown games is that they give the physical player a bird's eye of view, which allows him to see things the character in the game really can't see. By using the player as a 'lightsource' in our shadowcasting algorithm, we can combat this 'visual omnipotency' by simply drawing shadows over anything the in-game character wouldn't be able to see.
This really gives a special feeling to the game. To show this to you, I have selected a few 'before' and 'after' pictures. Again, the sprites are still funky so you'll have to imagine the blood on the floor and the monstrous enemies yourself, but here you go:
And another one:
The last one is my favourite. Rather than already getting a pretty good vision on everything that is close to the door or getting distracted by some tunnel that is next to the one you're in, you have to slowly creep into the room - but wait, what if there's a monster standing right around the corner?
This selective reduction of the player's field of view turns hearing into a more 'legitimate' sense. You can't fully rely on your eyes anymore. You may not see the monster, but that doesn't mean there isn't one close to you.
Didn't you hear the scraping of claws over granite right there?!?
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