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[Cow]

Tower Noire

A small hardcore RPG along the lines of Cave Noire. It's being made in Pico-8, which has been great for my creativity by setting hard limitations and giving me a good workflow by pretty closely linking code and assets, as well as letting me iterate extremely rapidly.

What I'm going for is a small, pretty game that shows off some of the chunky, weird tiling I like to do and using that as an excuse to make a traditional rpg fetish project. The visuals themselves are inspired by Star Ocean Blue Sphere, Cave Noire, and many of my old mockups.

Here's where I'm at now (click for full-size):



I'll post updates pretty regularly here and on twitter.

One Love,

Sheldon

[jsepia]

I love that tileset. Will the grass be flammable like in Brogue? And what purpose does the D-Pad thing in the lower right accomplish?

[binaryboi01]

Looks really pretty. Good stuff. Good luck! 

[UmutD]

This is sweet. Following.

[Cow]

Thanks guys!

Will the grass be flammable like in Brogue? And what purpose does the D-Pad thing in the lower right accomplish?

Flammable grass is a cool idea, should be doable and it fits with the game's concept. The D-Pad was just for debugging because I was having some problems with input (button presses being triggered on multiple frames). Also it looks cool and explains more about the game.



Since last update:
-Menu works now!
-Better function for checking for entity positions! Enemies won't move through stuff!
-Refactored everything to make more sense, the code is longer now though (PICO's character limit is harsh).
-Dead character frame, falling animation.
-Enemies can die now. Basic attack rolls are in.
-Added a screen fade effect.
-Sketching out game progression and a few floor ideas.

Next up:
-Enemy combat AI.
-Implement screen transitions and camera movement (rather than drawing a new chunk of the map).
-Add item interactions (via the menu that now works).

[jsepia]

I never would have known that the menu didn't work. :p

Is camera movement/panning really needed? I like the idea of each dungeon floor being a tiny, self-contained puzzle where you have to weigh your options carefully. As in "should I kill those enemies in case they drop useful loot, even if it means taking a few hits? or should I lock them behind a boulder and rush for the stairs, so I can save HP for the next level?" Not sure if that's what you were going for though, since I've never played Cave Noire.

[Cow]

Each floor is self-contained, however the way PICO-8 works is it's all on a big, flat map, so that camera won't pan but it'll jump to the area it's supposed to. Your idea of the game sounds pretty close to mine, actually.

[jsepia]

Each floor is self-contained, however the way PICO-8 works is it's all on a big, flat map, so that camera won't pan but it'll jump to the area it's supposed to. Your idea of the game sounds pretty close to mine, actually.

Oh cool, that's clever.

[Cow]

[eigenbom]

Neat! Loving the chunky visuals and palette :D

[happymonster]

Love the graphics and style of this

[Cow]

Thanks guys! :>

New things!
-Screenshake!
-Rats will nibble you!
-Falling animations and damage.
-You can die!
-There's a tile trap that doesn't work!
-Filled out the first areas a little bit to make the game playable.
-Slimes will smile at you sometimes!

Known bugs:
-Falling on any "entity" (including enemies, pushblocks, and fire) will crash the game.

Next up:
-Make some more interesting enemies and totally new area tiles.
-Chests and keys and doors and items.
-Player stats from items.

[Cow]

So, I've been focusing on trying to finish up the main game "systems" so I can actually spend time
making content. Today I added the item action menu and the inventory system works as it should
now. Really looking forward to adding enemies with more patterned behaviours to make it more
Cave Noire-ish and tactical.

Big update to PICO-8 means I have to worry about refactoring less, and using an external editor is
less painful.

Submitted this to Indiecade but I expect nothing from that. Doesn't hurt to try though, and forcing
myself to get a build ready for the deadline was a good experience.

[Cow]

Been working on this a little bit, started on a level generator too (no cool tiling yet). Added throwing, some other stuff.

[Cow]

Decided to turn this into a 7DRL project and made something decent out of it, with only a couple hundred characters to spare.

Therefore it is now done.

Win, Mac, and Linux builds here: https://cow.itch.io/tower-noire