GOB! [7DRL 2017]

[st33d]

Plan: You are are Gob, a big happy mouth. You shoot things. Shooting things costs health. There's spells. Spells augment shots, costing more health.

Had various plans for 7DRL. But since Unity is the only IDE I could comfortably get working on my new PC, I ended up taking several broken Unity engines I've made over the years and tried to glue bits of them together to finally make something work.

I got a roguelike engine going with no Chuckle Brothers turns (to me, to you). Everyone decides (correcting as we go), then everyone acts at the same time. Mmm, smooth. The bullets then test for collision during the animation. This makes it much easier to track than my previous attempts at bullets which required the player to guess if the bullets check for collision at the beginning of their turn or at the end. It's a mesh of realtime and turn based.

Normally everyone just goes for instant attacks on ranged weapons. This is more sort of bullet-time stuff with bullets colliding as well. I felt that I haven't seen that yet so let's have a gander.

Progress Gifs:
https://twitter.com/st33d/status/838053198300606464
https://twitter.com/st33d/status/838155687670779905
https://twitter.com/st33d/status/838200152728940544
https://twitter.com/st33d/status/838522546819588097

[st33d]

Shooting things costs health.

Ho-lee-shit was that a bad idea.

Here's the deal. You shoot, your health goes down. Now what? I guess you have to regenerate. Well it's a bit easy now but I guess you can still be overwhelmed right? Except you won't let that happen. You'll play in the most boring way possible, because that's what regenerating health forces you to do.

Even after I removed health-shot-cost and regen, it was still too easy. So I went the D.Grey route and removed all hit-points.
 
The state of the game now is a lot better. I've got spells, but they feel a bit underwhelming (except when you combo them), and I've got a few monsters. I had to do a lot of work on their AI so that they can pose a threat - because it's super easy to cheese with a gun. I could do more but I doubt I have the time.

It's looking promising but the internet at my house has been cut off somehow. There's insomnia stopping me from getting to sleep and building works outside stopping me from staying asleep. I've got a bunch of mechanics, death, and descending levels, but still no "game".

AAAARRRRGGHHH!!!

Now I'm off round someone's house to see what they've been up to for 7DRL.

[Avagart]

Huh, I was supposing you are going to implement it as "shooting costs health; killing regenerates health". Your gifs reminds me good old Dyna Blaster / Bomberman a bit

[st33d]

After I removed health it occurred to me that I could have done "glory kill" stuff a la nu-Doom, but health just didn't feel right. It suggests you get more health later - meaning it gets easier. And even having a tiny bit of non-regen health just killed all the tension - who cares, there'll be a health pickup somewhere.

-

I've got it pulled together as a sort of score-based arena shooter where you go down levels to increase your multiplier and up the difficulty. I added charges to spells at the last minute and finally they feel useful - you get to spam a spell 5 times before it runs out.

This is really important as you can equip multiple spells at the same time - there's even a clone-spell that copies all of the spells that come next in the sequence you've chosen. Meaning you can shoot and suddenly there's blasts, laser fire, mines, and another package of the same behind it. Because bullets block bullets, it's a huge waste creating a combo and seeing it get sniped.

I feel like it's got potential but needs room to grow. I think I should see what people make of it, and maybe return to it after 7DRL.

https://twitter.com/st33d/status/840314583260770304

Expect a link on itch.io soon.

[st33d]

Done 

https://st33d.itch.io/gob

[javelinrl]

Cool little game, very brainy  I wish that enemy fire would actually hurt them so you could set up makeshift "trap moves" and such.

Moving around is a bit confusing with a lot of unintentional backtracking. A minimap would be good but I don't think it really fits into the game. Maybe if the game had some unique tiles (let's say, statues of different colors) it would make it easier to remember where you are. Finally, it should have some sort of indication of where the map borders are, so that you know it without having to walk up and close (which could lead to you getting trapped since you have less movement options).

Pretty hard too, haven't been able to beat it easily yet! Good amount of challenge for a "puzzle-like rogue-like" 

[Publius]

The game feels very arcade (which is supported by graphics & sound) and I don't think it needs additional complexity: it's extremely playable as it is. Although I have to admit that I find the second level impassable already (and I'm annoyed just enough to retry, so that's OK)

edit: Ok, now I see that you have to actually equip the special weapons. Silly me

One issue I found: cannons can be generated facing the wall of the level.

[javelinrl]

I don't think arcade is the best description here since arcade gamers are seldom turn-based. I think I can easily get to level 4 now - I feel like if I knew I was getting close to the end I'd try to press on but my guess is that it's possibly neverending so there's no much point in soldiering on unless there's new content to uncover.

[Publius]

I don't think arcade is the best description here since arcade gamers are seldom turn-based.

You're probably right, I meant arcade as in coin-operated machines, referring mainly to level of complexity I expect from such a game. It should be fun because of its simplicity. Maybe what I'm trying to say is just that the feel of GOB! makes me expect something like that, and not roguelikey depths of gameplay.