Caves Roguelike (36dev team)

[Pavel Provotorov]

Hello !

About two months ago, our team has released a android roguelike that is called Caves.  The game is still in early development and we hope to get feedback and improve our game.



Caves - is a traditional turn-based roguelike game , that uses pixel art graphics. The game is totally free and has no ingame purchases (only dontaions ). The game is always developing and we always read throught the feedback that players give us.

The game has its own dark atmosphere, where both magic and high technologies work together to give a interesting experience for the players. The main feature our game is the lack of corridors. We have caves, that you can freely dig or bomb, so you can create your own paths to achieve your goals.

The battle system is also very dynamic for a turn based game. Both melee and ranged combat are viable options and different items can be used to take care of your enemies. The player also stars in a high-tech base where he can upgrade skills and also install special modules for his armor.

The game also has no classes and instead has something close to the SPECIAL system. The players are free to build any character they want by spending points on different skills.




The game might be a bit luck based right now, but we ill try to fix this problem with updates and balance

The game is currently available on google play store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=thirty.six.dev.underworld
Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebuFc4nwrIc

/36dev team

[akeley]

Apk plz

[Sealer]

I love the graphics and sound in your game. They're simple but add a lot of flavour.

UI is somewhat intuitive apart from small icons near inventory for the map and help screen, I'm also not a big fan of the inventory since with many items I find myself scrolling a lot to use potions and swap weapons.

I think you've done an admirable job of using a small line of sight and 4 directional movement to your advantage. It's simple, intuitive and works really well for mobile games.

My main gripes with the game are currently:

* after finding decent equipment the difficulty goes down to medium. After finding healing items on top of that, it becomes trivial. My current character is on dlevel 5 with a couple healing crystals and hasn't experienced a challenge last 2 levels.

* mining is an interesting mechanic but it encourages fully mining out whole levels which takes a long time and is boring. Implementing resource veins where resource blocks are grouped up might be a solution.

* after exploring the first two levels I feel that I've seen everything that the game has to offer. I hope it's just because of lack of content due to it being early in development :-) I feel I need to point it out because the ui, graphics and character abilities look really solid right now.

* I'm partial about persistent resources and upgrades. It makes balancing the game difficult and will encourage 'grinding' until you get upgrades.

[Pavel Provotorov]

I love the graphics and sound in your game. They're simple but add a lot of flavour.

UI is somewhat intuitive apart from small icons near inventory for the map and help screen, I'm also not a big fan of the inventory since with many items I find myself scrolling a lot to use potions and swap weapons.

I think you've done an admirable job of using a small line of sight and 4 directional movement to your advantage. It's simple, intuitive and works really well for mobile games.

My main gripes with the game are currently:

* after finding decent equipment the difficulty goes down to medium. After finding healing items on top of that, it becomes trivial. My current character is on dlevel 5 with a couple healing crystals and hasn't experienced a challenge last 2 levels.

* mining is an interesting mechanic but it encourages fully mining out whole levels which takes a long time and is boring. Implementing resource veins where resource blocks are grouped up might be a solution.

* after exploring the first two levels I feel that I've seen everything that the game has to offer. I hope it's just because of lack of content due to it being early in development :-) I feel I need to point it out because the ui, graphics and character abilities look really solid right now.

* I'm partial about persistent resources and upgrades. It makes balancing the game difficult and will encourage 'grinding' until you get upgrades.

Thank you for a such detailed reply

We are planning to make the inventory limited and it's possible to open the full inventory screen by pressing one of the small icons.

The game difficulty is constantly being balanced and it's already hard due to the random generation of  stats/weapons for monsters.

Resources usage and mining will also be changed and probably in the near future. We are thinking about removing the permanent upgrades and remaking how the modules will be obtained. We were planning to add a full trading system, so that should also change something.

New locations and special dungeons are going to be added and there, you wont be able to mine stuff. Giving the dungeons the old-school roguelike feel )

Thanks again for the reply. It means a lot to us )

/36dev team

[Sealer]

Thanks again for the reply. It means a lot to us )

/36dev team

Happy to help, I'll be watching development of caves closely.

[DragonDePlatino]

Hey, 36dev team! Glad to see you made a thread for the game here.

I've been playing it on and off and it's really fantastic. I've been continuing one file for the past few weeks and I've finally gotten to the point where the enemies are slowly whittling me down while my resources dwindle. Very fun and very challenging game. It's especially cool seeing the caves change around you as the game is updated. I'm really glad old saves are compatible with new versions.

[Pavel Provotorov]

Hey, 36dev team! Glad to see you made a thread for the game here.

I've been playing it on and off and it's really fantastic. I've been continuing one file for the past few weeks and I've finally gotten to the point where the enemies are slowly whittling me down while my resources dwindle. Very fun and very challenging game. It's especially cool seeing the caves change around you as the game is updated. I'm really glad old saves are compatible with new versions.

Hello !

It's nice to see that people enjoy our game, because this is what motivates us to work further on the it. This is our first serious project and we hope that it will become a big success, especially when the android market is filled with so many casual games and hard games don't get much attention.

We try our best to make the saves compatible with each update and hope it will always stay this way. Big changes are coming to the upgrade/module system, so we dont know how the game will be balanced, after the updates hits the store.

Thanks for the reply and we hope that you will continue to enjoy our game )

/36dev team

[King_of_Baboons]

I have never imagined that MINING in roguelikes could be fun,but this game proved me wrong.

The only complaint I have is that a "less zoom" button would be nice.Other than that I have no problems with it.

[Aleksanderus]

The game is bad. There should be much more permament upgrades and you should rebalance monsters.

[Pavel Provotorov]

The game is bad. There should be much more permament upgrades and you should rebalance monsters.

Hello

Could you please explain what is wrong with our game in more detail ?

As i said before, we are constantly working on the balance of the game, but it is really hard for us, because the game is endless at the moment and we dont' have an end point. If there was already some sort of goal/final area of the game, then it would have been much easier to adapt the balance towards the end goal.

There will probably be no permanent upgrades anymore, since it's a roguelike and we want every new run to be the same difficulty. We want the players to get experience and not grind for the permanent stuff. The modules/upgrades will not be removed, but instead scattered through the caves. Permanent stuff will stay, but instead of going for upgrades, we will be adding unlockable content.

Thanks for the reply

/36 dev team

[Pavel Provotorov]

I have never imagined that MINING in roguelikes could be fun,but this game proved me wrong.

The only complaint I have is that a "less zoom" button would be nice.Other than that I have no problems with it.

Hello!

We are happy that you enjoy the mining mechanic of the game. We hope to expand it in the future and make it much more interesting.

We would like to add this button, but sadly it's mostly impossible, without rewriting the rendering of the field of view. Also, many players have small screens, so it will not be fair. Hope you understand

Thanks for the reply and we hope that you will continue to enjoy our game )

/36dev team

[Pavel Provotorov]

Hello everyone !

We have a teaser for the upcoming update for Caves. This one is going to pretty big and we hope that soon, the players will get the chance to explore the new content. Right now, it's about 40-50% done.

The main addition of this update, is a totally new dungeon area, that will be closer to the original gameplay of traditional roguelikes, but of course with added flavour ) The entrance to the dungeon will generate randomly in the caves. Of course there will be new monsters, items and some game mechanics.

We have got a lot of feedback and already planned the next 3 big updates, that will come after v0.94.7.0. Soon you will see hunger, the option to choose the game difficulty and a totally reworked upgrade system.

A video, that demonstrates the dungeon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4iHDCfRb4E

Best wishes

/36dev team

[Legend]

Been playing this for a few months now. Rather cool, but a few things still need some clarification.

Like those rune tiles which activate when you step on all five tiles. Does it provide a bonus only when standing on the center tile, or for the rest of the level?

Also, what exactly does the radar alert you too and how do you differentiate between the two different radars? They both appear  exactly the same so I have no idea what I am switching to when I change the radar.

[abraksil]

Looks Awesome - can you play it on PC?

[Pavel Provotorov]

Been playing this for a few months now. Rather cool, but a few things still need some clarification.

Like those rune tiles which activate when you step on all five tiles. Does it provide a bonus only when standing on the center tile, or for the rest of the level?

Also, what exactly does the radar alert you too and how do you differentiate between the two different radars? They both appear  exactly the same so I have no idea what I am switching to when I change the radar.

Hello !

We are happy to hear that you enjoy the game and we will gladly answer your questions )

Upon activating the rune tiles, it will tell you if the buff is permanent or will only for the current level. It would be illogical to make the buffs work only inside the magic symbol.

The radar shows you how close you are to one of the special places on the map (shops, portals). When clicked, the radar changes the object it points towards to.In the next update, we will be adding a text description when switching searched objects, so there should be less confusion

Best wishes

/36dev team