7DRL 2020 - Day 7

#7DRL #devlog #gamedev #roguelike

My 7DRL 2020 game, Catacombs, is done!

Overall I feel pretty good about the challenge, and the game. I kept the game within scope, and delivered a small, decently polished experience.

First, a couple shout-outs to other creators whose assets I used:

• Kenney's 1-bit Pack (I recolored using the DawnBringer 32 palette to give it my own feel)
• The Essential Retro Video Game Sound Collection

Let's do a mini post-mortem!

Things that went pretty well:

• Started with an existing turn-based prototype, in my custom HTML5 stack. This really let me hit the ground running in terms of going straight to gameplay and content.
• Leveraged existing tools, like Tiled
• Simple tweaks to standard rogue-like mechanics (permadeath, hunger clock)
• Arcade style, endless meta game (easy to implement, no bosses, etc)

Things that didn't go so well:

• Procedural generation. I didn't end up with as much variety/emergence as I would have liked because of an overly simple procedural generator. (Floors are static with 1-4 object layout variants, and I only made 5 floors)

Feels good to ship something small and complete. Looking forward to doing this again in 2021!