I finally got some time to play my own 7drl and managed to win it.
Screenshot:
Downloads:
win32,
linux and
osx.
Not every attempt is winnable I guess.
But game is rather short - 10-15 minutes I think.
So several attempt are not too time consuming.
Actually it's more of 5drl, than 7drl.
1st day I spent prototyping 2 other ideas I had.
1st idea was suggested by my friend.
Kind of ZombielandRL. The trick is - you constantly move to
the right. And there is horde of zombies to the left.
ANY successful attack of zombie and you are part of them.
Idea was to make some limited use items like shotguns and pistols
+terrain (climb on the roof of bus, roll under fallen tree, etc),
+some special abilities like long jump, wall jump, mb some kicks and punches.
But when I made simple prototype, I found that it's very hard to balance difficulty.
You need some kind of AI director to make up situations where player can barely
escape zombies if doing things right. I decided that there is high chance to fail
to do this in 7 days (along with the remaining work).
Next idea was RGBRL. Enemies of 7 main color (R,G,B,R+G,R+B,G+B,R+G+B),
and various color changing tools - mirrors, filters, prisms etc.
But what is good for puzzle isn't good for roguelike.
I failed to think a way of convenient controls for all this things.
I made some kind of arena where you can place all this items,
and than monsters are coming from different sides, you supposed to lure
them in specific spot and kill with corresponding light.
But it failed in practice.
Than I came up with idea of Dungeon Sweeper.
Formula of the game is Desktop Dungeon+Minesweeper+PuzzleRogue.
You can see sum of levels of monsters in adjacent cells.
By analyzing this numbers you can find monster of your level and attack it,
probably using some of spells prior to this.
Most popular choice is sleep. If you know where monster is for sure
and know it's level - you can put it to sleep than close in and make blow first.
If you carry some weapons and monster is not +2 levels from you,
you can kill it with one blow, thus avoiding taking any damage.
Other available spells are:
Reveal - you need to select at least monster level/2 power level of spell to successfully reveal monster.
Pull/Fetch - move things around. For items max distance if equal to power level.
For monsters max distance is equal to power level/level of monster.
Pulled monsters become aggressive.
And finally - Invisibility. In order to successfully hide from monster power level of invisibility
must be greater than level of monster!
That makes things a little more difficult at last level with lvl9 monster,
since max power level of spell is 9. You can't hide from lvl9 monster.
But you still can put it to sleep. Attacking monster will break invisibility.
Mana spent is equal to power level used for all spells.
Because there is a lot of information to be displayed for each cell,
I decided to use graphical backend. When I tried to draw some tiles,
I figured out that pixel artists are indeed masochists.
There is very little pixel art oriented software.
And everything I tried is either bugged or not too convenient (for pixel art).
Best thing I found is pixen. But it is crashing time to time.
After I done some basic framework, I've spent 3 evenings drawing tiles.
Actual game was written in 2 days of rush coding.
I had around 2 hours to balance things a little.
I managed to make game more or less challenging and winnable,
but there are some useless items - rings of fire and cold.
It's much easier to put wizards to sleep and one shot kill'em,
than spend time with rings.
Probably ring is required if main boss (lvl10 monster) is wizard.
Shield also not too useful until lvl3 of dungeon.
Ah! Main task in a game is to clear 3 levels of dungeon of monsters.
You advance to next level once you kill all monsters on current one.
There are a few quickly done achievments to accomplish.
One of them is really hard.
Experience system was borrowed from POWDER.
You need to collect 100 exp to advance to next level.
Killing monster of your level gives you 10 exp.
If monster is 1 level higher than you - 15 exp.
If monster is 2 levels higher than you - 20 exp.
There are 10 lvl1 monsters, 10 lvl2 monsters and 10 lvl3 monsters on 1st level.
So you are guaranteed to be lvl4 by the end of first level of dungeon.
Actually it's not much of a dungeon. 15x15 field with a few walls
At lvl1 things may be somewhat hard until you find amulet of protection from poison.
Than you can easily kill snakes and eat poisonous corpses.
Ah! Items!
There are only 3 slots for items. Items are picked up automatically.
Once all 3 slots are full - next picked item will discard first picked item.
i.e. item will be lost!
Potions, food and corpses are consumed automatically.
Beware of poisoned corpses!
Corpses of wizards restore mana.
Corpses of kobolds are not edible at all!
If at starting location you are surrounded by lvl2+ monsters - use invisibility to sneak past them.
When 1 turn of invisibility is remaining - you can recast it without being noticed by monsters.
Healing potions can cure poison. Wielding amulet of protection from poison when already
poisoned also removes poisoned status.
Known bug on macosx version: backspace is not working. sorry.
Once I'll get some free time I'll probably make new version with
races and classes, with more balanced items and monsters,
and much more achievments
Good luck and have fun!
