Hi Everyone!
This is my third iteration on a browser based rogue-like. Its getting pretty close to completion and I'm looking for some feedback.
https://justin-wang123.itch.io/rogue-fable-iiThe main objective for this project was to create a game that is playable in a single hour while containing enough content and variety to make repeated playthroughs novel and enjoyable. I'm pretty heavily inspired by Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup and I consider this an attempt to capture the spirit of that game for times when I don't have 8+ hours to do a full DCSS run.
Features, design decisions and some rambling:
Themed Zones:The game contains a total of 7 different themed zones each with its own unique monsters, traps, environmental hazards and level generators. For each playthrough the first few dungeon levels are always the same basic zone but then in later levels 3 of these themed zones are chosen randomly. The idea here is to give the player different combinations of themed zones with each playthrough. I think that just random placement of rooms, corridors and monsters is not enough to really make each run feel different so this is my attempted solution to that problem.
Character Classes:There are 6 classes which I've tried to differentiate as much as possible. With rogue-likes, classes are kind of a tricky problem in my opinion. With random loot, its possible that many of the items that you find may be useless if your abilities are really solidly defined by your class. So to try to overcome this I've borrowed some ideas from DCSS and given each class a starting book from which they learn their class specific abilities. Later in the dungeon you will find the books of other classes allowing you to multiclass to some extent if you choose. There are some inherent statistical differences between the classes but most of it is defined by their starting equipment and their starting book. In this way I'm trying to have the classes be most differentiated at the start of the game but then the way in which you develop your character is dependent on what you find later in the dungeon.
Damage Model:I've continued with a fairly deterministic damage model though with the addition of random critical hits and misses thrown in a very small percent of the time. I find that random damage is just sort of noise when I play games and just makes it difficult to judge tactics while not really adding that much unpredictability. I cant really call the difference between 5,6 and 7 damage 'random'. So my solution to this was some small percent of the time there's a critical hit (x2 damage) and some small percent of the time there's a miss (0 damage). My thinking here is that this reduces noise, increases the players ability to play tactically and when the dice do fall a certain way a big effect is produced.
I've thought a lot during this project about this sort of 'meaningful randomness'. The themed zones could be seen as a form of tackling this issue. I've also generally moved away from say generating 3-6 gold per level and instead just made it a constant 4 but with a 10% chance to spawn a treasure room on a level full of piles of gold. I feel like players are unlikely to notice these small fluctuations in gold per level but a room full of treasure is sure to get their attention. This sort of design is carried through a lot of the project and is something I'll likely continue thinking about in the future.
Feedback:All feedback is greatly appreciated. The game is pretty close to what I'd consider 'complete' there's just some graphics missing in a few places and maybe a few balance issues here and there. I haven't really gotten to adding a lot of help text yet so one thing I'm particularly interested in is any confusion that crops up during play, anything that doesn't make sense. Obviously balance and challenge is a pretty big deal as well. I'd like at least with the easier classes for players not to just get slaughtered in the first few minutes, so I'd appreciated your experience in this. Last but not least, crashes, bugs, weird behavior, all that stuff that I'm sure keeps us all up at night. A copy paste of the browser console after a crash would be extremely helpful.
