(WIP) Misspell (MicRogue Spiritual Successor)

Hi everybody. I figured I should start talking about my next game. It's kind of a spiritual successor to my previous game MicRogue I attempted to take a single aspect of Roguelikes and focus the game solely on that. MicRogue being movement. Well with this game I wanted to focus on Items.

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The way Misspell works is as the play goes through they collect pages from their lost spell-book allowing them to cast different spells, to survive the dark forest. The player can also find treasures ,that grant passive bonuses, as they explore, but they will take up their limited inventory space. I am going to be posting more and more stuff here as I get closer to launch. I will also be answering questions and I have a PC build so maybe some people can check it out.

 

I actually did a few animations for the new Chaos game.

I would actually say the closest analog would probably be Zaga-33 that game has the closest feeling. The game is kind of small at the moment. But as you play you unlock new enemies, spells, and floors. So it kind of grows with you.

 

Thanks for the encouragement everybody. I can say there is a PC build up on Itch.io I may take it down once I get closer to launch not sure if a free PC build will hurt my mobile sales. Probably not. I might just change that to be a demo with a full build that has all the unlocks. Friday I am going to post some info for the game. Would you care to learn more about the spells, the treasures, or the monsters.

 

Friday Update:

So my plan going forward is to write up a post each Friday as a way to keep motivation going and and to keep everyone up to date on whats going on. My Friday post will always have 3 parts to it. an Update where I give you an idea of whats going on. Game Talk where I talk about some aspect of the design, and Rejected Idea. This last one is some idea I had that didn't make it into this version of the game, but that does not mean it wont find its way in later.

Update: Currently getting all of the sounds into the game. I have also been writing up a plan for the first update(Current plan is 4 new enemies, 3 spells, two treasures, and a secret area). I aimed a bit smaller on this first version to make sure the game would be doable to get it out.


Game Talk:
Today I just want to talk about the enemies. So this is all the enemies currently in the game. I wont talk about some of them and most of them will be unlocked as you play. This game has deterministic combat. you always do one damage when striking a foe, and they always do 1 damage when striking you. There are no hidden stats so all enemies need to behave differently and not just be the same monster with some different numbers.

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the three I am going to talk about today are The rat, The bandit, and the Scorpion

The Rat: - This is your standard enemy. It moves and it attacks and only has one health. Most enemies will use this enemy as a foundation

The Bandit: - It moves and it attacks and only has one health. Where this character shines though is with items. If a bandit strikes you it will destroy one of the items you currently have. This could be one of your spells or even one of the treasures you currently carry.

The Scorpion: - It moves and it attacks and only has one health. The problem with scorpions is their poison. A strike from a scorpion will not only damage you one, but also reduce your maximum health by one.

with just these enemies it puts the player in some tough choices. There was many a time where I had to chose between a strike that cost me a health or one that cost me an item.

Rejected Idea:
An enemy that summons more rats into the level to fight against you. The original idea was a Lich that summoned skeletons but the skeletons are much tougher, so I dropped it to rats instead. The main reason this character didn't make it in was I had some trouble with the summoning code, searching the level for open spaces. If the Lich ever does make it in, It may summon rats, but have a small chance to summon a skeleton instead.

Well that is everything for today. Leave any questions you might have and I will try to answer them.

 

Friday update! its been a busy day, so a shorter post today.

Update: All the sounds are now in. More testing and I need to get my apple developer set up (I will be putting this out without a publisher). I have been testing it on android and the touch controls feel pretty good.

Game Talk: So I want to talk a little bit about the unlock system. so the game will track 3 different stats for the players. Spells, Enemy kills, and wins. As the player casts more spells they will unlock new spells and treasures, as enemies are killed new enemies are added to the game. As you win the game will become harder. More enemies will show up on each floor and the final floor will be pushed back. These are the only stat unlocks at the moment, but I am not against doing other smaller unlocks that might be fun in the future (Killing enemies in specific ways for example.)

Rejected Idea: the Amulet: it was a treasure that dealt with spellcasting. When a player would cast a spell they had a 10% chance to get that spell back.

 

Update: More work under the hood. Adding a new control scheme so the player can tap or swipe to move around the screen.

Game Talk: Keeping the game different. One of the issues I have come across is making sure different runs feel very different. I have been trying to plan out new things that the player can come across to mix up the game a little. Right now the player will always fight rats, spiders, and skeletons, but what makes a run feel drastically different? I am often reminded of Spelunky. on a play through you will always battle the same monsters and go trough the same areas, but its the special things that make the game feel different. Not every run has a dark stage, not every run does the player get a jetpack. So I am looking at ways to make the game's scope wider to have a different feel to it. I am thinking A. special enemies that show up (See below) and also make special level aditions or possibly even super rare spells.

Rejected Idea: the knight. This was a special enemy that would show up. It had 3 health but upon killing it the player would get both the sword, and the shield treasure.

 

So big update on this. I have been silent for a bit, because I have made this in gamemaker and there is a problem with building to iOS. They have since released an update which fixes that process so I can start testing builds again.


I am also thinking about post release and new content. Would smaller updates more frequently or one large update further down the line be better? I feel like small updates adding like 3-5 new things (enemies, treasures, spells) would be better in the long run as it allows more iterations to build on the current mechanics.

 

So thinking about the name. I really like the name of Misspell, but it doesnt make for the easiest internet search. I think I am going to try and rework it to keep the name, but have it written differently. looking at Miss Spell or Ms. Spell

 

the problem that arises from the name is Misspell wont probably come up in a search engine.

 

I thought about that briefly, but I like the layered meaning of Misspell. The spells have vanished, or gone missing, and also I named the main character Miss Spell. That's why I am thinking of changing the name to Ms. Spell. It still works for the layered meaning and also makes it a lot easier to find in a search database.

 

So I have been able to get an iOS build up and running reliably. I might put a call out to testers in the future. I want to use TestFlight so I hope. To experiment with that this week.