"A golden worm, so entranced in contemplation it has rejected the writhing motions common to its kin. It guards the bridge between this Plane and those beneath.

'A step into the pool of transcension breaks the body. A plunge shatters the mind. A swim frees the Soul.'"

• flavour text of Thought-Matter Rifts

• Saintly Hologram, advertising its choice of starting Soul to new players

The Games Foxes Play

(complete source code - mirror | view all previous posts | play 0.4.3 online in browser on itch.io! (very old))

A much quieter week, but it did not stop me from churning out fresh packages from my inner factory of unhinged ideas. Following up from my removal of all tiles... I am now removing health, damage and killing once again.

Last time, it didn't work out. But that time was a long while ago. This new design may might it work. In a style similar to HyperRogue, the player loses if all action becomes impossible. It simply works so well with the lore... Transcend beyond feeble matters like blood and pain. Unravelling bodies and calling it victory is so brutish. Only when the Soul of your opponents has been fully subjugated or blazed blank can one truly crown themselves the victor...

There are still many ways to defeat creatures, or to be defeated. There are threats of having the literal programming of your character deleted, of being turned into an exact copy of another creature and beginning to mindlessly hunt down a player that no longer exists, or of simply being stuck in a massive pile of entities preventing all motion.

Alongside this rework comes two new Souls, or spells:

• The Last Saint offers to you a fragment of their ribbon-adorned vision of domination. Using this active ability causes all adjacent creatures to become clones of yourself with all Souls intact... Which leads to utterly insane chain reactions when used multiple times. Honestly, trying to even get to the exit when everyone is you is a puzzle in itself. Not to mention that every single clone causes an extra turn to tick away at each keypress.

• The Data Breather believes true enlightenment comes by viewing the world through the perspective of all creatures big and small - and their gift allows this in a very literal form. It reminds me a little bit of Caves of Qud's domination, though it is more a soul swap than a full takeover. I hope these kinds of abilities will create as much fun as the polymorph mechanics in Nethack and such.

Also visible in these clips are a new freshly designed trap: the deactivated pink Apiarists remain on standby, while the red Song of the Watchers in the centre continuously scans all 4 entrance points. Entering the room immediately sends the swarm against the intruder - which may not necessarily be the player! Lure a terrible foe inside to obtain aid, or misstep and have your situation worsen? The possibilities are as numerous as stars in the night sky.

Miscellaneous:

• Visual spell effects have returned, with greater performance and customization.

• I was going to make another Soul/spell for the Heart Rended By Bladed Leaves, another spirit of sorts in the game that is supposed to be the manifestation of fear itself. It was doing a good job at flipping the entire screen and causing gravity effects, but there were... complications. It will be back.

"Gaze into my cyan eyes. See an ocean: your identity, a droplet drowned in endless lives."

• Saintly Hologram, advertising its choice of starting Soul to new players

The Games Foxes Play

(complete source code - mirror | view all previous posts | play 0.4.3 online in browser on itch.io! (very old))

I've done too much this week. I'm nearly at 1000 Git commits. Let's jump straight into it.

Here is this week's demonstration video.

• Tiles have been removed. There are only creatures now.

  • There are now intangible creatures. They can move anywhere, completely unimpeded.
    • Yes, things such as the Well (stairs) or floor features are creatures. They have a Soul and everything. And you can become them. You can turn yourself into a walking door.
  • Properties can be applied to pretty much anything. Those airlocks that slide open when you touch them? You can put that on an enemy. You can open your enemies. Literally.

• The new Axiom "Droplets Drowned In Endless Lives" turns other creatures into perfect copies of the caster in both body and Soul. You can have 10 clones of yourself walking around in perfect synchrony and copying all your Souls ("spells"). This is balanced, because each action also makes 10 turns pass due to the way Souls work (1 turn per clone).

• The new Axiom "Reality Torn Asunder" removes all safeguards and restrictions from all Souls. For example, combining that with the previous Axiom lets you turn the walls and stairwells into clones of yourself.

• The new Axiom "Timelines Snapped Like Twigs" makes associated Souls trigger every second. Not every turn. Every second.

• Merging all those 3 alongside some other fun Axioms has return an old enemy type I had retired months ago. The new Serene Harmonizer gradually consumes the entire level with everything in it by turning every piece of matter into a clone of itself.

  • This is actually the nerfed version. The initial prototype would literally conquer the entire game in seconds due to a hilarious chain reaction and drop my frames per second to 1.

• A new starter area presents the player with a choice of 1 out of 6 starter Souls. Which Caste will you pledge yourself to? Since this is practically one of the first things a new player will see, I am making sure to bring out the cool stuff right away. This is no choosing if you want to be a wizard or a warrior, this is choosing if you want identity takeover, soul swapping or gravity manipulation in your starting kit.

  • Actually making those 6 Souls is a work in progress. I have the Ordered one (knockback and teleports) finished. The Feral one (gravity swap) is coming along, but has a few bugs. The Saintly one (assimilation and clones) will be extremely easy to make. Artistic (soul swap) shouldn't take too long. Unhinged and Vile are the ones I'm not too sure about. Their themes are respectively "greed and desire" (probably something about stealing abilities) and "distancing oneself from direct conflict" (probably something about summons or making a little pokémon team).

• Save and load system completely reworked.

  • Every time a creature changes either its Position, Species (and some other minor things), this gets tracked.
  • When the game is saved, the RNG seed is noted, as well as all the modified Positions and such of every creature in the game.
  • To reload the game, simply build the world using the same RNG seed, then move everything back into place.
  • Making it so Soul changes are tracked too is a work-in-progress, but should not be too hard.

• Complete rework of the rendering logic, which significantly improved performance and made movement animations much more satisfying.

• Tons of new lore and text for many different things.

I had the week off from any responsibility which allowed me to go full no-life and implement all this stuff. I expect the coming week to be very different. Nonetheless, I am still aiming for my objective of a new playable - and winnable - demo before the end of the year!