End game content?

[FancyMustelid]

Put simply, is there any compelling content to keep you playing this game after you've beat each level with each class?

Mind you, I got to play this game a little recently and I plan on getting it eventually. Right now, I'm looking at this game vs a few others.

To the Devs (from my experience of the first few dungeons):

The artwork is great. It's conducive to a pleasant and relaxing atmosphere.

The challenge is interesting. The different classes really feel different despite having only a few skills. I found myself at first not taking the game too seriously (mostly the graphics). But then I started getting killed before I knew it and soon found myself being much more attentive to each movement and ability/item I used or chose for an adventure. It very subtley drives its hooks into the player and presents the challenge at the right time.

The music is fantastic! This was one of the biggest things that attracted me to the game from the store page.

I wonder, though, if there's maybe a multi-themed dungeon, one that would run the gauntlet of dungeon types and bosses from each level. Something that would be a little more traditional roguelike. Not sure how you would balance character levels to a dungeon like that, but it would certainly provide the replay value after you've completed the game, which is what I'm really looking for right now.

[AlphaBeard]

Thanks for the feedback!

FYI, We're working on a new end-game difficulty level for the next major patch. This includes a bunch of behavioral and population changes, not just more damage and more health. I generally agree with what your'e asking for, and we've also got some ideas for a more traditional mode, but it would be a bit further down the road, and can't make any specfic promises about it at the moment.

[FancyMustelid]

Originally posted by AlphaBeard:

Thanks for the feedback!

FYI, We're working on a new end-game difficulty level for the next major patch. This includes a bunch of behavioral and population changes, not just more damage and more health. I generally agree with what your'e asking for, and we've also got some ideas for a more traditional mode, but it would be a bit further down the road, and can't make any specfic promises about it at the moment.

Thanks for the reply. I may go ahead and throw down on this game sooner rather than later just because I feel the play time and enjoyment will be worth the money spent.

I think the biggest issue I see with an end-game dungeon, though, is there's a lack of character investment. A new game+ with higher difficulty is nice, but I often dislike having to beat a game to unlock a higher difficulty. But I'm not really as concerned about that as I am the idea of an invested dungeon crawl.

Most great roguelikes have an aspect of character investment. But without changing the core mechanics of Sproggiwood, a deep dungeon delve would see the character at max skills relatively early on. And if the village is in play, the player will have their preferred item/weapon/armor combo so there won't be much need for dungeon loot. Reseting the character every so many floors will rob the player of the invested character feel.

If there were an end-game dungeon (or even a dungeon mode where items unlocked in story will appear in the dungeon mode), you could do a weapon skill tree type of system. A class would be chosen as usual, but the player would only get the starting equipment, not the village choices. And the character class skills would evolve as normal. But wielding any particular weapon imparts a set of skills to the character. As the character gets more experience with the weapon, he unlocks perks for that weapon (or weapon type). Probably stat bonuses for a few levels followed by a skill unlock after a set number of weapon levels. But in this mode, the classes would not be limited to a class weapon. The character's actual class level and skills would evolve much slower than in the regular game. Of course, for this to work well, it would still almost need some type of inventory.

At any rate, I do like this game and I'm no programmer, but I'm sure adding something like what I'm talking about would require a lot of time and resources that are currently allocated to working on the main game.

[AlphaBeard]

I think if we did do an 'infinite dungeon', we would would remain true to the design sprit that currently exists in Sproggiwood, which is to provide a dense short-form play experience. Likely it would lean towards longer than the current dungeons, but I'd rather have the gameplay be dense and ramp up fairly quickly in difficulty as you progress/descend than try to make Sproggiwood's mechanics fit into a clone of a long-play template that many, many other games provide perfectly well.

We've talked about, for instance, having it not be an actual dungeon dive, but instead a ramping continuous-play version of the final boss fight.

There's a lot of interesting options that I think would provide the sort of play experience people are asking for without necessarily just changing the core mechanics to play like a classic roguelike. If you're looking for a huge "classic" roguelike, our older game Caves of Qud is getting a Steam release with tiles (and is available for free now in ASCII form). Hopefully we'll be in early access in the next month or two!

Love the feedback and thoughts!

[FancyMustelid]

Originally posted by AlphaBeard:

I think if we did do an 'infinite dungeon', we would would remain true to the design sprit that currently exists in Sproggiwood, which is to provide a dense short-form play experience. Likely it would lean towards longer than the current dungeons, but I'd rather have the gameplay be dense and ramp up fairly quickly in difficulty as you progress/descend than try to make Sproggiwood's mechanics fit into a clone of a long-play template that many, many other games provide perfectly well.

We've talked about, for instance, having it not be an actual dungeon dive, but instead a ramping continuous-play version of the final boss fight.

There's a lot of interesting options that I think would provide the sort of play experience people are asking for without necessarily just changing the core mechanics to play like a classic roguelike. If you're looking for a huge "classic" roguelike, our older game Caves of Qud is getting a Steam release with tiles (and is available for free now in ASCII form). Hopefully we'll be in early access in the next month or two!

Love the feedback and thoughts!

Good to know. I'm certainly not griping about the core mechanic of Sproggiwood as it's really fun. I just don't see how a roguelike mode can be adapted in a way that the core game hasn't already offered, but I'll just experience it when it gets done. It would definitely be nice to see a roguelike mode done with the core gameplay mechanics and still offer something different than the story mode does.

That said, I'm very interested in this Caves of Qud. I've played some Moria and other games in ascii, but I've always desired to at least have tilesets. And seems I can't get Noegnud to run for Nethack for some reason. Any links to screenshots of the tilesets for Caves of Qud?

[AlphaBeard]

http://www.freeholdgames.com/Press/sheet.php?p=caves_of_qud

and a preview of the new tiles: https://www.facebook.com/freeholdgames/photos/a.134447113385855.29488.123068354523731/386864514810779/?type=1&theater

[FancyMustelid]

Originally posted by AlphaBeard:

http://www.freeholdgames.com/Press/sheet.php?p=caves_of_qud

and a preview of the new tiles: https://www.facebook.com/freeholdgames/photos/a.134447113385855.29488.123068354523731/386864514810779/?type=1&theater

Cool. Had no trouble finding the Dev site, but couldn't find a preview of the tilesets for the life of me. I will admit that I was hoping for a more modernized tileset, but the simple graphics do look appealing in their own right. A little different take than the upgraded tilesets for games like Angband and DCSS. I'd still like to see a traditional top down or isometric roguelike done with 3d sprites. Maybe graphics akin to FF tactics. It will happen one day.

Anyway, I picked up Sproggiwood this morning. After all, by the time I get through it, I should be able to afford the other games I had in mind and I really wanted Sproggiwood.

Noticed a couple of bugs. The minimap went behind the sword icon. This happened on the top level of the first dungeon. I noticed this after being in the menu options. When I went into the first level underground, the minimap was gone altogether. After exploring for several minutes, I happen to glance up and it was back and in the right place.

When I went back to the first level of Big Ick's with the Archer, I noticed a jelly at the very edge of the screen one tile Northeast of a spiderweb. The jelly moved directly south on the next move and got caught in a web. I didn't notice whether or not there was also a spiderweb directly south of the jelly before this move, but the spiderweb that I noticed before was now one tile west of the jelly. On the next move, the jelly was freed of the web and the spiderweb that was one tile west of the jelly disappeared. There were no fire mechanics in play at this time. It seems it just had some kind of X coordinate offset at the right side of the screen.

[LordBlade]

An idea for an "infinite dungeon" that would still allow more casual on and off play is to have a camp of some sort every so many levels. In fact, this could also work with the problem of a character maxing out too easily.

You clear a few levels with a character, then hit the camp. The character you were using now has to go back to the village to recuperate, and you have to choose a new character to play as.