First, I'd like to point out just how much Javascript lets you get away with. Forgot a semicolon? Wrong indentation? Calling a function that doesn't exist? No problem, chum, I'll still run! Just... perhaps not in the way you'd expect it. This has created many very amusing bugs, such as the one time where using any ability caused time to stop, every enemy to freeze, and the player being able to go stab them one by one. Maybe I'll turn that into an actual ability sometime.

There's also the... uhh... "Wall of Global Variables". Every day, it just keeps getting bigger and bigger, and soon, it may very well swallow the universe and end reality as we know it.

The Games Foxes Play (original post)

These last 2 weeks have been laser-focused on creating a grand variety of player abilities/spells. In the game, they're called "souls". Here's a showcase of some of them!

First, I'd like to showcase Aube. It's complete and utter trash, making the entire room harder for the very minor consolation prize of healing you slightly. However, after 5 uses, it becomes the completely overpowered Zenith. Just look at that power.

Now, nothing good can last. After Zenith has been used 5 times, it becomes the worn-out and sorrowful Crepusculum, with a minor utility effect. Once Crepusculum has been used 5 times, it vanishes forever from your deck, and restores 3 Ipseity as a reward for quieting this restless soul. For those who are just tuning in, "Ipseity" is the player's "true HP", and the game ends if they run out of it.

I really like how you can learn the sad story of Aube's life through these game mechanics. My plan is to make the game's "magic" feel emotional, in a way. The protagonist isn't using mere magic runes, but the actual spirits of beings which depend on your success in your quest to be saved.

Yeah, the "in your paw" part is pretty iffy. I just didn't want to say "in your hand" for a feline protagonist. I'll figure this out later.

Next up, we have the narcissistic Rose who lets you mark one enemy with bright pink ribbons, which will thus become targeted by all. Of course, the marked enemy will not be very happy with you and will remain hostile, but it's only a matter of time before they are torn apart by their former allies.

Here's a video of it in action.

It's not an especially offensive ability, as the marked enemy tends to die quite quickly, however, it does have the advantage of grouping enemies in a big dogpile over their former friend. This makes the room very vulnerable to an AOE-type ability, such as the one that will be demonstrated next.

Joltzazon is a potentially devastating blast that may require some set-up. It will wreck havoc on any enemy that's adjacent to other enemies, but will remain ineffectual on a dispersed crowd.

Here's a video of it in action.

Of course, not all abilities are meant to inflict damage. Kilami, for example, has a powerful loot-duplicating effect that lasts this turn and the next. Now, in this game, having multiple copies of the same soul type is very desirable, as the merchants of the world give much better trades if you can demonstrate your commitment to "harmonizing" your deck towards a single type, or at the very least similar types.

There's a really sweet synergy with landmine/charm/summon type powers, since the duplicating effect is also active for the turn where you are busy using Kilami. If you can get a kill despite not taking any offensive action, through the help of something you placed on the board beforehand, you can really harvest an impressive amount of souls! Once again, demonstration. Here, I set down a landmine with my Artistic soul. Then, just before that yellow Shrike steps on it, I activate Kilami. I immediately collect 2 extra Feral souls from the Shrikes, and then, while Kilami is still active for one last turn, I explode that group of 3 with Joltzazon for even more bonus loot!

Beyond the abilities I've not shown, I've also made sure that each ability is also usable by enemies. For some, it's not really relevant, like this Kilami one, but the more flashy, explosions-and-lasers powers are really fun to slap on enemies and watch them utterly decimate me, the player. I dream of a single boss in the entire game, that will only be found at the very end of the journey, that just pulls out a chaotic assortment of attacks while the player uses their own in an ultimate two-way DEATH RAVE.

HP sponges and tanks are boring. A lot of this game was inspired from Felid gameplay in DCSS, so I imagine the more elite enemies will be very squishy, but have a bunch of extra lives and/or be more of a coordinated swarm than a single "big bad".

Next up will be diversifying enemy variety, as the 5 types present right now are getting a little bit old. Or, I might just spend the week making more spells. They are really fun to design!

First time posting in one of these threads! While my project is still very nascent, it's starting to actually deviate from the sidebar tutorial it started from: the Broughlike tutorial in Javascript. A huge thank you to its writer! My dream roguelike had been floating in my mind for years now, but every time I tried to get started, I would bounce off due to not understanding how the libraries in the other tutorials magically did all the work for me. For any beginner/programming novice looking to get started, I highly recommend it.

The Games Foxes Play

The cycle nears its end, and the Old World is crumbling once more, soon to be replaced by the Next World.

You are Terminal, the Vessel purposed to save the souls from this crumbling reality, so they may have another shot at life in the Next World.

As a Reality Anchor, your task is to complete a pilgrimage to the all-engulfing Vortex that heralds the end of reality, and the beginning of another.

It won't be easy. By carelessness, your existence has been made known to all.

Your tale spread around like wildfire, giving the people hope. Hope of immortality, hope of making a difference, hope of becoming a Reality Anchor like you.

And it is with this hope that these copycats will tear you apart.

Gameplay consists of a maze of individual rooms. Whenever a room is entered, it must be cleared for the doors to open. This means that the layout is not an expansive cave system like most roguelikes, but rather self-contained, cramped interior spaces.

Slaying enemies awards the player with their Soul, available in 6 different types. Souls are the items of the game: there are no swords, sets of armour, or potions. Souls are stacked in a "deck of cards". You can draw from the deck of cards to equip Souls, and they can then be cast for a special effect. When a Soul is cast, it goes to the discard pile, and will cycle back for usage eventually.

Rooms can be cleared by slaying all enemies within, as one might expect. However, there is another way: dying to the enemies.

This will cause your foes to steal some of your Souls. For each foe left alive, one Soul is consumed. However, you can choose which Souls they take away. Generally, this will be used to remove useless and ineffectual Souls so they do not clutter your deck. A strong build is therefore the product of both victory and defeat, so you may accumulate the strong and expunge the weak respectively.

Of course, dying has a price. Whenever you are slain, you lose some Ipseity, which is your real HP bar. It represents your identity slowly slipping away after each reincarnation. When it reaches zero, you become not much more than a purposeless animal, and then the game truly ends. Conversely, slaying all enemies in a room reminds the protagonist of their purpose as a ferryman of Souls, and restores some Ipseity.

Special rooms can be found around the labyrinth. They each contain a mysterious NPC, a Serene Harmonizer, who will demand you sacrifice 6 souls in a gambling minigame of sorts. The Harmonizers, as their name might suggest, value uniformity and sameness above all, and favour players who are willing to focus their deck into only a single or a select few types of Souls. If you wish to impress the Harmonizers, you will need to throw away valuable Souls just because they are too different from the others, and also lose Ipseity in the process of that deletion. However, the loot granted by the Harmonizers is truly worth the gamble.

In a nutshell, this is the core principle. My main design goals are:

• Ensuring the player doesn't get oneshotted, but rather loses after many little mistakes

• Requiring zero grind or long walks across empty space, and constantly putting the player in danger

• Revealing extensive lore and worldbuilding without gameplay interruptions, through snappy dialogue (from the Souls and the Harmonizers) that's relevant to what the player is doing and flavourful descriptions

• Not making a game first and a story second -- they must complement each other through the mechanics

Here are some screenshots and gifs.

Setting down a landmine with an Artistic Soul, then leading an enemy on it to blow it up

Examining creatures with a cursor mode

Failing to slay all enemies in a room, and removing pesky Tainted Souls with that failure

Sacrificing souls to a Serene Harmonizer named Fluffy

Some examples of context-dependent dialogue:

What happens if you try to sacrifice a Soul without standing on one of the altars

What happens if you try to sacrifice a Soul on an already occupied altar

What happens if you try to sacrifice a Soul that you do not have

Future developments are to add cooler, more diverse rewards to the gambling minigames, to create new areas with new palettes and tiles, and to add a reroll mechanic to the gambling minigame... at a price.