MidBoss (now at v0.5.3 Alpha)

[Eniko]

Hi everyone. I just released a roguelike game called MidBoss, which hinges on possessing defeated enemies in order to get stronger. The story is that you're a lowly imp, and you want to become the dungeon's final boss! But you're weak and your only special ability is possessing other creatures, so you have to work your way up through the dungeon's other creatures to finally kill and become the final boss.

It's a graphical roguelike that I initially developed for Ludum Dare #25, with the theme 'you are the villain'. After that I've continued development, cleaned up the interface, added music and better menus, and did a full rebalancing of the game's core mechanics. Turns out it's rather hard to make a balanced possession-based roguelike! The game has 12 floors before the boss, but continues infinitely thereafter, has 15 monsters to possess and 10 skills to unlock, and features a dynamic music system. It's also open source, licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA.

If you give it a try I'd really like some feedback! For now, some screenshots:

[getter77]

Congrats on the release, looks to be pretty spiffy.   

[getter77]

Now back and better in all respects with v0.5.0 Alpha

About

MidBoss is a video game about possessing your defeated enemies in order to become stronger. You play the weakest of the dungeon denizens, an imp with no ability other than possessing other creatures. Your goal is to defeat and possess increasingly stronger creatures, unlocking their abilities for yourself and becoming stronger as you go along, and eventually defeat and become the dungeon's ultimate endboss.

The game is currently in alpha and only available on Windows, that means many features are as of yet not implemented. We have however tried our best to give you a smooth, bugless experience. In the future support for Linux and OSX will be added.

Features

    -Possess your enemy and gain their strengths and skills
    -Like tooltips? We've got tooltips for everything! All the information you need at your fingertips.
    -Line of sight and fog of war systems, and none of that cone of sight stuff. We assume you can look over your shoulder.
    -An absolute mess of abilities. We've got your passives, your actives, and your innates! With only half the planned enemies implemented, there are already 35 unique abilities to discover and learn.
    -Randomly generated dungeon floors are different every time.
    -Single-file save and resume, you don't even have to click any buttons for your game to save, it's all taken care of.
    -Permanent death, if you die your save is gone! An unforgiving roguelike, just the way we like it. (save-scumming is available)
    -Full options menu including key rebinding, resolution options, and more! (FoV slider coming soon)
    -Miss the good old days? Got some nostalgia for those eye-bleeding CGA cyans and magentas? Miss the old Gameboy days, or were you more of a C64 fan? There's 12 retro mode filters available in the options menu, and more coming in the future!
    (Kitsune Games is not responsible for any loss of vision, bleeding of the eyes, or other personal injury caused by playing with the CGA mode filter active)


The current version of MidBoss is a complete, from the ground up overhaul of the old game (hereafter referred to as MidBoss Classic) which you can still find here with new graphics, better interface, more abilities, more information, and a generally massively improved experience.

[getter77]

v0.5.1

Changes in v0.5.1:

-Intermittent file IO crash fixed.
-When saving fails and there is no 'save.xml' file but there is a 'save_new.xml' file the game will continue using that file.
-Tutorial system added which displays tutorial messages organically while playing the game. Delete 'tutorial.xml' to reset all messages.
-Added a new 'Enable hints' option to the options menu, disable this to disable the tutorial messages entirely.
-A 'crash.log' file will be created when the game crashes, which means the game can safely be restarted without losing the crash report.
-Added this file to document changes between versions.

[Zireael]

Grabbed it and took it for a spin.

The inability to see enemy HP and the fact that 1st dungeon level feels really tedious are the only downsides.

[Eniko]

MidBoss v0.5.2 is now available!

Relevant changes include status effect icon art, reduced floor size and number of corridors, several bug and crash fixes, including a bug which prevented saving past floor 1 on some systems, increased usability and a rest button used to fully recover stamina/mana. Check the changelog for full changes.

Screenshot:

[getter77]

Congrats on the nice variety of gains---keep at it!  Messed around any with the recent PosChengband release that introduced Mimicry as a player option to supplement the Possession mechanics?

[Eniko]

Thanks! Would've liked to have implemented more actually new features before putting out a new version, but the save bug and the rest button kind of called for a release. Haven't heard of that one, it sounds interesting! I'll have to add playing around with that to my (daily growing ) to-do list. XD

[Eniko]

MidBoss v0.5.3 is now available!

Relevant changes include both movement and combat animations, particle system, and vastly improved input and control options including keyboard targeting and mouse movement. Check the changelog for full changes.

Screenshot:

[getter77]

The streak of robust changelogs continues I see---always a good thing! 

[Eniko]

Haha yep. I make it a habit to document my code changes thoroughly in my svn, mostly because it's nice to look back and go "OMG LOOK AT ALL THAT WORK I DID". But it's useful when release time rolls around and I can just grab all the svn log messages and parse them into a comprehensive changelog.