Something I’ve learned from watching and listening to game developers is that most players would rather play efficiently over playing for fun. There’s a number of good examples, but my favorite is from Don’t Starve.
Don't Starve Story
Simple put, the Klei added a to-do list at the top of the screen as a quasi-tutorial for new players. This ruined the game for a lot of players because one item was “Survive for seven days”. Most players did this by sitting by their campfire… for seven days straight instead of exploring like they previously did. The worst part is that a lot of them unironically complained about having to do this when no one told them to do this. A lot of players genuinely lack self-awareness.
Also, this kind of puts some “lives system” replacements into prospective and why players like them. Realistically, most of the systems that replaced “lives” are easily manipulated or are just straight up negligible. For example, losing money on death is easily countered by simply spending most of your money. Similarly, Max HP loss is pointless if your character dies in one or two hits anyway.
Personally, I say just go the roguelite route and have the player start over runs on death. But have rare items that give the player additional “lives” when they find them. Like a Bottled Second Wind, Water of Life, or Fairy Bread. Maybe add unique downsides to the items based on what revives you like Fairy Bread briefly giving you the metabolism of a fairy, (little fat/health and lot mana/magic).
So far I have been working with the classic RPG monsters you can find in the older games (Bats, Goblins, Skeletons, Slimes, snakes…) but I’m not limiting myself in that aspect. As long it mostly fits into the dungeon theme it can be an enemy.
So, going the Barony route, admittedly I think that this game reminds me of it, and Barony seemed ripe for Wg stuff, so a game with a similar template seems perfect.
Also continuing this thought, could I ask if you were partly inspired by Barony/Knew of that game, or was it more of an original Idea? Am just curious about this. @Pony
Barony is a fairly popular roguelike from back in 2015. It’s a pretty faithful translation of old school dungeon-crawlers, like Nethack, into a 3D environment. I’ve never played Barony, but I have played Stone-Soup and a lot of modern roguelites.
Ngl I was writing a description and got beat to the punch, props. Game is very fun if you enjoy difficult/very-easy-to-die-in games, but that can also be completely broken through ingenuity and luck.
Also it has a hunger system, where you can overeat (though overeating just makes you vomit) and also has a weight system.
I haven’t played Barony myself, I just know it by name but I don’t really know much about it. Tbh the idea came mostly from playing Devil Spire. The game allows you to set your character weight but doesn’t really do anything with it, which I found a bit disappointing.
I actually want to add a few NPCs in the dungeon and even have a system up and running for them, mostly for dialogue but they can give items as well, just like this little gentleman here does! (It’s a sprite I made for a LISA edit).
Haha I thought people would find the teletubby Todd funny. But don’t worry, once I’m done implementing code and start working on actual level design I’ll add better NPCs to interact with.
So far I can say the project is going great! the inventory system is finally working and spells are looking good. I still need some more time to finish adding and tweaking stuff but I believe I will have a playable prototype real soon!
I was wondering if you had included unidentifiable items in your game, cause I saw this post (@intoxicat2.bsky.social on Bluesky) on Bluesky and was instantly reminded of the cursed equipment of the Mystery Dungeon series. Most items are unidentified when found and have a chance of being cursed, which made player more wary of equipping items. Cursed items cannot be removed and must be purified by another item.
Just a small suggestion, but I hope it helps!
oooh that animation is wonderful! I understand what you’re suggesting, tbh “cursed items” were not something I really had planned to add because I thought they wouldn’t fit too well in this game since I’m taking the rogue-like approach and it didn’t seem fair to punish the player that way for trying out the items they find along the way. Instead I could retake the idea with certain items not revealing what they do until you use them, but being able to take it off if needed.
