This week I'm working on overhauling my roguelike's UI - to add a way to play using just one button, both for accessibility and also potentially touchscreen support!
Here's a mockup I made to show how it could look.
Here's an upcoming trinket in Shattered Pixel Dungeon that I expect to be pretty polarizing.
Normally when dealing or blocking damage in Shattered, the average result is the most likely one, and the min or max are pretty unlikely. The thirteen leaf clover inverts this, making extreme results more likely than the average. This makes combat much less consistent, for better or worse!
This week we're putting the bullet into bullet hell with the hit SHMUP roguelike shooter Star of Providence!
Originally titled "Monolith", this NES-inspired modern retro shooter has it all: ghosts, mages, cybernetic constructs, giant spinning razor weapons, and of course: a talking cat.
Day 3 of #roguelike dev: monsters now move once you see them (once their fog of war disappears), and they can attack you. And of course, they can ki--WHAAT?!??
Day 2 of prototyping, let's see if it sticks. Added a simple fog of war (visible or not), the ability to range attack (click on a monster), and an out-of-range error. And a crapton of refactoring...
Rogule es un juego online de mazmorreo roguelike. Su particularidad es que sólo puedes jugar un dungeon al día. Así que, si lo juegas, esta guía con información y consejos de supervivencia te interesa.
Beginnings of a quick-and-dirty #roguelike dungeon crawler prototype. You can move around (not into walls), attack enemies, kill and die (get game over). And see stats. It's all a messy WIP.
I'm not one for "New Year's resolutions", but I am one for overly ambitious projects.
For 2023, Project365 is "One New Game Per Day".
Given that I have 634 unplayed games in my Steam account and {mumble} unredeemed bundle Steam keys, there's a reason my unplayed collection is tagged "Pile of Shame".
I'll pin this to my profile, and give a brief summary here each day (or x, if I miss x days due to work or stuff).
I'll play 15-30 minutes of (at least) one new game I've never played before (or played less than 15 minutes of). I'll give every game at least 15 minutes, even if I hate every minute of it.
I'm also open to suggestions; if you reply to this thread with a game, I'll schedule it, or tell you what I thought of it.
One of the things that's come up is that I have a bunch of games that I've played once, and not touched again.
Game number five in this month's Humble Choice Bundle is Terraformers. It's a "turn-based colony builder and resource management game with roguelike elements", built around an Earth expedition to terraform Mars.
You start with a single base, and need to explore and colonise various areas of the planet, gathering a whole load of different resources, which in turn pay for the various "research projects" that are delivered in a roguelike card-shuffle each turn.
Some turn-based games could be categorised as "just one more turn" games. Those games in which you're so deeply engrossed, that you look up, and the sun is coming up, and you need to call in sick so you can get some sleep, and then play for the rest of the day.
The key to those games is that they're scratching a particular itch, in an enjoyable and satisfying way. There's a constant series of build-ups then payoffs, and the effort->reward loop keeps those sweet dopamine hits coming at the right intervals.
I think this is why an integrated and well-planned narrative is so important; that's frequently the key to the payoffs.
Terraformers prods at the same territory, without delivering on the same satisfaction. I clocked out at just over 90 minutes, and just felt frustrated.
At the start of the game, you're presented with a choice of two leaders. Each leader has three skills, and a permanent buff. That bit's critical, because after each in-game year, you have to select a replacement leader.
I get why it's done from a gameplay mechanics perspective, but it feels like it repeatedly broke my sense of connection with the colony.
The game sets itself up as an "ancestors planting a tree" kind of story. It makes it clear that the colonists are doing this with the realisation that they'll never enjoy the fruits of their labour. I think that might be one of the key problems with the game.
I understand that the in-game population is building towards a long term goal with little short-term payoff, but the player needs some short-term payoffs, or else it feels more like a job than a game.
On top of everything else, Terraformers gives the population a hedonic adaptation loop. As they game goes on, it requires an increasing amount of effort to keep them happy, as they adapt to life on Mars.
With the repeated loop of disconnection, the cost of research projects grinding upwards and needing more resources, and the population becoming increasingly demanding, I eventually just tapped out.
Terraformers has some interesting ideas, but ultimately it felt like the gameplay was a lot of effort for little reward, and left me feeling pretty: