Well, let's just jump right into it, shall we?
A while back, I made a game called Rogueline, which was, as the title implies, a one-dimensional dungeon crawler. I made a topic in the design forum asking for help, which can be found
here. I never really finished the game, but a few months ago, I decided that I would reboot the project. And thus, Rogueline 2: Electric Boogaloo was born. And once again, I'd like to ask the TIGForums community to help me out.
Above is what the game looks like right now. The core gameplay is your character moving to the right and interacting with the various obstacles in front of him, including enemies, treasure chests, altars, etc. When you reach the end of the screen, you move on to the next level, with another randomly generated string of "tiles". Currently, there are four tiles that you can run into (although there are only three shown in the image above). Those are:
Enemies - deals damage to you, but you gain mana in the process
Chests - gives you money
Altars - spend your mana on upgrades
Shops - spend your money on items
Now, let's talk about the enemies. During an "encounter", you have three options:
1. Attack the enemy. You take damage, but you also gain 25 mana. The amount of damage you take is equal to the enemy's "danger value" (the number displayed under the enemy) MINUS your attack strength (the number next to the sword at the top). So, for example, the enemy right in front of the player in the above screenshot would deal 40 - 10 = 30 damage.
In the previous version of this game, combat was more of the traditional RPG style, in which you would attack the enemy, and then it would attack you, and rinse and repeat until either of you dies. I simplified it down to simply pressing a button because, essentially, that's all combat is in this game. There aren't really any decisions to make
during a battle, unlike in, say, Pokemon, where you can choose which move you want to use, or if you want to switch out to a different Pokemon. It simply boils down to attacking the enemy until it dies, and taking damage in the process. The reason your attack strength makes you take less damage in combat is that, the more damage you deal in a fight, the faster you can kill an enemy, and the less damage you take in the process. This is what differentiates having high health and having high damage. If you have a lot of health, then you can survive more battles, but if you have a lot of damage, then the battles themselves don't hurt you as much.
Of course, if the only thing you could do to an enemy was walk into it and take damage, it wouldn't be a very interesting game. That's why you have two more options, the second of which being...
2.
Use magic to kill it. This costs 25 mana, but kills the enemy instantly, and you take no damage in the process, although you also gain no mana from it. This is a good way to save yourself in a pinch if you're running low on health, but using it too much is detrimental in the long term. Why? Well, the only reward that enemies drop upon death is mana, and killing it with magic essentially means you gained nothing. This will overall decrease your mana gain, and since enemies get stronger and stronger with each passing level, having enough mana is essential to keeping yourself alive, buy buying upgrades and restoring your health at altars, which we will discuss later.
Using magic, then, is basically a last resort, in case simply attacking the enemy would result in your death. This moves us onto the third and final option...
3.
Push it one tile back. This was a suggestion made by valrus in my previous design thread, and probably the most interesting and dynamic tool at your disposal. When you push an enemy, it reacts differently depending on what you pushed it into. If you pushed an enemy into a chest, its threat level drops to 0 and you can kill it without taking any damage, but the chest is destroyed in the process. If you push an enemy into an enemy of the same type, they combine to form one big enemy that is much stronger, but also gives you more mana from killing it. Every push has its advantages and disadvantages, and it's up to the player to weigh the pros and cons, and decided whether to push or not. After pushing an enemy, you cannot push again until you kill an enemy. This prevents you from just pushing every enemy back again and again until you reach the end of the screen.
Chests and shops are pretty simple. Chests simply give you money when you walk over them, and shops are where you go to spend that money to be items, such as health potions, bombs, etc., which are nice short-term benefits.
Finally, there's the altars. Mana is used for two things in this game: killing enemies, and spending it at an altar. There's a guaranteed altar on every level, because altars are the primary way you regenerate health. The only way to regain health in this game is either through health potions, which don't heal you for very much, or buy spending mana at an altar. If you pay 100 mana (the equivalent of four enemies), your fully restore all your health. This is why you don't want to spend too much mana on enemies; which it may save you some damage in the moment, ultimately the only way to keep surviving is by saving enough mana to buy a health restoration at an altar. You can also buy health and damage upgrades at altars, which become increasingly necessary as the enemies grow stronger and stronger.
This game, like many other roguelikes, is really a sort of resource management game. In this case, you have three main resources: health, mana, and money. The strategy comes from juggling these three resources, and using them all efficiently.
However, I notice a few issues with the game that I was hoping you guys could help me with. For instance, chests are boring. They are the only type of object where you basically don't have any decisions. All you do is walk into it and get money. I'm not sure what I can't do to make it more interesting, but it definitely needs something.
Sorry for the long wall of text, but I'd really like some feedback and constructive criticism. What do you guys think? Does it sound like something you'd play? Do you have any suggestions on how to give the game more depth, or any mechanics to implement? I'd really appreciate any comments or advice.
(I'll be uploading an alpha as soon as I'm finished with it. It's very bare bones, and is really more a proof of concept than a game at this point, but it might help to further illustrate how the game plays.)