[Semi-Sane] Desert's Curse

edited in Projects
EDIT 2: First build for you! Get it while it's hot! The post about it is this one.

So after a little pondering the theme, I remembered that I used to play those Fighting-Fantasy books (dunno if anybody knows what I'm talking about here) where you have dice/pencil/paper and you chose which "street to turn down" and turn to the corresponding page kinda thing. There was one (that I never played but it had the most awesome cover art) called House of Hell, in which you had Fear points and if you gained too many you died of fright.

Sounded like a cool mechanic to toy with so I figured I give it a shot, though I am somewhat doubtful about how well it'll pan out. We shall see...

So anyways, first thing I thought of was an old Desktop Dungeons version I played a while ago and figured it'd be cool to try and make something similar where there is a map that starts out covered in fog of war (can you call it that in Desktop Dungeons?) and you reveal it as you go along. Maybe you'll have some way of knowing where monsters are and you have to plan your way around so that you don't suddenly appear in front of a monster that was previously hidden (and get fear points). In this way the player needs to try and approach monsters from a distance, or avoid them when possible.

Given the 2D nature of this undertaking (and the fact that it comes with free/default art that is oddly appropriate) I figured I'd use Game Maker again (last used it when I was in Grade 6, I made a really simple game and tried to sell it to my friends for R5...nobody bought :D)

Guess I'll have to see if I can learn some GML...but in the meantime at least Karuji's idea isn't quite so lonely.

EDIT: I called it Desert's Curse because the art seems to lend itself to that environment, and I could say that you're a tomb raider who got stuck inside a cursed pyramid. Can you keep your sanity under control until you reach the safety of daylight!?

Comments

  • When you mention DD as an influence the first thing that pops to my mind is: is exploration a resource? The uniqueness of the fog of war in DD was that as you explore it you gain back health, and so do your enemies.

    The other things that I think about DD are static enemies, roguelike, difficulty, and the famous 10 minute game tagline.

    So if the enemies are static I would believe it would be a poor idea to let the player know where they are exactly. An alternative could be that the player while near an enemy is draining a small amount of fear due to the scary presence of the monster. This leaves the player with trying to escape into an unknown area, which may be even more populated with monsters.

    Actually now that I think about it this would be very much like the marauders in Onslaught Of The Electric Zombies

    And thanks for making my thread less lonely :)
  • Nice idea. I like the fear points (sanity points) mechanic in relation to the fog of war.
  • edited
    Ok so first run-able build is up! (Link below) It doesn't really show much in the way of what the player does but It kinda shows for what I envisioned for fog and what it does (hides enemies but not terrain).

    I kinda wanted to tend towards more of a thoughtful approach to playing because I (currently) plan on making the enemies move every time the player does (or maybe every 2nd time or something?) and the fact that the player cannot see the enemies all the time means that an enemy's last known position is something important as the player can then work out where the enemy is likely to move to and can plan a round accordingly (one which avoids as many enemies as possible). Currently they do not move but you can try to find a way that doesn't lead you past any.

    I haven't made fear do anything yet, but I thought you could gain it for seeing monsters (the closer they are when they get revealed, the move fear points you earn) and if you gain too many then your movement is restricted (possibly to only moving away from nearby monsters, or your character just goes insane and runs randomly at high speed for 2 seconds or something) while your fear goes down. I guess this would probably mean that if the player screws up and gets too scared, they have to move in a direction that they do not want to, thereby moving them and their enemies out of position.

    Other things that came up that I thought could be a possibility:
    - Powerups (Say, 1 powerup per level that gives extra sight range for X moves for instance)
    - Should there be any combat at all? (I'm leaning towards know but haven't ruled it out if anybody thinks it'd be a good idea)
    - Should there be warning for the player of nearby enemies that are out of sight range (like the indicators in Onslaught of the Electric Zombies)?

    Other than that, please do leave your thoughts/complaints/suggestions :D

    Link
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