Thanks so much for the high praise! Makes my day to hear that people want this game to be developed further! I actually have plans on using this concept to make a new game from the ground up as I have a lot of ideas with this concept. Right now I am at the planning stage where I'm writing down all of my ideas into a design notebook and also looking at tutorials to try and learn the more complex tools I would need to develop this further. Let me know if you want to hear about my plans/ give feedback, don't want to talk (type) your ear off!
Viewing post in You are [UN] Dead, Enjoy Your Stay jam comments
So I was planning on making it into a Metroidvania but another commenter pointed out that the health draining mechanic discourages explorating for secrets so it would be hard to make it into a Metroidvania and I agree with them.
Instead, I plan to go in the direction of more of a rogue-lite game with a randomized map. However, so the player can take advantage of the blood they placed on the floor, instead of the map being randomized on each death the player can respawn in the same map a certain number of times to explore it further. Either I will make this a stat you can upgrade or make it so you can buy something that increases the amount of times you can go back to the map. I don't have the specifics down yet but I want it to be some sort of risk-reward design.
When playing on a fresh map, I was thinking that you could only start with one spell that you choose, and the rest you would find scattered throughout the map. More spells would be added to the drop pool as you level up.
I was planning on adding more movement spells and spells that interact with blood on the floor. For instance, I was planning on having the blood explosion knock the player around too, and have a spell that allows players to swim quickly through dried blood and damage enemies, and a spell that allows you to teleport to a blood spot and appear in an explosion of blood. Additionally, I was planning on allowing you to paint the walls with blood, by wall-sliding or by using spells that can do so, so you have more options on using these blood abilities.
I am still thinking about how I will handle overall progression but that is what I have thought of so far.
Let me know your thoughts, I would love feedback on these ideas!
first of : sorry for not replying sooner , I just overlooked this
personally I find the idea of it being a rogue lite slightly less appealing than it being a metroidvania , this is to a big part just my preference , because when I played games like dead cells or enter the gungeon , I played through them once fairly quickly ( dead cells took me just two tries to kill the final boss , there was a lot of luck involved ) and after I finished them I just couldnt bring myself to playing these things anymore because I knew , all I would find would be useless because the final boss is already beaten once , most times developers add more secret bosses to the game after its realiese but thats the same thing over again ,
In metroidvanias I spend usually way more time not only because they are longer , but also because I replay them very often , the key difference is that a game like hollow knight , dark souls or super metroid is so well designed and allowes for different strategies every time while the level architecture stays the same . after beating a rouge lite I always feel like there less variance in level design , because it feels very samey all the do to its random generation .
However especially in the case of your game I feel like the mechanics lend them self perfectly to a metroidvania and a rouge lite would harm them .
as you sad the idea of spilling blood all over the place to better move around is a perfect fit for exploring , every time you enter a new area you have to push against the boundaries of your domain so it gets somewhat like the ink mechanics of splatoon . I would double down on this aspect of the game , because its something I've never seen in this context and it impressed me a lot .
But of course its your game and you decide what to do with it and I have no right to tell you how it's done .
I can clearly see that you are a very skilled game designer and even if it would become a rouge like or rouge lite it will most certainly be a great one and I will keep follow the development of it .
thanks for taking the time to respond, I really appreciate your feedback! You are right that the hand crafted aspect of the map is diminished when it is a rogue-lite, it trades quality for quantity I suppose.
The blood mechanic does work well for the common Metroidvania trope of backtracking, and it would make it fun to backtrack if you get to use your movement abilities to do so.
I'm still on the fence between the two, and I'll have to ask more people on what their thoughts are for this. Regardless, thanks for your input, I will keep it in consideration!