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Thank you for the kind comment!

OK, thanks!

I just read the additional requirement of all entires needing to use procedural content generation that "impacts gameplay in a substantial way", and I'm not really sure what counts as "substantial".

Since it should be "a way to maintain the spirit of the challenge", do I get it correctly that the procedural generation is just supposed to make the games feel more roguelike-y, and using the model of randomly generated levels with randomly placed enemies (but with enemies of fixed types, as seen in many traditional RL's) would be OK? Or does it need to be ingrained deeper into the game?

I'm sorry if the question is a bit dumb. I just wanted to be 100% sure about where the red line lies exactly, so that my entry is not refused if I manage to make it in time.

You can certainly make the artifact spawn a bit later; however, in that case, I don't get how they are spawned. I just thought that every time you have a new combination of weapon and book, there is a roll for an artifact to appear. So in each game, I tried to cycle weapons and especially books as fast as I could.

However the problem seems to be that for any given character, there aren't really many items of significance, period. Typically, you will want one specific weapon and at most one specific book. After that, you want winged boots and an armor, and that's it. Sadly, most items I find in any given run are junk. And I'm still not sure about the books because they seem to have a proper effect only with spells. With other weapons their effect seems to be much reduced (they trigger only rarely, but I can't say that they don't trigger at all — it's a bit weird). The artifact doesn't particularly change that state of things.

With respect to the boss: I think it should have much less health and much more "procs". As of now, the bossfight is quite simple and I'd say repetitive — you hit it 10 times, 20 times and then you start thinking "will it finally die?" It looks like the fight takes something between 150 and 200 rounds, which is a lot, and in that time, you unleash at least ~30 attacks, but it can be even as much as 60.

One thing that would make sense for a dragon is dragon's breath. It would make things a bit more interesting than just running straight away from it — you would need to dodge the breath weapon to the side. There could also be a lingering effect, e. g. the red dragon would breathe fire that would keep burning for a couple of turns, and if you step into it, you lose some HP. The dragon wouldn't be affected by these fires at all, and with other monsters — I don't know but probably they should be immune to it too. The black dragon could breathe some kind of poisonous vapors with a similar effect.

Finally: I think that the main game is pretty well paced now and there seems to be little need of adding some difficulty spikes. One such spike is, in my opinion, the bats, especially when the white spheres come right after them. I would rather tone down the little dragons a bit, because they seem to be very hard to defeat (the last time I managed to do that was with the overpowered archer in v1.5, after that I always had to run away and grab the amulet). The three problems with them are: 1) they have a lot HP, 2) they hit hard (for 8!) 3) there's so many of them and they come from all directions. I think that the third point is the most important: I always get swarmed, or there is such a serious threat of being swarmed that I need to run for the amulet. Maybe it would help if you spawned just a little bit less of them and give more time before the big black dragon comes.

I really liked the meteorites in the boss battles. They add a feeling of epicness, although they're quite inconsequential most of the time.

I had an interesting run with the spark wizard. I managed to max out the sparks and that was a sight to behold. Here's a video (I'm not sure if you have time to look at these videos, I just try to record them in case something interesting happens): https://is.muni.cz/de/darek/horde-v17-sparkwizard.mp4. I think that at least the last 6-7 minutes are quite awesome, in spite of the fact that I was defeated at the end.

By the way, there is a weird bug that can be seen at ~23:25 in the video. I got healed for 1 HP for some unknown reason. (There's another instance of this at ~26:05.) That was very unfortunate for me, because I had previously used the supercharged potion and so I had a lot more HP than my maximum allowed. However, there's another bug that will discard any HP over the maximum when you're healed (I suggest first checking whether the player has more than maximum, and if so, the healing should be skipped altogether). So due to this weird 1 HP heal, in fact 50 HP have been lost. Maybe that has something to do with my premature death 😃.

Another by the way: there seems to be a big need for AoE now. The start has always been rough for the archer, but now, when the rats are smaller than before, I'd say it's a bit too much. It looks like in order to be viable, the archer needs to obtain the fireball as soon as possible; otherwise he will be destroyed simply because there will be more monsters coming than he will be killing. When I tried a run without fireballs, I had a huge tide of monsters tailing me, and by the time the grey orcs started coming, the horde still contained rats! Starting the bow at 3 arrows seems to be even more needed now.

I don't think it needs to be nerfed. You need a lot of cannon-fodder to power it up, and the battle needs to be stable enough to give you time. WIth the dragon, it was possible because it has amazing numbers of those blobs with it. Sparks tear through the blobs by dozens and the HP grows nicely. In hectic situations, it's not very useful.

I would keep it as it is just for "coolness".

Thanks for trying it out! :)

The "roguelike" is not really there because it didn't get done in time. The school part is working but the world really isn't. I also admit that the ping-pong is probably too harsh — there was little time to do balancing, so I just put some numbers in there and that was it :—). I was working on it with my brother (who wrote all the stories) and scripting all of those things that he wrote took me way more time than I thought. In retrospect, I should've sacrificed half a day or even a full day to making a simple GUI that would generate the scripts automatically. That would be a huge timesaver for me and for him as well.

By the way, the graphics is all Creative Commons and there is a complete list with attributions in the zip file, so you can have a look at where exactly I got it and under what terms it can be used.

I like the idea of spells being powerful but a bit random, and it's very obvious from the start that the spells were meant to be this way.

A couple of ideas for spells — of course with no guarantee of usefulness 😃:

• Lightning — several arcs of lightning would shoot out of you and go in "lightningy-random" fashion, more or less outwards. Good damage but shorter reach. The point is to have a spell that you can rely on to clean your immediate surroundings, but it wouldn't work like the spark and the fireball do (i. e. run away and the spells do the work for you).
• Tornado — one whirlwind going more or less straight towards random enemies (like fireball?), it would grab the enemies and throw them around, giving mild damage. The point: it should be good for scattering big hordes. Then you can defeat them part by part. Or, at least, the scattered horde will be easier to run away from. A con is that it can make your other attacks less effective.
• Poisonous mist/wall of fire/whatever — the spell would make a cloud of poison in a (not totally) random position. The catch is that the cloud would linger there for an extended period of time (20 rounds perhaps?), maybe slowly moving around ("with the wind"). Anything caught inside would be damaged, monster or player, each turn, as long as it remains inside. The point: a powerful damaging spell, but it's sort of a double-edged sword. Looks like it could make the game more interesting because you would like to go around the clouds while maneuvering the monsters into them. This thing should have a huge cooldown (having more than 2 clouds at the same time should be rare).
• Generic debuff spells — they would hit a bunch of monsters and debuff them for several rounds. The monsters could be e. g. slowed down, have their attack reduced to half, or they would take 50% more damage from each attack, while debuffed.
• Mistform — after casting it, you would become invisible for several rounds. The monsters would stop following you and you would be able to pass right through them without being attacked. Probably a good idea for some kind of powerup but a bad idea for a spell 😃. Not sure how it should be triggered.
• Mind control spells — one possibility would be a confusion spell that would hit several monsters and make them mull around randomly, perhaps attacking other monsters. Another would be a more direct control spell that would hit one monster, that would turn around and instead of running at you, it would run at the nearest monster and start attacking it. (Probably hard to implement but could be nice if the player can build combos around it.)
• Polymorph spell — it would transform a couple of monsters into frogs for a couple of rounds. It would do no damage but the monsters would have only 50% health and no attack power while polymorphed.
• Something that would detonate gems around you, destroying them and dealing damage to monsters around them. Probably useless idea, as the spell would wildly oscillate between useless and overpowered.
• Fetch spell — an utility spell that would fetch some gems and/or chests nearby every couple of rounds. Not sure if it makes any sense to have this alongside the greed skill.
• Rebuild wall — exiting a square where a wall has once been while casting this spell will renew that wall. Probably not worth a skill pick.

There's some detail left to work out, of course, e. g. bosses should be immune to some of those.

Ad the whirlwind guy: I had a single point in fireball and the other 10 skill picks were melee (whirlwind, slash, bash). So I had the fireball, but I don't think it was very useful. I guess it would probably be better to pick something else.

By the way, I managed to get a win with the fireball wizard. I got the life-draining artifact staff, so after obtaining it, I maximized sparks as much as I could. In the bossfight, I was hit 2 times but ended with full 100 HP nevertheless 😃 (I tried to continue but I couldn't obliterate the elemental giants as fast as I should. As soon as the little dragons came, I had to run like hell and grab the amulet. And I got hit for ~ 40 in in only five or six rounds just before that.)

By the way, I managed to win with the whirlwind guy, so he's no longer as useless as he was before. I obtained the freezing sword artifact and that essentially decided the battle with the dragon. After some initial wrong moves, I found a cycle of moves in which it was permanently frozen and I could beat the heck out of it.

I tried the archer again and... wow. I had a very rough time. Here's another video: https://is.muni.cz/de/darek/horde-v16-archer.mp4 (171M, ~26 min).

I wholeheartedly agree with the bow nerf, except for starting with 1 arrow. I would still start with 3. There are two reasons for that: 1) the bow has always been a great weapon against single targets but not really good against large hordes of enemies (until late game if you can upgrade it). So the archer had a problematic start even before the nerf. 2) I would often take the bow with the other classes because it is a good supplementary weapon for clearing the space in front of you. I especially like to get it with the wizards, because their spells hit more or less randomly and they badly need something to clear a path to run through. But if it starts just with 1 arrow, it is useless in this regard. And I think we'd like to encourage various mixed builds at least a bit.

By the way, sometimes if the bow is fired at an enemy which is right in front of you, the arrows fly right through the enemy but they deal no damage. I never noticed this before, so it looks like it's a new bug. See for instance 00:53 or 05:16 in the video.

Finally, thanks for all the little "quality of life" improvements!

Thanks! Some bits I wanted to offer:

• First off, as noted by other commenters, the game is too long now. Personally, I think it would be the best if you could get to the first dragon (and the regular victory) in 10-15 minutes. Now it is 30 minutes which definitely feels too much. And I don't mean that the game would necessarily be boring, I just mean that you want the players to "fail faster". If you die 5 minutes into the game, it's OK. If you die in the bossfight 10 min into the game, still it's OK and you will want to try again. Die in the bossfight half an hour into the game though, and the player will feel exhausted/frustrated. Mostly they will say "I'm not playing that again for now" and go away.
• Others have said that there was too little pressure, but I don't really agree. There needs to be more pressure, but not by much. I tried playing with the other classes and the pressure is actually quite okay for them; it's more like the archer needs to be nerfed 😃. If you would like to make it shorter, I think it would be good to keep the delays between the waves more or less as they are and just cut a couple of the waves (esp. the wolves and the orcs). I guess it would also be better to choose some waves randomly, e. g. in each game, send either the bats or the weird white spheres but not both. Maybe also randomly choose between the wolves and the basic green orcs (they seem to be pretty similar and it can start to drag a little bit).
• The chests and the items are a nice idea, however so far they are a bit too simplistic. The main problem is that there seems to be more or less a strict ordering of the items (maybe I'm just thinking too rigidly but it looks like it is so). Some examples: with boots: any speed bonus > resistance, and among two resistances, the higher is better. With weapons: artifact weapon > upgraded weapon (crossbow, nice staff, battleaxe etc.) > your basic weapon > everything else. With books, I as the archer ranked freeze book > burn book > the other two. In this way, you're waiting for a very small subset of items, and most of the chests you ever open are then useless (and that can feel frustrating) — see the video, where I was constantly offered axes, staves and other stuff that I didn't want 😃. A solution to this problem could be introducing a couple of more items with incomparable effects that would be useful for any class (I have some wild ideas, I can give you a raw unsorted list if you want to, but no guarantees that it will be useful 😃).
• The artifacts are a really nice idea. I got one only once, but it's great to occasionally be able to try and fight through up to the big black dragon.
• Random stuff: the fireball sound is way too loud and long, listening to it for half an hour straight can get tiring fast; the music still gets messed up occasionally (the treasure music often replaces the main music totally, sometimes they both get played simultaneously); a pointer in the form of equilateral triangle is not very practical (hard to see which way it is pointing); I don't understand the sun book description at all (does it do anything?) and not sure about workings of the burn book either; "melee speed" is quite a confusing description but I found out that it equals more reach with axe slash (a hugely useful thing) — perhaps it would be better to talk about "melee reach"; when you get the amulet for 1024 XP, it shows as "+102" on one line and "4" below that; potions and food seem to be grabbed by the greed skill and that sometimes leads to an accidental gobbling of these precious consumables when you didn't intend to eat them (btw. it would also be nice if the 3 potions at the southern boss could be taken one by one; I mostly manage to grab two at the same time and much of the healing is wasted)

I tried the v1.5.2 a couple of times and there's a lot to say. I even recorded a video of me playing (I got an easy win with the archer; I killed the big black dragon, and in fact it didn't even touch me). So if you are interested how a "veteran player" (😃) played the game, you can look at it at https://is.muni.cz/de/darek/horde.mp4 (beware though, it has ~200M and since it's on a temporary deposit provided by my university, it will remain there only for 30 days). I will probably refer to it when I write more.

Wow, that's a totally different game now! It will take some time to explore it.

That sounds good. However the Linux archive seems to be faulty — it only has one empty directory in it, and it's hard to play with that 😃.

Great! One thing though: I would propose putting a couple of words about controls in the "instructions" screen. I just randomly found out that you could move diagonally, and that's a big game changer. Immediately after that I got a win with the spark mage which was something I wasn't able to do before. Maybe I'm just blind, but I don't think this was explained anywhere.

(Also it looks a bit like when going diagonally, you go √2 times farther than going orthogonally, but I'm not sure about that.)

Looking forward to that! I really think that the melee needs something more going for it (I've got a successful win with the axe slash guy though).

Well, I don't really put much effort. I just play the game 1-2 times in a row and then I go about my usual work for several hours or a whole day. And after that, I write up a wall of text (but writing something short would be more complicated! :—))

I absolutely agree that the melee attacks in particular need to get boosted. A knockback or stun effect would be great (as I noted when I was ranting about the hammer :—)).

Anyway, just now I had a particularly fortunate run with the axe slash guy, so I was even able to kill the dragon. But I didn't win! The monsters just stood on the amulet all the time and I couldn't get them to go away from it. I tried to run circles and lure them away but I got killed in the process (essentially if you don't run straight away from them, you get hit, and if each of those hits is for 5 or 10, you can't afford to take many of them).

I think that reinforces my point about the monster speed. The monsters in general should be slower than they are now, and none of them (except bosses) should be allowed to be faster than the player. I suspect that the archer is so much easier to win just because he has the 30% speed boost which is just what is needed to evade the monsters efficiently, have them run circles without being hit etc.

No, I didn't meet the big black dragon. I was glad to be able to grab the amulet with the last few HPs.

I tried the v1.4, starting with the archer. Since I was already able to beat the v1.3 with him, it was easy and I won on the first attempt. However, I wasn't able to win with any of the other characters, despite having tried it quite a couple of times (with the slasher and with the spark mage). I got pretty close though.

First off, I like that the projectiles are turn-based as well (btw. also the flying numbers are turn-based now which feels a bit funky but it's nothing serious of course). and I was surprised to sometimes get three things at once when opening a chest. XP numbers are a good addition too.

On the other hand, the difficulty seems to be roughly the same as in v1.3, i. e. it's quite hard. The fact that the monsters can break walls increases the difficulty, although not by much (and I think that if the monsters can do it, the player should be allowed to do it as well — I would like it better if the walls couldn't be breached though). And I don't think I've managed to catch an occurence of heavy figure pushing through lighter figures (but I guess it's hard to see anyway, and at least it looks like I was spending less time inside the flies than before).

Some random observations:

• With the spark mage, the necessary (but of course not sufficient) condition of at least getting to see the dragon is to have a well-upgraded fireball and at least some bow. If you don't get the fireball by the time the bats come, you're dead. Up to that time, you get 2 levels and 1 chest if you play well, and that still leaves much to chance.
• Why is it so? Because the bats are faster than you and you need something to get rid of as many of those bats close to you as possible. Sparks do not suffice because they kill a couple in one line but you need to kill primarily those who are immediately dangerous for you. And the fireball has the advantage of blasting you away from those bats, giving you a good head start. (The axe slash is OK for this too but it's not as good because you need to wade right into the bats for it to work.)
• This is even worse when swarmed by the beholders or demons. Sometimes the situation is just so bad that you get hit for 5 or 10 (or even multiple hits) each round without being able to do anything about it, and you're toast in couple of rounds. Again, the only thing that can save you is the fireball, however weak, because it blasts the monsters and yourself in opposite directions, giving you a much needed break.
• Generally, I think that all ordinary monsters should be slower than the player. Some of them maybe just ever so slightly, but I think that if the player wants to run away from them, they should always have the opportunity. Leaving the monsters unchecked isn't really useful anyway, and running away from them will likely bite you later. Bosses, on the other hand, should be kept as they are.
• It is true that the individual monsters walk in more zig-zaggy patterns, but when they make a big horde, the entire horde will just pretty much go straight towards you and we get the good old conga line.
• Btw. it would be good if the fireball would be thrown only at enemies that are reasonably close. Just now, I was killed by the dragon just because the fireball was shot at some enemies that were far off screen instead of at the dragon, like 5 times in a row. Hitting the dragon repeatedly with the fireball was the only thing that could buy me enough time to kill it with the inefficient slashes.
• Some random bits: broken walls seem to change to some random terrain which looks kinda weird; there's still a typo in the hoarder ability (HORDER); the music transitions are a bit buggy (e. g. if you grab a treasure in the final bossfight, you get the treasure music and then the normal music instead of the boss music; you also don't get the victory music in the case of your victory).

I will gladly try it, but I won't be able to do it before Sunday as I'm going away for the weekend. And of course you don't need to address anything that I wrote about, that's just a random opinion and it can certainly be wrong :—). However I read the changelog and it sounds good.

By the way, I managed to beat the v1.3 yesterday with the archer, so it's not as unplayable as I first whined about, but still it's really hard and in some parts I had only little control over what was happening.

Well, thanks for reading all of that! Of course I know that balancing is a rough ride that mostly ends either in "too easy" mode, or in "too hard" mode. And I get where you want to be going with the game (and I would call that the right direction). (By the way, I was trying some more plays with the axe slash guy, and I even got to see the dragon! (Not that I got to hit it, though.))

Anyway, some more random thoughts:

If the game should require some mastery to win consistently, we should ask where that mastery will be coming from. I think that most of it will be coming from the strategic (high-level) considerations like: what level-up to take, when to go beat a miniboss, when to run for a potion, when to try to collect the gems that were previously left on the ground somewhere else. Since the dragon boss comes in a fixed amount of time, the object of the game is essentially to prepare well for its coming (while not dying in the process). At the high level, I guess this could be considered a game of risk management (risk too little and you will be unprepared, so you won't have much chance on taking out the final boss, risk too much and you get killed). And that itself needs to give the player a way to manage the risks.

The core game loop seems to be very solid, but it doesn't allow for too much tactical (low-level) mastery. There's a couple of things we can do, though. First of all, I think there should be more obstacles and perhaps other "terrain": you can use it to split the monsters or make them get stuck (and of course you can get stuck yourself). That's interesting to manage.

The second thing is that we can "get rid of the conga line". The line emerges so much because of three factors: 1) all the monsters go straight towards you; 2) you don't want to be close to them; 3) all the weapons work best when the monsters are tightly packed and/or as many of them as possible are on the same straight line with you.

Each of these factors can be quite "easily" removed: 1) make some monsters move in other fashion (e. g. if they're too tightly packed let them go perpendicular to make sort of a circle); 2) make the close combat less fatal; 3) add attacks with other patterns (circles or something more spread-out).

Another thing that could be done: let the heroes block 1 point of damage each round. That could allow for more daring tactical maneuvers with more considerations (do I get more into contact and risk getting enveloped, or do I chicken away?), as well as fulfilling the point 2 above, but it won't save you if you really screw up; also bosses do more than 1 damage, so you will still get hit by them.

That's a great game! I found it to be quite addictive (I even managed to win the v1.1 with all the characters). I wanted to return to this page to give a few remarks and a list of things that could be improved (in my opinion!), and I found there's the v1.3, so I had to give it a try. I did that, and I have even more comments now :—). Hopefully you don't mind a wall of text — I wrote far more than I initially intended.

Comments for v1.1:

• It seems like the best strategy is to form "conga lines" of monsters. You move ever away from them, they follow and you hit them using the magical attacks. Because of that, the magical attacks seem to be much needed in order to win.
• I really liked the differentiation between the weapons. I found them all to be useful in one way or another, except the hammer. Here are some random observations:

  
  

  • Bow: great for bosses. With a couple of upgrades you can easily kill the dragon face-to-face (you need to make sure that it is hit by most of the arrows).
  • Fireball: very good for kiting a mass of monsters, because it shoves you forward when it explodes and you make a head start. Probably an unintended use, but I like it, and it's a good payoff for its randomness.
  • Slash: quite nice from the get go. The upgrade that makes it slash backwards is far more useful than any other.
  • Hammer: maybe I'm missing something, but it seems to be the essence of uselessness. It has a very short reach, a huge cooldown, and pitiful damage (only 10 or 15, it seems), and an unintuitive swing (I haven't figured out how it works, and with multiple hammers, I can't ever tell how many times will any given monster be hit). I would propose having each hammer go full 360°, improving the damage and cooldown by a lot (it's really for close quarters and you never want to be close to the monsters, so it needs to pay off well), and perhaps adding a knockback or stun effect so that you don't need to pay precious HP for each attack.
• I like the fact that the monsters stop when they hit a wall. It makes the game more manageable and you have more "strategic choice".
• After the dragon comes, perhaps it would be good to show an arrow that would point in his direction. Occasionally, he would get stuck on a wall and I would be searching for him like mad. (Sometimes I even got killed by the swarms before I could find the stuck dragon and kill it!)
• The automatic use of attacks every n-th turn is great. I think it would be cool if the cooldowns were relatively prime. Now they seem to be 2, 4 or 6, and so the pattern of attacks repeats often. Using 2, 3, 5 and 7 would give more variety.
• The "special places" with boss fights and rewards are a nice touch. However, the game is so tight that there is often no time to go there. Furthermore, when the boss' minions  appear everywhere around you, you will often lose more HP in the fight than you get back when you take the healing potion as a reward. The boss fights for experience gems seem to be hardly worth it (I guess there should be at least a full level-up). It would also be good if the reward weren't blocked right away by the boss so you could grab it.
• The initial swarm of rats seems to be a bit too large. For the non-magical classes, this swarm seems to be a much more of a problem than the later ones. Moreover I would consider lowering HP of the "thieves" (the next wave); there seems to be a very sharp spike in difficulty (the rats will die with one hit of anything while the thieves need at least 4 or 5) and maybe sending a bit less of them.
• It would be nice to have health bars for the monsters. Especially with the bosses and the later enemies that have a lot of HP, I never know whether I need to kite them some more, or if it would be better to turn around and hit them with the "front attacks" because they're near death.

Some more comments for v1.3 (they're going to be quite negative and I'm sorry for that, but I found it to be a big step back in terms of enjoyment):

• The hordes seem to be way too big. In v1.1, I was able to win with all the characters. In v1.3, I never got even close to winning with any of them. With so many monsters, the game essentially plays itself because most of the time you have only one sensible choice (to run straight away from the monsters). Another effect is that you cannot collect the gems from the monsters you've killed until you make a huge circle with the mass of the monsters on your heels, and often, even when you manage to do it, another wave of monsters comes from a different direction and blocks the access to those gems by literally standing on them. (This also happens with other goodies like potions and chests and it's even more painful with them). The result is that when the orcs come, I'm level 3 (as opposed to 7-8 in v1.1), and sometimes I haven't been able to get even to the level 2, and my un-upgraded abilities are not enough to cope with them.
• Having removed many of the walls that were in v1.1 just adds to the problem. In v1.1 many monters would become stuck on them and you could get a moment of respite when you needed it; the monsters wouldn't also be coming at you from all directions.
• Adding new special places with bosses is nice, but now there seems to be no way to visit them and not die. The treasure chests and combat numbers are solid additions too. Making the movement animation faster is also great.
• The character variations (more/less demage from certain abilities, more/less HP and so on) also seem to be more hindering than helping, especially the fact that the "melee" characters have a -XX% penalty for magical attacks. These characters are already at an disadvantage because the "melee" abilities aren't as good for wiping out large hordes, and now, even if they acquire a magical attack, they will still be weaker with it. I don't think that the characters need to be balanced — in v1.1. some were easier than others and that was OK. All of them need to have a fair shot at winning, though.

Day 7

Sadly, we didn't manage to complete the world part... at all. And, worst of all, it's quite unstable, so the game will often crash while in the overworld, and I wasn't able to deduce what's the problem.

So I uploaded an incomplete version at least: https://evolvent.itch.io/magisterium. The school part is quite fun and working correctly; only the overworld is messy (and quite empty). So there's still some fun to be had with the incomplete game.

Day 6

The school part is now more or less working, and the last day will go to the overworld scripting. There is also a tutorial that will show you the basics of the game.

Day 5

The whole engine is more or less finished. Now we have a working game world that you can wander around with your wizard. Places can be visited and scripted arbitrarily.

Now it "just" remains to convert our Google documents with events into the actual Lua scripts, and we're done! There is still 48 hours left, so I have hope that this year will be a success for us.

For this 7DRL, me and my brother are making a peculiar game called Magisterium.

You start as a student at a school of magic. After three years of studying (the first stage of the game), you (hopefully) get your diploma and become a real magician. After that, you will wander around the world and use your magic to perform various deeds, until you die. The point is to have as much fame as you can at the end of the game.

There is a fixed list of spells in the game, and each of those spells gets a randomly generated pseudo-Latin incantation (1-3 words, depending on the power of the spell) that you need to know in order to use the spell. So in the school, you will be primarily visiting lectures where the incantations are taught (and you will probably need to take notes with pen and paper!)

However, those lectures are pretty demanding, and you will probably want to enjoy some "student life" as well (you can visit parties and make some friends), so you will get progressively more tired. The more tired you are, the more difficult it is to pay attention at the lectures. This is represented by a little Pong distracting game (in the top right corner), and the more tired you are, the faster the ball will be flying. If you lose the Pong, you doze off and the lecture with the precious magical phrases ends. So you will need to spend some time sleeping, but there is a fixed number of "actions" per each school year, and each action spent sleeping is not spent on lectures or parties. So you will need to do some risk management at the school. At the end of each year, there will be a little exam that you can either pass on your own, or cheat with the help of your friends. Only if you by some chance fail, you will have to repeat the year again (but you can spend only three years total in the school, so in the event of repeating, you won't get into the more advanced years.

After three years, you step out of school. Welcome to the real life! The point is to amass as much fame ("victory points") as you can, and you can do that by doing various quests and deeds that pop up on a simple world map. Instead of fatigue, there will now be "stress". Each successfully completed quest will lower your stress a little bit, each failure will add a bunch to it. Though you can never be killed (e. g. in  combat), you will die when your stress goes over a certain maximum. So the world part of the game is a risk management game as well (do I visit that dragon lair and potentially get a big reward, or do I stay with something safer to do?) The events that you will meet in the "real world" will still often use timers and/or distractors (if bandits are attacking you, you need to quickly decide what to do in the heat of battle!), so having well-organized notes and perhaps memorizing a couple of the most useful spells will be a key to success.

(Obviously, this game can be a bit "controversial". I guess that people will either love it, or hate it, and nothing in between. Simulating the heat of battle by a strict time limit and a weird Pong game can be offputting for many people. I just hope at least someone will like it!)

A little devlog

Day 3+½

There was nothing interesting to post because the development is not too flashy and building from ground up. After four days (one of which was totally killed by me having to prepare my real-world math lessons), there is a very general and scriptable event system — that is essentially the most important building block for the game. The game itself is still absolutely basic, but that will soon start to change as soon as we migrate the content made by my brother from some Google documents into the game scripts.

I hope for a lot of visible progress today, so hopefully tomorrow, I will be able to show off more interesting screenshots.

I'll definitely try this one out. I never got to like Lisp, but perhaps this game will be a good introduction :--). (You moan about Windows build — I hope that means that a Linux build will be available?)