For 7DRL 2018 I am happy to claim success of my entry 'The Sky and Depths of Kobrade Hills'.
"In the Hills of Kobrade you find a mysterious locked church. Maybe your newly aquired jumping boots can help you to find a way into it... and into the adventure taking you to the sky, the depths and back up again."
Download it here:
https://jan-rl.itch.io/tsadokh7DRL submission and rating page:
https://itch.io/jam/7drl-challenge-2018/rate/232887Roguebasin:
http://www.roguebasin.com/index.php?title=The_Sky_and_Depths_of_Kobrade_HillsTwitter:
#tsadokh
It was made with libtcod and BearLibTerminal in Python.
I was interested in making a ASCII-3D roguelike after playing a lot of Dwarf Fortress. The different z-levels triggered my imagination and I thought, what if you could move relatively freely in such an environment. So I made a very simple jump mechanic, that allows to hop up to the next z-level and a bit of airtime to move to higher grounds. I was educating myself on heightmaps from the libtcod package, to create the slopes on the ground and later also caves and more. I felt from a gameplay persepective, this is fun to just jump up and fall down the hills.
One common challenge of 3D maps in the classic 2D top down perspective is to give the player hints of other z-levels, like the one below and the one above. The ones below are now hinted at by the color and shape of the layers of air above, so they 'shine' through about four layers, and you get the impression to be able to see down. For the layer above you and the question, wheter I can jump up, or whether the block above me is blocked, I made a small HUD. Probably not the best solution, but you can get used to it and also find your way up again quite easily.
The game is filled with a few jump'n'run challenges and is in general about exploring the world most of the time vertically. Due to lack of time and a 100% convincing design idea, I skipped monsters and combat... it makes the game quite relaxing, you cannot do anything wrong and happily jump everywhere possible. Yes, a roguelike without dying... maybe I add these things after the challenge one day.
This way it became a ASCII-3D-7-Day-Rogue-Like-Adventure-Game with jumping! Enjoy the game!
