7DRL 2024
#7DRL #devlog #gamedev #roguelike
As mentioned in my 2024 roadmap, I'm participating in 7DRL Challenge 2024 for the fifth consecutive year.
This year I've taken the week off work in order to spend some solid time on the jam. Since we're traveling quite a bit this year (our planned Norway vacation, an unexpected trip to Spain, and some US travel to see family), I'm looking forward to this "staycation".
From a technical standpoint, I'm reusing then engine from my 2023 7DRL entry, Jotun Grav. 2023 wasn't my best showing - the first year I've marked my entry "incomplete" - in part because I tried to write a new roguelike engine alongside the jam. However, after some massaging and engine feature work in the last year, I feel it's in a pretty good spot for 2024.
This engine is based on my latest generation of ECS architecture (a forthcoming post, perhaps!), is written in TypeScript, and targets the web browser.
My goal for this year is to make something "better" than Catacombs - my 2020 and, subjectively, best entry.
7DRL allows and encourages rough design ahead of the jam, so I'm planning to go back to my roots with mechanics that involve death.
Some design elements:
- The player is a Necromancer infiltrating a medieval stronghold (TBD: why?)
- The Necromancer is weak in melee combat, and has a small health pool
- However, the Necromancer can use skills on any corpse found in the world (existing and those of slain enemies)
Some core Necromancer skills:
- Reanimate: Converts a corpse into a skeleton warrior that fights for the player
- Explode: Causes target corpse to explode, dealing damage to nearby entities
- Harvest: Consumes a corpse to gain "mana"
My hope is that there's interesting gameplay around managing your "pets" (reanimated skeletons), which act as a proxy for your health pool as well as your body (skeletons might aggro something you didn't want?).
That about the gist of it - I'm sure things will evolve as I go, and I'll be curious to see how much of the original plans survive the week!