[Pirate Jam 2017] Ascend Prototype
Last week Danny Day and I were at Pirate Jam in Thailand. You can see the thread about it here: http://makegamessa.com/discussion/4674/ (There's a series of videos documenting the jam if you are interested).
Of course, I made a prototype during the jam. It's a game tentatively called "Ascend". It's a reverse roguelike, where you start at the end and unlearn abilities while climbing out of a dungeon.
You can try it out here:
Windows: http://www.callofthevoid.com/Builds/Ascend_MacOSX_March_27_2017.zip
OSX: http://www.callofthevoid.com/Builds/Ascend_MacOsX_Prototype_12_Days.zip
The theme for the jam was "Impermanence". I interpreted this as the experience of losing your strength and knowledge after having fought hard to gain them. RPG's are nearly always about regularly increasing your avatar's power, this is then about regularly relinquishing the power of your avatar.
Trying to design an RPG where you downgrade feels like a very interesting design space. At the same time it cuts against the grain of what we expect, and I think that this current prototype isn't nearly intuitive enough to compensate for this.
I'm also not sure if this can be a compelling experience, I think that players might not want to start this kind of game again (like they're meant to with roguelike designs), as a new opportunity to lose your power isn't as compelling as a new opportunity to gain power. Although obviously the prototype is very simple, so this is difficult to test (as roguelikes get more compelling with more diversity, and there aren't that many difficult choices, or ways to really customize your skillset, in this prototype).
I'd be interested to hear anyone's thoughts on the weaknesses of this concept, and/or avenues that might overcome this problems.
Of course, I made a prototype during the jam. It's a game tentatively called "Ascend". It's a reverse roguelike, where you start at the end and unlearn abilities while climbing out of a dungeon.
You can try it out here:
Windows: http://www.callofthevoid.com/Builds/Ascend_MacOSX_March_27_2017.zip
OSX: http://www.callofthevoid.com/Builds/Ascend_MacOsX_Prototype_12_Days.zip
The theme for the jam was "Impermanence". I interpreted this as the experience of losing your strength and knowledge after having fought hard to gain them. RPG's are nearly always about regularly increasing your avatar's power, this is then about regularly relinquishing the power of your avatar.
Trying to design an RPG where you downgrade feels like a very interesting design space. At the same time it cuts against the grain of what we expect, and I think that this current prototype isn't nearly intuitive enough to compensate for this.
I'm also not sure if this can be a compelling experience, I think that players might not want to start this kind of game again (like they're meant to with roguelike designs), as a new opportunity to lose your power isn't as compelling as a new opportunity to gain power. Although obviously the prototype is very simple, so this is difficult to test (as roguelikes get more compelling with more diversity, and there aren't that many difficult choices, or ways to really customize your skillset, in this prototype).
I'd be interested to hear anyone's thoughts on the weaknesses of this concept, and/or avenues that might overcome this problems.
Comments
It also looks pretty Diablo 3-like in terms of juice, so well done on that :D
Downloads....... and stares at exe file on my mac :( Any chance of an OSX build?
EDIT: OK, so it pays to play before commenting. Just a thought, maybe change the ability keys to 1234 and movement as arrow? Found that a little confusing to begin with.
[Edit: spelling]
The loss of power is really tricky though unless it's used to drive the narrative (which is does very well here). Maybe the powered down moves could have some other utility that gives you different options. For instance, summoned bats can show you secret passages to avoid combat, or the stone ground wave can freeze traps giving passage to areas the other versions of the spell can't. Powering up your bees (flies?) could have the enemies flee from you, opening up an escape. Summoning on your poop summons a Kaka Demon?
I liked how there were other options too, like precious memories of loved ones, a happy childhood, etc. I didn't quite finish, dying at level 2, but I could never bring myself to choose those options. They might be mechanically irrelevant in terms of clearing a cave and getting out alive, but thematically they were wonderful as a difficult decision between survival and humanity/identity.
I put up an itch.io page now (as part of the jam), but there's no new information there: https://callofthevoid.itch.io/ascend
- Way more spiders
- Bad Manners
- Ghosts
- Nests full of spiders
- Invisible Ghosts
Also, the way the level progression works has changed. Before there was a constantly decreasing mana pool pushing players towards losing their most powerful spells. Now the spell cooldowns are controlled by skills that the player can forget (so the kind of choice this creates is choosing between casting a powerful spell every 4 seconds or losing the powerful spell but all the cooldowns remain 2 seconds long).
There's also fewer choices, so that makes the randomness have a greater effect on each playthrough. (Though there still aren't enough differentiating factors from game to game).
You can download the build directly here: Ascend_Windows_March_26_2017.zip
You can download the WINDOWS build directly here: Ascend_Windows_March_27_2017.zip
You can download the MACOSX build directly here: Ascend_MacOSX_March_27_2017.zip
Do they become stronger and or more intelligent? Perhaps some enemies could gain what the player loses.
Very cool, thanx:D