I’ve been redoing the New Game menu sequence.
This started off as a necessary Chapter Select screen to let you pick between the three chapters of content the game will have. It ended up absorbing a bit more functionality; I needed to rewrite the character selection screen, so I threw it in there. I also realised I’d lost interest in the idea of Bastion-style extra challenges – so I’ve gone for three tiers of carefully calibrated difficulty instead.
It took a while to figure out a new flow that incorporated all these decisions while providing you with the necessary information without feeling overcomplicated, but after fiddling around a ton I’ve finally settled on something. When you hit New Game now, here’s what you see:
There are three acts. Each one is about hunting down and murdering an evil tyrant in the FACE.
The stuff in the bottom corners is the difficulty you’ve cleared that act on with each character. This is important.
Select an act and the screen shifts to character selection. This still needs a lot of work, but the basics are here: you can still see what act you’re on, you can pick a character, and you can see the highest difficulty you’ve cleared this act with on each character. Again: this is important.
Completing each act with different characters and on higher difficulties is important. This is a game you can blow through on the lowest difficulty in maybe five hours or keep throwing yourself at for much, much longer, until the highest challenges it offers succumb to your merciless will. Specifically:
Yup, that one there at the bottom.
Several roguelike fans have told me the game’s too easy, so I added a mode even I have trouble with – even knowing the game inside out. It makes monsters deal a bit more damage and has a few other effects, but most critically it switches off safeguards in the normal game which prevent you from dying without much warning. This makes it a much harsher, much more lethal game. I’ll likely rely on playtesters finding out for me if it’s possible and gradually tweak characters until someone eventually manages it with each.
“Beat the odds” is, I think, an honest description of roguelikes at their most fierce. Sure, they’re about adapting, improvising, making smart use of what you find and pushing the systems to their limits. However, when things get really tough, there’s unavoidably an element of luck. Play poorly and you’ll always die; play reasonably well and there might be a 10% chance you’ll win. Play smarter and you can push those odds up. Play flawlessly and you might get near 100%. Up until that point, it’s all about being skilful enough to make the luck you’ve got count for something.
I’m kind of unsure about this difficulty level because it’s going to mean way more balancing and playtesting before the game ships to work through all the balance issues it’ll raise. On the other hand, with six heavily varied classes and three distinct acts, the game now has eighteen ultra-hard challenges for dedicated players to take on.
I’ll make sure they’re all possible. That’ll keep you busy. 😉