For the past month or so I've been taking a look at the innards of T-Engine hacking away to make a module. I was meaning to make it for this year 7drl competition, but at the time I found myself travelling and moving with no PC at all. So, after a couple of months pencil and paper designing and testing I finally started working properly this month. I think I might be able to release a proof of concept/uber-early alpha next week to start getting proper feedback in the systems, before adding story bits, challenges and proper graphics (t-engine display works better with tiles).
I really suck with announcements since I wrote a wall of text which was all rambling and thunder and tl;dr. So, trying to keep things simple here:
- Roguishlike is a work name, haven't settled in a proper name yet.
- It's influenced mostly by sil and brogue, but also dark souls and desktop dungeons.
- The main focus is to expand bump mechanics, making a kind of gladiator/duelling combat model more aking to a boardgame than a pc rpg.
- No stats (so far, I haven't ruled them out fo'sure), only perks to define characters (think Desktop Dungeons here).
- Making character builds: More sil and dark souls than brogue in this regard, like, being able to plan out ahead, instead of having to deal with what the rng throws at you.
- "Word" based magic: you learn words of power a la Ultima, with some really simple effects, and combine them for more complex spells.
*I do need to say, magic is more akin to dark souls, as a kind of dueling wizard, I haven't finished designing ranged combat since melee is deadly.
- Low Healht/Stamina pools: Every action, even spells use stamina as resource, and combat is resolved as a series of turns of attacks and counterattacks gaining some sort of momentum until a hit is resolved, and so far there can be 1 hit kills (but these won't be 1 turn kills).
- Consumables: There are consumables in game, but using them in combat can be exploited by adversaries (so now being low HP its not a matter of squeezing a healing potion to go on, rather a choice, can I heal in the middle of combat and get away with it?).
- De-emphasize random loot: Im not sure if this one is going to be popular
. I'm having a really short list in the loot department, and each type of armor/weapon should impact how a character plays. Heavy armor impacts how a character moves in the battlefield and how long can go in fight before running out of stamina vs a really light armor, or no armor at all. In the same fashion, a swordsman should play differently than a pikesman, as weapon allow different moves a combat styles. There will be random egos and some artifacts but these are more akin to brogue runics and dark souls rare weapons. Ideally any smart player should be able to win the game with lower quality/tier weapons (meant to be harder, but not impossible).- Combat: For now i'm trying to make a compelling melee combat that goes beyond merely bump into something, or 3 enemies go to choke an kill one by one. I'm aiming at having a small bestiary, but with each creature more distinct and floor 1 monsters still be a threat to endgame characters. It should present mostly 1 v 1 situations, with some 2 v 1 and 3 v 1 situations rare or avoidable. I'm aiming for these situations should be stressing for both the character and the player, but not obligatory restarts.
- Scope: I'm planning a midsize game. Something between 4 and 8 hours, but this one is like in the planning stages. I do have a setting, number of levels in the dungeon, and so on, but before all that I wanna have the core combat mechanics completede.
And that's it, I know I'm probably forgetting something (as if Im not worried enough about feature creep!) but, please let me know what you think guys.
I'll add the alpha as soon as I finish to hack all the combat things into it (sorry for what I'm doing to your code darkgod haha!).
Saluts!