"As they bore the most vulnerable minds of all, the mere presence of a Collectivist sufficed to induce oddly intelligent behaviour in wild beasts. Some paranoid individuals held a caged bird atop their homes, waiting for its chirping to turn to discernible words. Even as they reached for their bunkers, they quickly learned that cement cannot silence the Harmonic song."

• Harmonized Feral Soul description

The Games Foxes Play (github | original post | play online in browser on itch.io!)

It seems my eternal cycle of obsession and laziness has circled back to the former. Things quieted down in Real Life™ after completion of a major project at work, so I've had plenty of time to devote to the finding of new ways of pulverizing pixelated creatures.

My main focus this week was centered around solving a design issue. I have three main branches, each with unique gameplay, but spells and player abilities that are the same everywhere. This is a problem: whereas a simple dashing ability (Feral Soul) is very powerful in a traditional top-down roguelike grid, in the Serene Spire where gravity is a factor, I've noticed that using a dash like this is especially suicidal and ends half the time with the player falling down a death pit.

Enter Adaptative Souls. All six Common souls of the game have been reworked to have a different effect depending on which branch they are used in - the effects are similar in theme across all branches, but are more adapted to their environment. They thus come in Subdued (Faith's End), Harmonized (Serene Spire) or Glamorous (Roseic Circus) forms.

Here are some of these new variants:

The Harmonized Unhinged Soul fires a slow-moving orb bearing a devastating payload. The moment it hits a wall or a creature, it detonates, knocking back everything in an X-shaped cross and also teleporting the player to the burst location. Besides the obvious offensive purpose, this also serves as a fun recovery tool: fire an orb towards a safe location, make a leap of faith into the void, go all out with aerial combat against flying enemies and be teleported back to safety before you plummet to your doom.

The Harmonized Artistic Soul is another powerful recovery option. Upon use, it places down a waypoint, which you will be instantly teleported back to the next time you are struck by an attack. This can be lifesaving, as Serene Spire enemies rely on knocking you out of the map instead of doing damage to kill you. You can therefore engage in a really risky position or expose yourself to a devastating blow, and return to safety the next turn. In addition, the waypoint also detonates in a cross-shaped laser upon being teleported back to it, potentially returning the favour on the attacker that was just about to demolish you.

In this video, I climb through the first few levels of the Serene Spire and battle its homogenous denizens with a varied assortment of Harmonized Souls.

Glamorous Souls in general have all been turned into summoning-based powers. I realized that having allies is one of the most fun parts of my game, but despite my attempts at making multiple ways to charm enemies, it was still too scarce in my game. The Roseic Circus is really well suited to ally combat due to the wide open space, so why not let the player form their own personal militia? It's less development time (as now every enemy in the game also serves as a potential effect of an ally spell, and I'm already coding them this way due to the existence of charming effects already in the game), and the player gets to use their most hated foes as assets to thwart the Circus's challenges.

There are quite a bit more. A part of me hopes it's not getting too confusing, with many of your spells having their effects changed completely just because you are in a different location. It's not something that the player usually expects from a roguelike.

I've long debated what I wanted the gimmick of Roseic Circus to be exactly. I think I've settled on it at last: flipping the roguelike formula on its head. There will be only one single enemy, the tyrant Rose, serving as a boss, and the vast swarms of enemies will be on the player's side, so fed up with Rose's narcissism that they are putting aside their animosity, just this once. I'm interested to see how fun using the Glamorous summoning powers will be to take down a single highly-evasive, overpowered and tricky target. Also known as a @ - a "protagonist"! If my neurons fire their productivity juices correctly, I'll return soon with an implementation of this concept.

"Has the Harmonic Song absorbed all your attention, leaving my words to bounce off your enthralled shell? Listen to me carefully this time around - valuable loot is at stake. Something you will actually find important, unlike the ascension of all souls into objective perfection. Hmph!"

- the Serene Harmonizers offering a valuable trinket in exchange for surrender

The Games Foxes Play (github | original post | play online in browser on itch.io!)

All my focus has now diverted to the game's other branches. This week, I added some life into the Serene Spire. That means, a single enemy type. And there won't be any others, either.

Populated by a narcissistic hivemind that despises violence, it is absolutely impossible to take any damage in the Serene Spire. Instead, each strike assaults one's ferocity and urge to fight, slowly increasing the knockback taken on each hit as one lowers their defensive guard.

Yeah. It's literally SMASH, but turn-based. If you get knocked out of the screen, you instantly lose the fight (and your Ipseity points, which are basically extra lives).

Coupled with a gravity mechanic (that only affects the player, as Serene Harmonizers are basically air elementals) and plentiful platforms, prepare to eat the biggest uppercuts of peace and kindness you've ever seen.

Of course, my horrible roguelike-platformer-fighting-game frankenstein aberration would not be complete without some special moves. Right now, these are only usable by the enemies.

Cumulus Cascade - Drop down on the platform underneath the caster, then unleash a shockwave across its entire surface that knocks everyone on it upwards.

Bashful Repulsion - Grab an adjacent enemy, then push them in a random direction. The caster dashes in the opposite direction. Totally didn't steal this one from a certain video game about a blind forest.

Video example!

For some reason, I haven't been able to pick up the audio of my computer in recordings, so here is the Spire music theme. It's called "Fly on the Wall", because that is what you are to its inhabitants. An intruder. That deserves to learn some manners and go splat. Credits to Zenith, my composer.

I am totally going to be giving these to the player as well, in addition to 4 other planned moves - my plan is to replace the effect of all 6 basic Souls (spells) with these Spire-exclusive abilities, much more applicable to the terrain.

I will have to make sure everything becomes clear and fair to the player - right now, the enemies occasionally orchestrate ridiculous combos (enemy #1 basic attacks you onto the platform, enemy #2 smashes it and knocks you up right into the range of enemy #3 who bashes you into the stratosphere and instakills you in one turn), but I want to leave some of this stuff in since it's exactly what I had in mind. And besides, "dying" in my game is pretty much the equivalent of eating a fat damage hit in a other roguelikes.

I also wrote a whole bunch of lore/dialogue for the Last Saint, who oversees the Circus branch of the game, and got a much clearer idea of what I want to do with that one so it still feels distinct from Faith (slow-paced, strategic gameplay in claustrophobic spaces) and Spire (chaotic, aerial combat with ways to win/lose in less than 3 turns). My thoughts are orbiting around a kind of protect-the-flag/tower-defence type of deal (wide open, summon-oriented playstyle).

Next time, I'll probably be adding in the aforementioned bonus abilities. I'm thinking more ways to get around the level, with dashes and teleports!