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7DRL Challenge 2022

Hosted by Slashie, Darren Grey, jmlait · #7drl
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A jam submission

Soul BreakfastView game page

Revenge, like cereal, is best served cold. A quick roguelike.
Submitted by stpyramids — 1 day, 13 hours before the deadline
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Soul Breakfast's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Roguelikeness#144.4294.429
Overall#863.0003.000

Ranked from 7 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Successful or Incomplete?

Success

Did development of the game take place during the 7DRL Challenge week?

Yes

Is your game a roguelike or a roguelite?

Yes

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Comments

hanz9427Submitted2 years ago(+1)

I am a big fan of lifesteal tactics in combat rogue-likes. So this game played on my strings. :-)

I have run the game in a Chrome browser and when going up or down using arrows, the whole web page moved. Switched to the vi-like hjkl and everything was fine.

Somehow I managed to win even the first game, which was a little unexpected, but possibly I was just lucky.

Was there a possibility to change the spell target? I have possibly missed it and danced in front of enemies just to auto-aim the one I wanted to zap.

I want to prize the copywriter, the text in your game serves a great atmosphere.

Thank you for a great game

Submitted
Lirael's Library
Reply
stpyramidsDeveloper2 years ago

Thanks so much for playing and for your comment!

This reminds me that I have a fairly substantially updated version I need to get onto Itch. A lot of the UI is revamped, so perhaps that would fix the control issue you were encountering. I’ve been busy with work and haven’t had a chance to work on this for some time, but I have some time off soon and was going to spend some time on it.

As for spell targeting, it’s intentional that by default you can only target the nearest enemy. (I have an esoteric in-game explanation for this, which I should probably add to the Help screens I have in the new release.) The intention is for alternate targeting schemes to be a soul effect. To make this really work, though, I need to make some adjustments to dungeon generation to allow for more variety in tactical movement.

This particular version is pretty easy, after a few releases that were unfairly hard (or at least had unexpected difficulty spikes). The current development version is harder but I think fairer than earlier versions.

Thanks for the kind words about the writing! I had a lot of fun with it.

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cornfabSubmitted2 years ago(+1)

I really like the tactical choices of which souls to use in the build and whether to release the souls to gain health back. I was going to say it was hard to rebuild on 0 souls but then I saw your earlier comment and that definitely helps. I think the game comes together really well I think the only thing I was left really wanting was arrow key support lol

Submitted
Wayward King Attack
Reply
stpyramidsDeveloper2 years ago(+1)

Thanks for playing! Forgetting arrow keys was a total oversight on my part. I have them in my dev branch but I’ve also made a lot of balance changes and need to do playtesting before cutting another release for Itch.

Reply
katerbergSubmitted2 years ago(+1)

Had a lot of fun with this one. It was definitely confusing on how essence worked, since I was unsure (even to the point that I died on level 19) what could hurt me and what couldn't. Still a fun game, and the core mechanic of consuming small enemies to gain their abilities OR your HP was a fun one.

Submitted
SUPERDARK
Reply
stpyramidsDeveloper2 years ago

Just to clarify, was it unclear which enemies could hit you at any given time, or unclear which enemies were hitting you? Right now, the logic for ranged attacks is very basic: if you can see a monster, they can see you, and ranged attacks have infinite range. (This makes +sight soul effects a double-edged sword.)

I definitely need a “look” command to supplement the targeting view, so it’s easier to distinguish different enemy types. One thing I’m trying to balance, and which is only partially implemented right now, is the idea that the player character’s perception is unusual: they are a nearly-disembodied entity that doesn’t have eyes, etc. and is navigating the mortal world by something like active sonar, except with spiritual essence rather than sound. That’s why you can only target the nearest creature, but in later iterations I expect to add different targeting options as soul effects.

Thanks for playing and for the feedback!

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katerbergSubmitted2 years ago

for me the part that confused me was which enemies I should care about or how much they’d deal. I probably just need to pay better attention to the log!

Reply
Cody LoydSubmitted2 years ago(+1)

yo i love a classic RL. Nice work here. A bit chaotic to insist on VI keys for playing, but I can respect that lol. Usually i’m asking people to please ADD vi-key support.

overall nice game! I enjoyed the ‘essense’ mechanic.

Submitted
GORLF
Reply
stpyramidsDeveloper2 years ago(+1)

Thanks! I honestly just kind of forgot arrow keys existed, but now that you’ve reminded me I’m going to add them.

Reply
VeralosSubmitted2 years ago(+1)

Neat game. It's a bit old school for my tastes, but I still enjoyed it. The mechanic of consuming enemies to get different upgrades is cool and leads to interesting choices about when you swap out for new ones. 

One complaint is that essence being both health and the main resource leads to a rich get richer scenario. When you have lots of essence you can kill and devour your way through all the enemies. When you have none you're basically screwed unless you get lucky and find a safe path to vermin.

Submitted
The Omega Rod
Reply
stpyramidsDeveloper2 years ago

Thanks for playing, and I appreciate the feedback! I’m not sure if you played the archived 7DRL submission or the current version, but I made a few changes recently to balance out that particular issue. You can (r)elease souls to gain essence, which is a better deal than having them knocked off you by attacks at 0 essence. You can also now pass through all monsters’ squares, although of course you’re leaving yourself open for attacks.

The flip side is what you mention about being able to overrun enemies at full essence. There’s a few mechanics that are meant to balance this, but they need tweaking. The essence cost to go through passages is meant to force a risk/reward tradeoff (entering a more dangerous area with less essence, but also progressing faster). The auto-targeting mechanic sometimes forces you to destroy dying monsters that are in a place that’s too dangerous to hit.

My next round of updates will include adding more monsters and tweaking level generation. Right now there’s a bit of a “feast or famine” situation with vermin. There’s also some more soul effects I have planned that will increase tactical options. The Slow effect needs a substantial nerf, as well. And there’s one mechanic that was always intended but I never got around to implementing – dying monsters should actually, y’know, die eventually, so you can’t just leave them around as essence caches.

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