Looking at other rogue-lites

Just to give you guys an status update:
Cres is on her way to recovery, but since she needs to do some commissions, progress on the game will be rather slow.

Anyway, lets talk about other games for once.
Especially about rogue-lites, since well... our current game is being a rogue-lite. (with hentai)
And it's always a good idea to look at what other (similar) games did.
Obviously I already did this months ago, but I figured that maybe some of you might wonder what's going on in my head, right?

That's why I'm doing this blogpost.

Lets start with Rogue Legacy.
It's a rogue-lite platformer, okay.
It has random level generation, as well as lots of other random stuff.
(even random character selection, kinda)

But ugh... yeah... without going too much into the details, there's stuff I actually don't like in this game.
First of all, my notebook is damn slow, and Rogue Legacy runs in slow-motion.
If I manage to get a character that's either far sighted or near sighted, I actually get a slow-motion "boost" lol

Anyway, everything goes reeeeeeeeaaaaaaaally slow, and thus dodging stuff should actually be quite easy, right?
Yeah... in theory...
I quickly found out, that it isn't.
And I actually needed to start dodging even before the enemy telegraphed his attack, which is kinda annoying to me.
So that kinda led me to stop playing the game after a while.
(I'm not complaining about the slow-motion, I'm complaining about the requirement to dodge an attack even before it's being telegraphed/used)

Btw. no, I'm not saying it's a bad game, I'm not even doing a full review or anything here.
I'm just pointing out things that I either really liked, or really disliked.
Purely personal preference, no offense intended.

Anyway, that leads me to the conclusion, that in the game I'm currently working on, dodging and blocking should be easy to use, and the enemies need a reasonable telegraphing animation.
If you see an enemy telegraph an attack, you should always be able to react.
Either by avoiding the attack completely, or by blocking it.
At least that's how I personally feel about this.

I actually want to make a fast paced game, where reacting to things happening on the screen is crucial.
Of course you can simply button mash your way to victory (or defeat...), but reacting to the things that actually happen on screen should give you an advantage over simply ignoring telegraphed attacks.



So uh, yeah, lets move on to the next game:
Ascendant is pretty much going into a similar direction I'm heading.
It has close combat, ranged combat, and stuff to explore (well, it's a rogue-lite).
You also find upgrades occasionally.

Aside from several "traps" that I got into that simply felt unfair, the game seems to be pretty enjoyable.
The only things that I find a bit lacking is the combat system itself.
You only have a 3 hit combo, as well as a ranged attack.
It somehow feels like there's something missing, I don't know...

Anyway, I want to focus a lot more on combat and having some interesting special attacks in my own game.
So, yeah, that's something I definitelly "learned" from this.
Ah yes, and no unfair traps... there will be some kind of "traps", but first of all there's some kind of "telegraphing" that makes clear that there's something.
(occasionally glowing eyes in the darkness... and stuff...)
And furthermore, they won't drain you of a large amount of your HP.
(or even kill you...)
Which still makes it annoying to fall for a trap, but it's not feeling unfair.
Or at least I hope that it's not feeling unfair...
(yeah, some stuff looks good on paper, but bad when put into the game...)


The last game I wanted to mention is Risk of Rain.
I didn't know that it was a rogue-lite until lately, and when I played it I was kinda surprised at how good it actually feels.
The thing is... it's a damn hard game.

It's so hard that I often don't even survive the first stage.
But strangely it doesn't feel frustrating?
I've no idea why that is, but maybe it's because you actually find a lot of upgrades in a short time period.
At least that's my guess.

What I think I learned from this is, that I actually want the player to find a lot of (small?) upgrades along the way.
So, instead of finding 1-2 upgrades before facing the first boss, I figured it would be cool if the player gets 1 "guaranteed" new special-attack per stage, as well as ~3 upgrades or something like that.
Maybe even a bit more, if you're lucky.

The thing is, even if you fail beating the first boss, I still want to give the player some feeling of achievement.
Having slayed a hundred demons/monsters, finding some upgrades and a new skill along the way, all that stuff "should" feel good, even if you fail against the first boss.
At least... that's the plan.
(in the end, it needs to be tested if it really is as great as it sounds... same thing as before: it sounds good on paper, but how will it be once implemented?)


I guess I'll stop here.
As you can see, I really think a lot about all those things, and I like to look at other games what they actually did.
And despite this being a hentai game, I really want the gameplay to be fun and challenging.
(well, easy-mode might be less challenging, but normal-mode and hard-mode certainly will be)


And err... speaking of games.
I'm not sure if it's a coincidence or not.
But I realized lately, when playing War Thunder, that team-members (people I certainly never seen before) keep on shooting at me without any reason.
Like, the match starts, and suddenly someone fires at me, and I didn't do anything... I mean, the match just started.

So, what I wanted to say:
If someone recognizes me, and wants to say "hi", please feel free to crash into my plane anytime lol
I guess that way I'll recognize it way better than some "stray bullets" xD

I'm not complaining here, I'm just saying that a "crash" into my plane would be way more effective.
(and certainly way more funny xD)