Galaxy Chomp

[Dark_Oppressor]

Hi, I'm Kevin Wells and I'm currently working on a roguelike-like space game called Galaxy Chomp. We are doing a Kickstarter, which you can see here: http://kck.st/Wg2R3L

The game has a page on our site here: http://cheeseandbacon.org/galaxy-chomp/

It's real-time, which is the main place where the "-like" comes from in the genre description. It's also very roguelike. It has a randomly generated galaxy (with a variety of items, hostile ships, space features (wormholes, randomized nebulae), a tough difficulty curve, permadeath, randomized items (both parts for your ship and "potions" called computer chips that you jack into your ship's computer), and resource management.

You directly control your spaceship and fly it about space from a top-down 2D perspective. While you can equip a large variety of weapons, they automatically target and fire upon enemies within range, so you can focus on piloting your ship. This is emphasized by the fact that running into things, including other ships, causes damage, not to mention incoming weapons fire. Ships have hull, armor plating, and shields, corresponding to 3 kinds of damage: solid, explosive, and energy respectively. So collisions (with ships, solid weapon shots, etc.) cause solid damage, missile explosions cause explosive damage, and beam weapons, stars etc. cause energy damage.

You equip defensive parts to determine what kind of damage your ship defends best against. There are also movement parts, like a warp drive and faster sublight speed/maneuverability, and "other" parts, which encompasses a lot of random stuff.

I'd love any feedback on the game's (very early) development! Does this sound interesting? Would you like more info?

[getter77]

It certainly sounds promising and I bid you all the best on Kickstarting it---you may run into difficulties in terms of how raw everything still is, but on the other hand the funding target is quite modest so all I can advise is to work hard at the project updates.

[Dark_Oppressor]

Thanks for the kind words!

My only concern regarding the success of the Kickstarter is definitely that people will need to see more graphics or hear some music or something. All of the assets are still just placeholder stuff right now. I am going to post an update later tonight that shows some gameplay, and I will talk about some of the more important features of the game, too. That will be view-able here: http://kck.st/Wg2R3L

[getter77]

All I could say there is that if it comes down to using placeholders or "Artist's renders/sketches"----probably FAR better to go with the latter in terms of critical reception at the least.

[Dark_Oppressor]

Ya, I am afraid you are right. That is a real bummer, and pretty discouraging. I gather that if I showed a completed (really good) game, and just needed funding for artwork, I would fail to raise the money, because most people only care about pretty art. No wonder so many games are just nice graphics with no gameplay.

Heh, anyway sorry for the rant. My problem is that one of the primary reasons I NEED funding in the first place is for the art assets. That is the part (and I realize it is a big part, haha) I cannot do well on my own. I can design and code everything, and handle some artwork/sounds/music stuff, but I need to pay people for some really good stuff to put on top of my game! Unfortunately, it seems that without that stuff, I cannot raise the money to be able to afford that stuff. Paradox!

Here's a question: How MUCH artwork do you think it would take to help it along? I could certainly save up enough money to pay for some small amount of art assets (enough perhaps to show off the core gameplay, which would be completely implemented at that point), and then try the Kickstarter again.

[getter77]

Hard to say.

Hmm, on the one hand, you might be able to go about it at least in part via injecting levity----something akin to endearing/comical stick figures in a witty slideshow while expounding upon the fact that all else is in good shape with only this pesky visual side of things acting as the comic foil?

[Dark_Oppressor]

That's a pretty fun idea, I might try it, hehe. Worst case I will focus on implementation until this thing fails, then get an artist to make some things BEFORE the next Kickstarter.

I also plan on having an ascii mode (still graphical, just ascii sprites) that you can switch back and forth to in the game at any time, and I could put that in now, but somehow I doubt it would attract many people :-)

[Dark_Oppressor]

tl;dr
Wow, so that post turned into a book. And I really barely got to touch on all the cool stuff that is already implemented!
You can get a playable prototype of the game (for Windows) here: http://cheeseandbacon.org/galaxy-chomp-prototype.zip
The prototype is very much alpha state, and tons of things are half-implemented. But lots is in there!
Please play the game and let me know:
1) What did you like?
2) What didn't you like?
3) What confused you?

So I've been working on this a ton since the last time I posted. The Kickstarter failed, but I kind of figured it would so it wasn't too painful!

Some new developments:
-I wrote out a complete design for the whole game. Monsters, items, effects, spatial features, everything.
-It actually feels like you are playing a game now.
-You can die/lose.
-All ships have procedurally generated sprites.
-All items are in.
-All but a couple of properties (buffs/debuffs) are in.
-All monsters are in.
-Stars, asteroids, and black holes
-AI is about halfway finished (cowardly monsters flee from you now!)
-An initial huge balancing pass has been done, and I have been constantly tweaking balance ever since.

I do plan on trying Kickstarter again, but with some changes:
1) I'm going to work a little longer on the prototype, and hopefully make it more presentable. Specifically, I think I have some nice music figured out, so that might help.
2) I now have a really in-depth design written up (to the point where I have numbers figured out for most stuff), and I can present this to people so they have a really clear idea of what the game will be.
3) A playable prototype will be available from the start.
4) I am going to try lowering the amount I ask for pretty drastically.
5) My engine currently supports Windows and Linux, but I am about to get a Mac, so I can add support for that, too.

Now, for something more interesting: I have a playable prototype of the game up now at: http://cheeseandbacon.org/galaxy-chomp-prototype.zip
It's a zip file containing the Windows version of the game. I can also build the Linux version if anyone needs it.

I would greatly appreciate any feedback on this! It's a prototype, so it is very very alpha. Many features are not implemented or only half implemented. Placeholder assets abound. There are probably horrifying bugs. Perhaps most notably the interface is still all totally just thrown together. I have a number of ideas for a good UI, so that will definitely be improved later.

For feedback, some questions you might answer:
1) What did you like?
2) What didn't you like?
3) What confused you?

Quick instructions:
-Mouse is needed for all menus for now (later on I will add support for moving about in menus with the keyboard or a gamepad)
-Arrow keys move
-'Right control' "brakes" the ship
-'1 + a direction' toggles warp if you have a warp module installed
-'2' toggles cloak if you have a cloak module installed
-'3' fires your EMP if you have an EMP module installed
-'4' creates a decoy if you have a decoy module installed
-'q' toggles automated weapons fire
-'Space' is the Use key. For now, this just allows you to "use" a nearby ship upgrader
-'c' opens your inventory window
-'p' opens your equipped items window
-'Escape' toggles the main menu
-'Pause' pauses
-'Backquote (unshifted tilde)' toggles the console

-The names above items simply tell you what they are (or at least what they look like to you, this game has an ID system)
-The names above ships (including your own) are what the ship's type is.
-Nothing has a nice readable name (or description or anything) attached to it yet, so you just see what things are referred to as in the code/script files.
-Those big circles represent "auras", for lack of a better term. The white one surrounding stars and black holes shows you where its special effect will occur. The larger circle around these is whatever the color of gravity stuff is in this game (randomized due to the ID system), and represents the range of the objects gravity.
-Similarly, ships can have an aura as well, if they have a module installed that creates one.

-Those bars in the top left that currently have no bloody labels (why?) are:
Hull
Armor
Shields
Juice
Cheese

-Hull and shields regenerate over time, but armor doesn't.
-If you run out of hull, you die. Armor and shields just protect your hull from damage.
-Three kinds of damage: solid, explosive, energy
-The 3 damage types and 3 defense types (hull, armor, shields) have a sort of rock-paper-scissors relationship going on
-Juice is used up by moving, firing weapons, using manually controlled modules, being cloaked, etc. It is kinda sorta like mana, in that once it is used up, you cannot do those things until you replenish it (with the exception of moving; you just move more slowly).
-You get more juice by: a) right ctrl-clicking a pancake, which converts it to juice, or b) flying near a star. Beware, flying near a star also causes energy damage, and stars have gravity that will pull you off course!
-Cheese is your food clock. It steadily decreases over time. The only way to increase it is to eat cheese. If it runs out, you die.
-If you increase your cheese bar beyond the max, your ship becomes overcharged and all cooldowns are decreased, but whenever a weapon fires it may deal explosive damage directly to your hull.

A few tips:
-Waffles are money (i.e., gold)
-This particularly applies to short range weapons like your starting cannon: use 'q' to toggle auto weapons fire. Leave it off until an enemy has fired at you, then quickly close and turn it on, unloading your weapon into their face!
-Don't attack the 'mirror' monster without a non-solid damage weapon (i.e., something explosive or an energy-based weapon). It has the "reflect solids" perma buff, which means it will reflect solid objects (ships, projectiles) away from it. If you use your starting shotgun-style cannon against it, you will get a face-full of cannonballs yourself!
-The 'boomer' monster has the "conflict" perma buff, so any ships near it fire their weapons at random, ignoring whether you want them to or not.
-If you get a cloak module, toggle it with '2'
-While cloaked, taking damage depletes your "cloak meter", and if it hits 0 you are forced out of cloak
-If you get a camo module, activate it by not moving, taking damage, or firing weapons for a few moments
-When cloaked or camouflaged, firing any of your weapons will disable it.
-'hoarder' monsters have extra waffles and no weapons, but will run from you
-Watch out for the various thief monsters, as they will steal your waffles and inventory items
-Don't linger, because the monsters in an area grow stronger over time, and cheese becomes more scarce

Some console commands of interest:
-'cl_ascii_mode <true/false>' will toggle ASCII mode, which is exactly what it sounds like
-'cl_dev <true/false>' will toggle dev mode, which causes lots of info to be displayed
-'heal' heals you
-'ident' identifies all your items
-'kill' commits suicide
-'purge' kills all enemies on screen

Thanks!