A new roguelike - The Ground Gives Way

[BtS]

Hi!
I am a roguelike developer and I have been working on a game for a number of years now. It is called "The Ground Gives Way", It is currently fully playable and I plan to release it this year (for Windows).
Some of the features:

• Improvisation-based progress (i.e., your progress depends entirely of what you find in the game).
• Highly varying game play.
• No experience points or character levels, no automatic health regeneration.
• Hundreds of interesting items, and a lot of content.
• Very simple and intuitive interface.
• Small levels, short game time and rapidly increasing difficulty

You can read more about the design and development of the game on my new website/blog, www.thegroundgivesway.com. I hope you find it interesting!

[getter77]

Ah, the mystery is revealed!   

Sounds quite promising indeed.

[guest509]

Looks like one of those short games with infinite variety? The 'new model' roguelike Andrew Doull was speaking on?

I'll be playing this for sure.

[BtS]

I don't think I am familiar with that concept, do you have a link to where he talks about this? It would be interesting!

[guest509]

It is here BTS. Just a quick note. My memory made it a bigger deal than it was.

http://roguelikedeveloper.blogspot.com/2013/09/post-modern.html

I'm going to agree though, procedural generation plus permadeath is great for a shorter length game with tons of variety each play through.

[BtS]

Thank you Jo! Interesting read, and also interesting thread on Reddit. I had not seen it so thank you! Yes, it really seems Andrews description fits my game pretty well. I have a new post describing this concept further: http://www.thegroundgivesway.com/design-goal-variation/

[guest509]

Yes it's an excellent design principal that goes with permadeath and procedural generation very well. I call it 'short/wide' but the term 'variation' is great.

I'll be playing when you release.

[Enke]

Sounds like a great game!

[Stone Dog]

If you're prepared to say, I'd like to know when you're planning to release (something more precise than early '14).

Looking awesome, by the way.

[BtS]

I don't dare to say anything more than "within a few months", but I'll let you know when I set a specific date. I would like to polish it and get it tested a bit before I release. Thank you very much for your interest, I will post any updates on my blog. 

[BtS]

The game is now approaching release, I have set up a form so you can be notified when it is available: http://www.thegroundgivesway.com/download/.

[Legend]

Looks pretty cool. Fullscreen?!

[BtS]

Looks pretty cool. Fullscreen?!

Thank you! It runs in a normal console window so it depends on your Windows version I guess (in Windows 8 it doesn't seem to work).

[awake]

Thank you Jo! Interesting read, and also interesting thread on Reddit. I had not seen it so thank you! Yes, it really seems Andrews description fits my game pretty well. I have a new post describing this concept further: http://www.thegroundgivesway.com/design-goal-variation/

That makes so much more sense than what e.g. ToMe is trying to be imho, best of luck to you.

[mushroom patch]

This short/wide concept sounds good on paper, but the game is only as wide as the field of optimal play -- which is usually quite narrow and difficult to control -- unless there's so much slack that the game is too easy. When people figure out your short/wide game, you're going to realize what you have is just a short game.

(To clarify, I'm referring here to the blog post referenced by Jo, not this particular project.)