Postmortem
This was my first time to really try to make a game. It was an old text-based RPG which is inspired by incremental type games! To keep things simple, it was entirely done using just JavaScript and HTML.
Success or Failure?
The game is more of a prototype. The incremental side needs fleshing out. It overall needs more content. But... it's a working, breathing, framework. You can: gather resources, explore caves, upgrade stuff, unlock new resources, fight monsters, craft weapons and armour, hire adventurers, and reach a final dungeon. I'd call that a success!
Breaking it down:
- More than just numbers increasing - success! The game has item gathering, upgrading, currency exchange, item crafting, party management, exploration/dungeons, and RPG battles. These features can all be fleshed out, but its already a good variety of stuff.
- A clear ending: a narrative with an end goal. Sort of. The game has a clear structure, with dungeons, but there is no real narrative and I wasn't able to create an end boss. The game does tell you when you reached the final dungeon, though.
- Avoiding ridiculous numbers - success! The multi-currency system works better than I expected. Having multiple currencies definitely pads things out. Moreover, the currency exchange market, with its shifting rates, means that you dont even get 100:1 rates, so it takes quite a while to upgrade money.
What Worked
I tried to make a game multiple times over the last 10 years. 10 years! I never succeeded. This time, for the first time, was different. Why?
There's probably no easy answer, but I'll try.
Keeping the interface simple - It's purely text-based, there are minimal graphics (basically just icons) and there is no animation or sound. The characters (adventurers, NPCs, etc) always just appear in a list, without sprites aside from a portrait. Fighting is just the characters' portraits, and nothing is animated, exploring dungeons is just an "explore" button with a percentage that goes up. Inventory is a fixed order list - so no inventory-tetris to worry about coding. With just a basic CSS, it still looks a bit like a game. I think it worked surprisingly well.
Not so much simple mechanics, rather implementing them simply - not sure how to explain this, but something I felt I really did (surprisingly) well is finding simple ways to implement my ideas. There's a lot of complexity under the hood, for example, combat-turn calculation system, a passive skill training system, a functioning currency exchange market, craft-able weapons/armour. However, combat turns are "instantly" displayed in a text log, skills/weapons/armour don't do anything more than flat atk/def bonus. Currency exchange is randomly generated. I think this turned out quite well, though. My only real regret, mechanics-wise, is not being able to make combat more than just "attack / defend".
Starting messy - A lot of people look back and say they didn't plan things out enough, and their code was too messy, and urge you not to do that. I say, if you are a beginner, you should! Rather than plan everything ahead, design notes on paper, and so on, I just started. Yes, the code was messy, and yes, sometimes I realised my approach sucked and had to rewrite stuff. But, I think this was valuable experience. When you are an absolute beginner, carefully planning ahead can make your scope too ambitious (because you don't understand what's technically feasible yet). By coding it straight out "by hand" first, it helped me to just try my ideas out and see how well something works (or doesn't). If something didn't work, it was much easier to figure out why. Only once ideas were concreted, my game code became modular.
Of course, this doesn't mean I think it'a a good approach. I just think it's useful for people doing first time projects to get started, and get their hands dirty. (It also depends on the type of project.) Once you're better at game design and coding, you probably should not take this approach.
What Didn't Work
The main things that I didn't complete properly was fleshing out the incremental side, and adding a narrative.
Two-games in one! - my idea to make something with RPG and incremental elements was good, but it was a mistake. It was actually making two games in one. And then a third game that ties them together. That was way too much work. I should have just chosen one, and stuck with that. As a result, the incremental side is poorly fleshed out, and doesn't tie that much into the RPG
My first post jam update began to address this, though. Lots of new craftable stuff that requires the incremental's resources and upgrades like "adding a party slot" which requires lots of wheat. Exploring also costs "food" (wheat), meaning now the incremental side is starting to fuel the RPG.
"code first, think later" - it was good to learn about code, but it's a short term solution. I should add that it only works in certain situations: RPG game design seemed to work pretty well, just thinking up ideas and dropping them in and see what happens, but incremental game design seems to require a more thought-out process, as everything needs to carefully interconnect. Narrative, likewise, and at least in this game, isn't something I could just add as I go. If I went back in time, thus I would strip my goal down to focusing on an RPG without much plot
But I'm happy with it. It just meant that my first game is more about learning to put something together and code, and ambitious story telling and a design-orientated approach will come in future games.
The Future
I definitely plan to continue on the game. I still have lots of ideas of things I want to add, including:
- more incremental stuff, such as fleshed out village building
- more fleshed out adventurer management (start a guild, gain reputation, find talent)
- better combat (more than just attack/defend)
- class and skill system (train up adventurers, customise their class and abilities)
- and more of everything else!
Feel free to try it out and check out the devlog at:
https://newretrogames.itch.io/incrementalrpg
Bonus: Next Game Jam
I also have plans for a future MyFirstGameJam game in Summer. I drafted an idea ages ago for a Monopoly style game called Minipoly, with the goal of addressing the hideous balance issues in the original (which were apparently intentional to demonstrate the horrors of capitalism), to make something more dynamic and much, much faster to play.