Six Way Wanderer [7DRL 2015 SUCCESS]

[binary_headspace]

Success: You can play it here: http://www.mikesspace.net/sww/ (please use your phone or tablet!)

I have been wanting to take part in a 7drl for years but work always got in the way. Not this year though!

My first 7drl is "Six Way Wanderer", a web based roguelike based on the idea of progression via solving puzzles. Think Metroid and the dungeons in the Zelda series.

I'm an experienced C/C++ coder by trade but I wanted to try something different so I am using Cocos2d-js for this. If all goes to plan, after the game is done, I'd love to rewrite this natively for phones & tablets but we'll see!

I'll be posting updates on my tumblr http://binaryheadspace.tumblr.com/ and I'll post any major progress here as well :-)

Good luck to everyone participating! I look forward to having many interesting new games to play soon :-)

[binary_headspace]

The first days progress has been good, although I pretty tired now. Everything is drawn OK and you can move around and start to use the various abilities your acquire during the game. I'm looking forward to pressing on tomorrow :-)

Screenshot & info at: http://binaryheadspace.tumblr.com/

[Samildanach]

Puzzle progression is something we don't see very often in roguelikes. I'll be interested to play this when it's done.

[binary_headspace]

OK! Six Way Wanderer is done and playable at http://www.mikesspace.net/sww!

Please play on your phone (or tablet) as it is very much designed for that!

There are of course still rough edges, missing features and things I would like to tweak, but most importantly it is done!

Time to rest now, and then I will write some more about SWW and start playing all the other successes!

[Adam Perry]

I liked this, although it was short and rather easy. I never figured out what the wind element was for outside of combat, and it would be interesting to have a second half of the game that expected you to use all four elements to solve puzzles. Still, though, an enjoyable five minutes.

[binary_headspace]

Thanks for the feedback :-)

I agree with your points - Ideally I wanted the runes to player a larger part with more puzzles using them. I have some more puzzles designed but I just ran out of time. I plan to continue working on the game so watch this space :-)

[Tim Saunders]

Hey just played through and it is a fun little romp, I especially liked the way you can progress further with new powers metroid style.

The combat goes from impossible if you meet the wrong foes to very easy once you have lightning though. I initially thought that the jewels were going to act as mana, but it turns out you can cast spells infinitely. Would be nice to have some puzzles/enemies that you need to combine the powers to defeat (as Adam Perry said above) whilst having to watch how many jewels you use.

Perhaps splitting up monsters health and attack would make it more balanced too.

Also is there a way of waiting? I died a few times because I had no choice but to move towards a 3 heart enemy.

Overall though I enjoyed it.

[binary_headspace]

Thanks for the feedback :-)

The combat does get impossible sometimes, although the way map generation works there is actually a path of least resistance:

Before the map is generated a random order of runes is created. Next a map of rooms is created that includes at least 4 (the number of runes) + 1 (for the start room) + 1 (for the exit room) = 6 dead ends. A path is traced from room to room from the start position to the first rune, then on to the second rune and so on. This assigns a stage to each room which is basically a list of which runes the player could have definitely acquired by that point. This stage is used to control which enemies are generated (as well as choosing a puzzle to generate).

Thus, if you find a room that looks too difficult you should look elsewhere as there is probably an easier path leading to a rune that can help you overcome the previously difficult room.

But! The problem of entering a room that is a insta-kill situation still remains. One solution is to allow the player to exit through a door they are standing on by clicking on themselves - I may try implementing this.

There is no way of waiting atm. I'm on the fence about this as it essentially allows a player with all runes to just keep waiting as all enemies walk into attack range. Possibly giving all runes a 2 hex range could address this somewhat (the fire run already has this range).

By splitting up monster health and attack do you mean changing the Damage = #hearts / 2 formula currently used? I'm totally open to this if it improves balance but I'd have to play around with it for ideas. If you have any let me know! :-)

I'm looking at additional puzzles and combat tweaks atm so we will see where that goes :-)

I also need to include a quick help/tutorial screen I think...

EDIT: The idea of rune attacks / powers costing gems is interesting and I had not though of that...I will probably play around with that :-)

[Tim Saunders]

"By splitting up monster health and attack do you mean changing the Damage = #hearts / 2 formula currently used?"

Yes this is what I mean as currently monsters with more health are massively more dangerous because they do more damage per turn and also have more turns alive in which to deal it before they die.

Also a spell that recovers health might help during longer fights too.

[binary_headspace]

I have posted a retrospective of my 7drl experience over at my tumblr: http://binaryheadspace.tumblr.com/

Also, thanks Tim, I'll take that into account!

[KhaoTom]

I encountered a frozen over exit that I was unable to unfreeze. I only found 3 out of the 4 runes so I think that 4th one was missing

[binary_headspace]

Did you have the wind rune? That allows you to move frozen blocks :-)

(If you had the fire rune and it didn't let you melt the block then that is a bug, but I have never seen that happen so far!)