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[JasonPickering]

Hey guys Need some feedback so here is Microgue!!

Try it

Build 2.10.2012

Basically I am at the point where I need to decide if this prototype is worth pursuing. A lot of this is repeated from my devlog so bear with me.

Now this build is an excellent vision of what the final game will be. It needs a lot of balance, which seems to be the main problem now, but all the combat is in. The player has two skills. these are built in for now but eventually the player will be able to choose which two they head into combat with.

Controls: (Updated)
click next to the player to move around, get to the 8th Floor and defeat the boss. Fireballs can be fired by clicking in the top corner and then clicking a direction.

no comment is to small. tell me everything.

eventually this will be an IOS game once I get sounds, music, and all that good stuff. also I will most likely add more content. new enemies/skills/locations. all that good stuff.

[BlueSweatshirt]

all skills cost 1 man and clicking the player opens your skill tab. let me know what you think.

no comment is two small. tell me everything.

Aside from your hilarious typos, I'd say it's just way too difficult. And it's not difficult in the sense that it's hard to play or control, it just seems impossible to win. You're put into situations where you are unable to come out alive. That has been my experiences, at least.

[Kapser]

I really like the retro graphics. I love roguelikes but I always wanted to play (or make) one that has a bit deeper tactical battle aspects. Although the game is minimalistic, I love the approach you've been taking. The game is a bit punishing, but once you get started it was rewarding.

It's hard to make perfect strategic situation, especially randomized, but the game got me thinking a few times while keeping it simple. The enemies felt well designed with the gameplay.

I'm not sure if it's a bug, but I did manage to ressurect once when knocked out by using spells. I was kinda pissed off when I died, early because it feels impossible to survive, but late one I felt that I made some mistakes, which is great. However, because of the linear and puzzle nature of the game (instead of more exploration/rpg) I didn't feel like starting over even though I really enjoyed the game. It's like the game isn't random or rewarding enough since it's not a fully featured rogue rpg but feel more like a puzzle game and puzzles have bad replayability (not sur I'm making sens). To be honest, I love how simple the game is, but I'm sure I'll be back for more when you add more content.

One other thing is I kinda wish we were able to outplay some enemies instead of running into them, but I'm not sure if the possibility to skip a round would ruin or make the gameplay too easy.

Hell, I'm gonna go try one more game

[True Valhalla]

I enjoyed it. Loved the graphical style.

As a prototype, it's definitely worth continuing work on.

[JasonPickering]

thanks guys.

jakman: yeah I guess it was later then I thought. Do you mean the situations where the player has to move forward and the enemy gets a hit.

Kasper: the skip turn made the game far to easy. I at one time thought of building each room as a premade puzzle actually, which still might be an option. Any suggestions on getting that strategic situations? can you give some examples?

True Valhalla thanks

A couple more questions. since the game's main focus is positioning yourself and the enemies, would skills that involve moving or manipulating the enemies be a better plan? A couple suggestions I had were giving the player some type of projectile allowing you to hit any enemy, this would be limited like the Mana. Another Idea was getting rid of Mana making the skills one time use for each island. so basically the player might have skills like throw rock, Skip Turn, Lunge (Attack Enemy and move into their space).

[Pemanent]

I really enjoyed this actually. It felt like it would work really well on a touch screen but that is just because of the controls. I'm not sure what they are saying about it being hard. Maybe I just got lucky but it was perfect difficulty for me. It was challenging but it felt fair.

I liked the white skeletons. I used their bones a lot to protect myself to make sure I didn't get surrounded. There was also the risk though because they can come back and attack me.

I think its definitely work pursuing more. It was fun and I can see how it can get really fun if you add more skills and enemies. More skills to position yourself would be good. Skills to teleport yourself or an enemy. Something along those lines would make things interesting.

I would leave the all skills use 1 mana thing in. It forced me to make hard decisions. If there were more skills then the decisions would be harder and more fun. Should I heal myself now or wait and save the mana to use my fire attack. It was fun and I enjoyed it!

[JasonPickering]

Pemanent: the skeletons are my favorite.

thanks. next question. should mana potions be dropped? or perhaps you get one mana potion somewhere on the level at the start. this means you could only use one skill per island, unless you saved up. Another suggestion someone gave me was making the drops less random. like ever time you kill 5 guys a potion is dropped. it would make it easier to plan ahead with potions and also give some reason to kill enemies. also do you think two skills are enough? I was going to do 3, but I felt like 2 really limited you and forced you to think ahead.

[Kapser]

I actually meant that it's difficult for the type of game/small level layouts/limited amount of spells, but the game succeds well at it.

I love the simple design and I'm sure you wan't the game to stay user friendly, but since the game is pretty fun, I just want to see a larger variety of possibilities for me to keep playing. It might be harder to keep the design clean and balanced, but a simple leveling system could do the trick (or some simple potion/item inventory instead of heal spell). Like for every level you get +1 max mana/hp and have to chose a new spell. Having a larger mana cap could also allow for different spell cost, for example a spell where you can create a wall would allow nice strategy but would never be as usefull as just healing all your life for the same price.

This is because, in roguelikes you gotta have that feeling 'oh, I have a good start I wanna survive', but in Microgue you often reach the hp/mana cap, and all you want is avoid tricky situations where you run out of mana.

Anyways, even simple as it is, once we get a clearer final goal and indication of how far you got, I'm sure it will be replayable/rewarding enough.

[capn.lee]

jakman: yeah I guess it was later then I thought. Do you mean the situations where the player has to move forward and the enemy gets a hit.

I would agree there, I was just killed because my starting move put me adjacent to 3 monsters.

[OddGoo]

I made it to the 5th screen!

Man I'm a sucker for those tightly put, checker-board shaded pieces of floating land. Everything fits so snugly.

looking forward to see further versions! My only suggestion at this point is thinking of a better name, MicRogue just doesn't charm as much as the game itself. Just to throw some ideas around for brainstorming: Nanogue, Roguetite..

[Ooops]

I spent some time with the game, and have had some thoughts :

* the graphic style is really good. Retro is the (not so) new black in the app store and this is one of the best looking examples, with crude graphics that ooze charm and also make each enemy instantly recognizable

* Generally, the gameplay works well and reaches its goal (or what I perceived the design goal to be)

* That said, the game felt too generic : generic monsters (rats, skeletons, ...), generic spells (fireball + heal). Maybe try to add some elements that are more unique. The core gameplay is reasonable original, I really talking about flavor here.

* The start of each level is wrong: only one possible action (move right) and this single action can make you lose the game.

* I agree that some levels felt unwinnable. Sometimes because of the problem stated above, sometimes for other reasons. Maybe it's because I'm a poor player. But maybe not. If some levels are indeed unwinnable, maybe you should refine your level generation algorithm. I don't know how easy it would be to code a competent ai player, maybe use this solution :
       a. code an ai player
       b. generate a level
       c. make the ai player play the level
       d. if ai player dies, discard the level and generate another.

I hope those two hunderdths of a dollar were helpful.

[st33d]

 a. code an ai player

You make it sound so easy 

Having the monsters on the left side of the screen at the start of a level is perhaps a bad idea. It demands you sacrifice a life just to start playing. I also felt that unless I had magic, I was pretty much fucked, because I had to repeatedly run into the fist of monsters that were in the way.

[Ooops]

 a. code an ai player

You make it sound so easy 

Notice that I also said

I don't know how easy it would be to code a competent ai player

That said, now that i think of it, because the player has at most 6 possible moves each turn (left, right, up, down, heal, fire), such an ai player could easily be coded. If the monster's moves are purely determined by the player's movement, I'd say it's almost childish if you have ever touched ai programming. A max tree should do. By max tree, I mean a tree with branches corresponding to the player's moves. You don't need branches for the monster's moves, because being deterministic, there would only be one anyway.

If there is a random component to monster moves, it's a bit more challenging but also not so difficult. A standard min-max tree seems at first sight like it could do the job.

The evaluation function should be easy to design, taking into account, for example, a player score (a function of remaining HP and MP) and a monster score (sum of remaining monster's values ex : rat = 1; skeleton = 2, etc.)

You just run the algorithm on the starting position, and then take the resulting evaluation fuction value, which gives a good indication of whether the level is too easy or difficult.

Actually, if the monsters move at random, better than mini-maxing (which would give a result for a worst-case scenario) would be to take an average of the eval function values for each possible combination of monster moves.

[JasonPickering]

Kapser I dont know if I could do a leveling mechanic. the player goes through so quickly, that it might seem tacked on. The +1 Health/Mana could work. but would it be better to do it by island or by enemies killed?

OddGoo Yeah the name has been a sticking point. some people like it and some hate it. and I change depending on the day it seems. I probaly will end up changing it, but to what I dont know. maybe Tiny Quest or something. get away from the Rogue use as it wont make much sense to players who are unfamiliar with roguelikes, and for players who are, they might find that it has to little in common for the name to work.

Ooops So do you think I just need a more interesting blend of Enemies? or are their skills what seem generic?

I dont think I have the skill to code in an AI to solve the level though. I am fairly new at procedural stuff and its all a bit over my head. I know the AI wouldn't work. It might work now, but as I go and add more Skills the code would have to be adapted for every kind of skill and some are not the usual stuff of doing damage, but stuff like hurting any monster on the board, swapping places, and stuff like that. One earlier idea mentioned before was building a huge amount of islands. they are easy enough to make, but then the problem arises as I don't know what skills the player has, so all islands would need to be fairly generic and solvable without any skills, and then that raises the problem of how much damage should I plan for the player to take? should they be able to get through every island without a scratch? I do agree that the algorithm of level placement needs work though.

Right now levels are generated this way.
1. a Block is randomly placed
2. a number of tiles is chosen
3. those tiles are placed adjacent to current tiles until there are none left.
4. Bridges are Added
5. All Open Spaces are noted and randomly chosen for which ones to have monsters on them.

so any suggestions in fixing this bare-bones system?

[True Valhalla]

Does this mean I won? 

[JasonPickering]

yes, followed promptly by losing.

[True Valhalla]

Hehe, I actually got through 4-5 more levels like that. I think when the rooms are full like that, the game starts placing enemies at the 0,0 coordinates (you can see something weird behind my HP).

[Kapser]

Kapser I dont know if I could do a leveling mechanic. the player goes through so quickly, that it might seem tacked on. The +1 Health/Mana could work. but would it be better to do it by island or by enemies killed?

By island sounds good to me. Well, if balancing stays manageable.

[verticalvertex]

Works great. Little annoying that you have to click one square infront of you.

[JasonPickering]

Thanks guys everyone has been really helpful. Quick question I would like to know. about how often do you actually use your skills. is it maybe like 3 times a game? I am thinking of adding something for finishing a level and it might be that skills are one time use. but on to the next island you can recharge one skill or add 1 max health. Just wondering how often people actually use them.

Since this has been posted up I have been adding in the stuff I knew I would need, but didn't put in yet. Now an Island can either be the normal Field we have now, or snow. each area will have its own enemies and each enemy now has a rarity.

Verticalvertex: do you mean you wish you could just click in a general direction to move that way? I do plan on implementing that soon.