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Hi irskep! The green Ts are just trees, the treasures are invisible in the world view. You have to have the sky matching exactly what's on the map and you have to be exactly at the spot of the red X. There is per game always only one constellation of a specific letter.

Very good to bring this up! The stars in the sky for constellations. These constellations are way bigger than the small window you see from the sky on screen. This way you can navigate much bigger parts of the world, by anticipating the direction of the next star. To be able to anticipate the shape of the constellations, they have the shape of alphabetical letters. Stars of the character Y form a big Y in the sky, composed of many Ys, like you would draw it with dots. So when you see two Ys on screen, you should be able to tell, whether you are in the part '\' or '/' or '|' and therefore also where the other parts of the Y are. When you see only one Y on the screen, you can circle a bit around in search of the next Y and then you should know. Ys are quite easy, let's say a B has much more horizontal and vertical lines, that is a bit more difficult to follow and know whether you are close to the upper part or lower part.

Thank you so much! You are right about the narrow scope, that was for 7DRL, not sure whether I will ever find time to expand it :).

Thanks! "Stranded" should only happen, when you sail to fast into an island and cannot sail past it either. You have to slow down at least a bit to land :).

Thank you!

Hi Jupiter, thanks for featuring it! It is the first user feedback I get and oh so valuable. Maybe it was not as self-explanatory as I thought it was :). You were so close to use the key mechanic - the jump - for a second time to the next z-level and I hope it would 'click' then.

I am happy to claim success of my entry 'The Sky and Depths of Kobrade Hills'.

"In the Hills of Kobrade you find a mysterious locked church. Maybe your newly aquired jumping boots can help you to find a way into it... and into the adventure taking you to the sky, the depths and back up again."

Download it here:
https://jan-rl.itch.io/tsadokh

7DRL submission and rating page:
https://itch.io/jam/7drl-challenge-2018/rate/232887

Roguebasin:
http://www.roguebasin.com/index.php?title=The_Sky_and_Depths_of_Kobrade_Hills

Twitter:
#tsadokh

It was made with libtcod and BearLibTerminal in Python.

I was interested in making a ASCII-3D roguelike after playing a lot of Dwarf Fortress. The different z-levels triggered my imagination and I thought, what if you could move relatively freely in such an environment. So I made a very simple jump mechanic, that allows to hop up to the next z-level and a bit of airtime to move to higher grounds. I was educating myself on heightmaps from the libtcod package, to create the slopes on the ground and later also caves and more. I felt from a gameplay perspective, this is fun to just jump up and fall down the hills.

One common challenge of 3D maps in the classic 2D top down perspective is to give the player hints of other z-levels, like the one below and the one above. The ones below are now hinted at by the color and shape of the layers of air above, so they 'shine' through about four layers, and you get the impression to be able to see down. For the layer above you and the question, whether I can jump up, or whether the block above me is blocked, I made a small HUD. Probably not the best solution, but you can get used to it and also find your way up again quite easily.

The game is filled with a few jump'n'run challenges and is in general about exploring the world most of the time vertically. Due to lack of time and a 100% convincing design idea, I skipped monsters and combat... it makes the game quite relaxing, you cannot do anything wrong and happily jump everywhere possible. Yes, a roguelike without dying... maybe I add these things after the challenge one day.

This way it became a ASCII-3D-7-Day-Rogue-Like-Adventure-Game with jumping! Enjoy the game!

Hi, the first upload seems to have issues with the keys for using the stairs. Try backslash and shift+backslash for (English?) keyboards.

It is fixed now to "a" and "A" in the new upload. Should work on every keyboard then.

Have fun and feel free to report bugs :). THX!

Hi Vedor, thanks for feedback, really helpful. I opened the comment section at Rogue of 5 now.

The stairs are a bit weird regarding the keys plus I am operating from a German keyboard, maybe try backslash and shift+backslash. I'll fix it in a second to make it clearer and use a non-symbol key (like "a").

Does the game crash upon exiting from the main menu or from the dungeon to the main menu?

THX and best regards, Jan