Share your ideas for 7DRL

[NeedsFoodBadly]

Got any fanciful, hopeful, outrageous, outlandish, serious or silly ideas for 7DRL?

I'll start.  Here's mine, a Roguelike based on the original Rogue...Sarah Palin!

You play the role of Sarah Palin, who must embark on a fantastic quest for relevancy and attention.  Battle hordes of liberals, lame stream media, political pundits and Gotcha Goblins as you descend deeper into the depths of madness!

Here's a mockup of the title screen:

[Z]

I wanted to create a similar thread myself.

My plan for this 7DRL is to create a more complete game based on Hyperbolic Rogue. The current version has been featured in several media, to my great surprise, as this was just an experiment, more a concept than a real game. Since the concept of using hyperbolic geometry makes an extremely minimalistic game so popular, I expect that merging it with a more complete game could bear great results.

I plan to keep the general (a bit minimalistic and DROD-like) style of gameplay, though. I feel that the usual mechanics of stats, hitpoints, heal-by-rest, accuracy and dodging, armor, and so on are overused, boring, and don't bring much to the game. Hydra Slayer's mechanics are more interesting and would fit the hyperbolic world, but I don't want to repeat it either. Especially 7DRLs should try to replace this with a more interesting, tactical gameplay.

The new version is planned to allow players to explore several types of lands, each of them including specific monsters, terrain features, mechanics, items, and treasures. One of these lands will be the icy one from the current version (although with new items and boundaries with other terrains), so Hyperbolic Rogue will be a kind of a subset of Hyperbolic Rogue II. I am afraid that this might be considered cheating by someone, but I don't think this is a problem (the original Hyperbolic Rogue was an out-of-challenge 7DRL itself, and e.g. Jeff Lait also tends to reuse parts of his previous 7DRL entries, and also this is roughly equivalent to reusing "@ moving on screen", with a difference that the geometry is very special).

My other plan (and a suggestion to all 7DRLers) was to see what is the theme of the Experimental Gameplay Project and try to make the game consistent with their theme. Since this project also aims at creating experimental games in 7 days, I think it is a very cool idea to make the game which fits both challenges. (Februrary's theme was Infinite World, which fits Hyperbolic Rogue extremely well.) March's theme turns out to be Economy. I think this theme also fits roguelikes quite well, since resource management is so important. I'll try to make the 'economy' in HyperRogue II interesting. I also recommend everyone to try to create a roguelike with some kind of interesting resource management, and swamp the Experimental Gameplay Project with roguelikes.

[NeedsFoodBadly]

Hyperbolic mixed with more traditional Roguelike play would be great!

[Darren Grey]

I plan to keep the general (a bit minimalistic and DROD-like) style of gameplay, though. I feel that the usual mechanics of stats, hitpoints, heal-by-rest, accuracy and dodging, armor, and so on are overused, boring, and don't bring much to the game.

What is DROD?

I've come to a similar conclusion myself lately about stats, dodging etc.  Deterministic systems should be the norm in games with permadeath.  Failute should always be from your own mistakes, not the whims of the RNG.  Dice rolls are an inheritance of table top gaming, where there was a specific tension to picking up the dice and rolling them hoping for a specific number.  When a computer does it and you never ever see the calculation then it just feels arbitrary and unfair.  Not fun at all.

Equipment and items are also boring as they take away from the fun of interactive gameplay.  You should spend your time making tactical decisions, not fiddling about in menus.

Anyway, my 7DRL 'Rogue Rage' has nothing to do with economy, and I'm sure as heck not changing my design now    If you want to know all the gritty details I've got them in a spreadsheet (take note of the different tabs):

https://sites.google.com/site/darrenjohngrey/games/roguerage-designdoc.xls

As a simple overview, it's a melee combat game that encourages fighting against groups.  You attack enemies just by standing next to them, with bump-to-hit triggering special attacks.  The exact effects depend upon your stance, and you switch between these freely.  There is no character progression between learning new stances.  You have a Rage meter that increases in battle, and when it hits 100 you get quite immense power for a short amount of time.  Outside of Rage you're much weaker.

I'm hoping it'll be quite fun.  I don't think I've made a game yet where many people have actually found the gameplay fun, though I've been praised for other things.

[Z]

What is DROD?

Deadly Rooms of Death, a quite old game close to a puzzle roguelike, but without any randomness (predesigned levels) and checkpoints instead of permadeath. I have played the old (2002) Architect's Edition which was great, and Journey to Rooted Hold (also very good, but not as novel). Architect's Edition is free, so I recommend to try it (although maybe the JtRH demo or some other version also includes the first part for free with some improvements, I am not sure now). I referred to it because I discovered that some of my ideas for monsters are a bit similar to those in DROD (and also because it has been mentioned in the other thread).

[ejg_dnd]

For roguelike ideas, I think my 7drl.org post is particularly apt.

I like the idea of an economy focused roguelike.  Might use that for my 7drl.

[Krice]

Yeah, this is what we need. More ideas. Let's throw in some ideas. Fuck.

[NeedsFoodBadly]

Yeah, this is what we need. More ideas. Let's throw in some ideas. Fuck.

Enter Dungeons of Blank, Get to Level X, Retrieve Amulet of Blank.

Your move.

[guest509]

  I made a little program that spit out roguelike ideas. I can't find it now. It was a couple of years ago when I first started coming around here. Basically the out put was.
  You play a BLANK searching for the BLANK.

  I had a text file with a bunch of professions for the first blank and one with random nouns for the second.  It was funny for about 10 seconds.


EDIT: And my idea this year is You play a Klingon searching for the Genesis Device. But I may just make an interface for my card game. But I don't think that's much of a 'game'. Just sort of a drag and drop, die roll and shuffle engine. So we'll see. Depends on time I think.

-JO

[guest509]

@Darren - Cool beans on going Hex man. You are doing this with the ToME4 Engine, correct? Does that easily support hexes?

[Krice]

Enter Dungeons of Blank, Get to Level X, Retrieve Amulet of Blank.

Your move.

You are a shopkeeper and you need to get some new items in your shop. However it requires a long journey over dangerous wilderness with the usual bandits and critters trying to kill you. With couple of pack mules you begin your adventure.

[ejg_dnd]

Ok lets continue adding more ideas.  May put them up on 7drl.org

-Suicidal roguelike: You play a @ that is really hard to kill.  Your goal is to repeatedly "die" in a certain amount of time to descend to the next level of the dungeon.  As you level up, you can make yourself more vulnerable, or get talents that can be used to achieve this goal.  Conversely, the monsters keep getting weaker on each level.

-Wall sliding roguelike:  You must always be adjacent to a wall.  You can only attack enemies if they are next to a wall.  Several abilities, such as creating or rearranging walls, will be useful for you to attack otherwise unreachable enemies and get to the stairs.

-Photographic roguelike: You don't have any weapons, but you do have a camera.  Your goal is to take as many pictures of monsters as possible, before time runs out, or you run out of food.  Additional points may be added if there is interesting scenery around the monsters.

-Instant healing roguelike: Your health regenerates really fast, you are up at full health each round.  Conversely, you can only get killed if you take that much damage in a turn.

[Darren Grey]

Jo: Yup, T Engine supports hex as of b38 :-)

[NeedsFoodBadly]

Enter Dungeons of Blank, Get to Level X, Retrieve Amulet of Blank.

Your move.

You are a shopkeeper and you need to get some new items in your shop. However it requires a long journey over dangerous wilderness with the usual bandits and critters trying to kill you. With couple of pack mules you begin your adventure.

I was actually just reading an article about a roguelike pretty much like that the other day.  Darn me if I can't find it now, but it was a working game where you played a shopkeeper next to a dungeon, and heroes would come and sell their items and you would also sell items to them, in an intricate dance of trying to make profit, and keeping them equipped with gear just good enough for them to bring back more loot to sell/buy from you.

[oohara]

Got any fanciful, hopeful, outrageous, outlandish, serious or silly ideas for 7DRL?

* kamikaze dwarf roguelike
You are a devout kamikaze dwarf.  Your only attack is
self-destruction.  If you do it right, your god will
resurrect you.
This idea is stolen from Every Extend Extra:
http://www.everyextendextra.com/

* lich roguelike
You explore a dungeon in a human form.  You will die
sooner or later.  When you die, you transform into a lich
and explore the _same_ dungeon again.  Your ghost appears
this time.  It does exactly what you did.  In other words,
it is your pet which is as wise as you are.  Plan for
your better afterlife.
This idea is stolen from Onore no Shinzuru Michi wo Yuke:
http://www.fromsoftware.jp/game/archive/oreike/