[Devlog] Swipey Rogue, by First-Order Games (swipe-action, autorunning, puzzle-rogue)

Thanks for your feedback!

 

Week Wrap-Up

So I've been plugging away here. Polishing what I can, finishing designing the remaining Challenge Rooms for Challenge Saga, and making my press kit. I'll be sharing more of the new images, videos, and gifs from the press kit over the next couple weeks as I move towards final submission to the App Store.

Here's a few images that I haven't shared here yet. Enjoy!

This is the pre-release poster (I've updated the first post in the thread with it):



This is the app icon (I'm surprised I haven't shared this here yet, it was finished a while ago):



This is a friendly reminder that Swipey Rogue is a "No B.S." game:



Bonus Dev Shot

And finally, I've been really worn out from doing all this indie game marketing work so it was nice to get back to doing some in-game work. Yesterday I added SFX and VFX for the chain damage perk in Free Running mode. It felt good to do something creative instead of just trying to promote the game online:



Thanks!

Thanks again for dropping by to check on progress. I think I'm 2 weeks (or less) from submitting to the App Store for final approval. It's been a long road. I'm looking forward to wrapping this up!

 

Cool idea! Unfortunately, I can't afford to pay the contract artist to do any more edits so it's final as is.

Thanks again for the encouragement and your suggestion!

Thanks, by "no money purchase" I just mean that there are no items in the shop that you buy with real money (ie: IAP for gameplay). Thanks for asking, hope you like it!

 

New Media Update

Hey everyone, I've been working on my press kit so I have lots of new media to share. I don't want to spam the forum so I'll post up a whole bunch of the new stuff all at once, then post up more in a couple days maybe.

New Challenge Saga Collages (menu flow and gameplay preview):






New Free Running Collages (menu flow and gameplay preview):





Status Update

Right now, I'm finishing up design of the remaining Challenge Rooms for Challenge Saga mode. This is the really fun part of game dev when you get to make cool things with the tools and gameplay mechanics that you've designed and created. I created more than half of the Challenge Rooms already, but I had to put the rest on hold until I had finished the rest of my tasks. For some reason, I can't kick back and relax and do level design when I have other tasks hanging over my head. It makes me anxious and I don't work well. It's like doing design work is so fun I feel bad if there's any other work to do. Weird right?

Here's a screenshot of the Challenge Room editor tool I made in Unity:

This tool has been very helpful. I've created all the Challenge Rooms with it for all of the areas. It greatly increased my productivity. I can't imagine laying out each level in 3D in Unity. That would be a gigantic task. It has been fun to see the tool evolve. I've added features to support all the new gameplay mechanics, and I even tweaked the colors over time so it wouldn't be so ugly since I spend a lot of time using it.

Here's a side by side screenshot of a level in the editor and in the game:

I don't think I've ever shared a side by side shot. I thought it might be cool to show how it looks in the editor vs in game.

And here's a bonus shot showing the final design for the Perk Icons and where they'll be replacing all the temp ones that are in now (gonna look sweet!).


Thanks!

Thanks again for dropping by to check on progress. I'm completing about 15 Challenge rooms per day right now and I'm on track to wrap them all up some time next week, do a little final testing, integrate the final perk icon art and then submit to the App store for final approval. Wow! So close! I'm still on track for releasing in August. I'm pushing really hard right now to get this released. Can't wait to have it out there for everyone. Hope you enjoy.

 

The old ones? If you look close you can see the old ones are the original concept sketch. The new ones will be the same, just finished off so you should hopefully still recognize all the images themselves they'll just look better. I put the original concept sketches in the game so they'd be ready to replace when the new ones are all done.

Anthony (freelance artist), had his SSD fail. <--- crazy I felt so sorry for him. He had backups but you know what it's like when computers just die. He had to buy new hardware, re-install OS, apps, restore backups, etc. That's so demoralizing. Set him back a couple weeks. So that's why the temp ones have been in so long. He's all back up and running now though so they should get replaced soon. Didn't affect me much, I had lots of other things to finish, but man.. poor guy. He's a trooper.

 

Challenge Saga - Special Leaderboard Rooms



While I've been finishing up the design of all the Challenge Saga rooms, I've been sneaking in some exta-stupid difficult rooms for fun.

All rooms always have a relatively straight forward way to get to the exit. There shouldn't be any that are intentionally too difficult to just beat. Even if one is, you can buy your way past it with gold you've collected (doesn't even cost that much gold).

However, to complete all the challenges sometimes I've made the rooms extra hard. I consider that fair game. That's the point of the challenges. Not everyone is going to be able to complete all the challenges in all the rooms and that's ok in my books. Some speedruns are more tricky, sometimes it's harder to get all enemies.

Extra super special hard rooms will have:
- non-random gem pickup for a special reward
- dedicated high-score leaderboard
- 3 challenge completion achievement.



Challenge Saga - Normal Leaderboards (explanation)

Here's a quick refresher on how the normal leaderboards work. The normal leaderboards in Challenge Saga mode are broken into Score and Time types like so:

High Score:
- cumulative value of all your high scores
- higher is better

Time:
- cumulative value of all your times
- lower is better
- rooms you haven't beaten count for 60 seconds by default until you beat them and get a lower time

There are Score and Time leaderboards for each of the 4 areas in Challenge Saga, and there are global Score and Time leaderboards that use the combined scores and combined times from all 4 areas.

So there are 10 general leaderboards in total. As you can see, all leaderboards favor players who play more of Challenge Saga than everyone else.

Basically, I wanted the challenges, leaderboards, and achievements in Challenge Saga mode to give hardcore players something to hack away at if they get into the game at all. Runs in Challenge Saga mode are recorded using the Everyplay service so you can share your runs and see each other's techniques for beating rooms, getting speedruns, and completing challenges.



The Future:

Part of why I wanted to make Swipey Rogue is I like hard-core games that involve challenge and mastery. I think there's room on mobile to play around in that space. On the surface Swipey Rogue is relatively easy to engage with and should be accessible to many players, but there is a hard core structure in place for anyone that might really get into it, and a venue to demonstrate and show off your skills and accomplishments (replays, leaderboards, achievements).

I'm not adding any more new features right now, but I'm researching ways to add weekly leaderboards in the future, possibly post-release. I'd like to have a system for Free Running mode that would generate a weekly, fixed maze that everyone could compete against each other in (in addition to the normal random generated mazes that you play in that mode).

Wow, I wrote a lot.. sorry.

 

New Media

I have some new media to share. Lot's of images and videos have been added to the press kit. Here's a few.

2 New Challenge Saga mode Gifs



2 New Free Running mode Gifs

 

Thanks for your feedback. The art is all I can afford.

 

Last Additions:

I'm wrapping up here today. This past week, I've completed the final little additions that were needed to the game and integrated the final art for the perk icons. I've uploaded a final testing build (just so testers can check out the final game, it's already been tested internally very heavily). When that test build is approved for testing, I'll leave it up for a day or so then upload the final build (with advertising enabled) that I'll submit to apple for App store review.

I'm pretty excited. It has been a long road. This has been a fun game to make. I enjoyed the process of the game revealing itself to me. I think I paid attention to it closely along the way and made sure to keep adjusting and adding what was needed to round it out into a full piece of entertainment. I hope you enjoy it when it releases!

New System: Start Spells

I've realized that the Perk system is really the key hook of the Free Running mode. I decided I wanted to create a way of rewarding perks beyond earning them during Rank-Up and finding loot drops that grant you partial perks.

SO, I created a spell system. Spells are used once when you start a Free Running run. A Spell is a collection (1-3) of perks. The possible perks are random, and their strength is also random (on the low scale, nothing insane, but good starting values).



You select from your collection of spells when you start your run. You can find spells as rare drops in loot crates, but you can also win them as prizes in the new prize minigame.

New System: Prize Minigame

I wanted to provide players with a way of gaining access to the game without having to beat all the challenges. The challenges were previously the main way to earn Gems (which you need to unlock areas, and to continue). While you could also buy them with gold you've collected, and also find them as rare drops, I wanted more of them in the economy.

I also wanted a way of doing this without creating an IAP. I don't like selling currency in game for money, it skews the game design too much towards screwing the player at all opportunities. Anyway, I figured that I'd make a random prize minigame that you can play for a minimal cost (5 gems), or you can just watch a commercial to play it. It seems like a fair trade to me.



So, you pay the 5 gems or watch an advertisement then 3 shields spin on the screen. You pick a shield to uncover them all and see what's under them. The prizes under the shields can be gold (range of value), gems (range of number), and spells. It's a great way to get all of the above. You can stock up on up to 100 Spells before your "inventory" is full.

Final Art:

The last of the artwork is now integrated and all the Perk icons have been replaced. I'm excited about how they look. It has already made me want to collect perks and spells more just to see them all on the screen.



Demo Video:

Here's probably my last devlog video. I show the new systems in action.

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Thanks!

Thanks for following along. It has been a long road. And thanks again to everyone who tested and provided feedback. I'll post an update when I've got the final build uploaded to Apple and I'm just waiting on approval (or rejection). After that, I'll post up a trailer video for the game. (I need to make that...)

 

Thanks! Crossing my fingers the App store approval goes smooth.

 

Thanks a lot, hope it adds much swipey to your life when it releases!

I have ideas yes! Hopefully I can add them as updates after release if people enjoy the game.

I'd like to push Free Running mode way further with the following features:
- selectable (unlockable) characters with different starting attributes and gender
- more enemy types, and actual enemy behaviors & attributes
- boss battles
- item equipping (inventory, consumable items, weapons, gear, etc)
- some sort of collectible system with rare drops
- daily challenge maze that's generated and has its own leaderboard and special drops
- quests, events, stories, etc.

Hopefully people feel like it's a "full game" now when I release it. There's a lot of work in there, and it's free even. But ya, it's very much version 1.0 and there's room to grow.

Some More Gifs For You

2 New Challenge Saga mode Gifs



2 New Free Running mode Gifs