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As of example of good Roguelikes, I would recommend you ADOM – Ancient Domains of Mystery. It is not available on Steam at the moment, but the latest version should be available for purchase at the official site.
Another good example of Roguelike would be Elona, though it is a “Roguelike, but not Roguelike” – that is, it has all elements of Roguelike without actually having permadeath. The game used to be freeware available for downloading at its official site, and probably still is.
I can suggest a simple, but IMHO, effective way to make each playthrough worthwhile without breaking Roguelike spirit: give the player detailed report on their playthrough. If you play ADOM, you will see a great example of how it is done: not just characters’ stats, but how many in-game days they survived, their most important deeds, overall amount of monsters killed and how many of each particular monster the player killed, and more!
It does a great job of making players feel they accomplished something (at least, it does for me).
If budget doesn’t allow for more then 2 character models, I would suggest at least making different classes and/or skill sets (like it was done in Dungeon of Dreadmor, for example, you pick out 7-something skills out of much broader skill list). Uniqueness of each playthrough is an important part of Roguelike, and playing each time with the same set of abilities (or one of two/three sets) would get boring pretty quickly, I’m afraid.
Also as a girl, I hope that at least one of playable characters will also be a girl, as playing as a male character is a big no for me (I know that with Winged Sakura in mind, the chances are at least one if not both playable characters will be girls, but I still thought I’d put that in).
Would definitely prefer turn-based combat, as it is in ADOM, Elona, Tales of Maj’Eyal, and, well, most Roguelike games, actually.
I like graphics of Winged Sakura a lot, both character art in the cutscenes and battle graphics. So, I don’t think your overall graphic style in your Roguelike really need to change much.
If you go with my suggestion to make the game turn-based, you may want to have smaller sprites so that bigger dungeon map could fit the screen. Though it would also be nice to get close-up view of your character, especially with your promise of unlockable costumes. So, perhaps, give the players ability to switch between different zoom levels, if budget allows it?
http://te4.org/index.php (free download)
I think this game have good way to deal with permadeath choice
Letsplay example:
http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=42428
-Chocobo's Dungeon 2 (unidentified potions every time you enter a dungeon)
-Izuna 2 (Levelling up items as much as you have the patience for, hardcore death themes)
-Zettai Hero Project / Paradox: The Guided Fates - These are both unique games in that they set you back to level 1 every time you left a dungeon, but you kept a handful of bonuses to maintain your power.
-One Way Heroics is available on Steam, and is very good, but leaves much to be desired.
Turn-based is a must, Grid-based is very good. most games that have adapted roguelike into real-time have not maintained their replay value. Games like Binding of Isaac irk me greatly, and I did not enjoy it at all.
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As for visuals, try to avoid large and bulky sprites, no matter what you do. "Brave Frontier" has been making their units gradually more and more laden with wings, ghosts, and mechanical bits such that you can't tell which units are in battle.
-Back in the day: http://i.imgur.com/QhS3F65.jpg
-More recently: http://img.tapatalk.com/d/14/08/15/esunape3.jpg
If you're planning on having multiple units on the screen at a time, either in a party, or hordes of enemies, Cecilia's sprite from this game is about as complex as you want to get.
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Get someone to proofread your script. This game had plenty of typographical and grammatical errors
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What I want most in a game:
-Customization
If there's only one "right" build that everyone does, it's easy to lose interest. Izuna lets you play with bows, swords, claws, and the like, on a host of different characters.
-Infinite Progression
Disgaea was really good at this. Why should I stop because the big-bad is dead? Can I still level up my items, characters, and skills? Is there a boss I can fight for a rare drop? Is there an even bigger boss to fight somewhere?
-Multiple Playable Characters
I mentioned this in customization, but seriously. This is a big one. Chocobo's Dungeon 2 had six characters to play as, Izuna 2 had fifteen or so. Playing with your favorite character is just as important as playing through the story itself.
-Hardcore Aspects
When you die, what happens? Do you start the whole game over (Diablo 2)? Do you lose your items (Way of the Samurai, Izuna)? Is your friend/sakura going to be dead forever (Fire Emblem)? Letting people feel like their accomplishments mean something is super important in a roguelike.
I'm a big fan of rogue-like, so I'll list here what I consider as components of a good rogue game :
- Sessions between 20-40 minutes max. Beyond that, I can't get myself to start a game - especially games like Don't Starve where you lose dozens of hours with one mistake.
- Random, yet balanced, which means in 10 games, you'll face 10 times roughly the same difficulty - if you get random power-ups, they should all have a similar impact on your power.
- Colorful graphics. I'm so sick and tired of rogue games in dark caves and brown dungeons. Mindy's Arc is great on that point, so that shouldn't be a problem.
- Not a big fan of turn-by-turn strategy. I would prefer some real-time fight, but some people will say the contrary, so it's a choice to make.
If the "lose everything when you die" is a problem for you, you can see how Rogue Legacy works. In a nutshell, you collect gold during your playthrough, and when you die, this money can be spent to build your castle, which increases stats for all your future characters. You defeat the end boss with an exponentially better character than against the first boss, which combines rogue-like gameplay and sense of progression quite nicely.
The Rougelike I have in mind doesn't have a super long story and is more aimed towards addictive gameplay, short-medium sessions, and unlimited replayability with the intention to sell for about $15-$20. When I say Rougelike, I really mean Rougelike. When you die, you die. Permadeath. Start back from the very beginning. You don't advance in the story, you start a new gameplay with new unlockables and encounter randomly generated enemy, events, quests, etc.
Just wanted to clear this up that we're not making a rich-story 20+ hour session dungeon crawler / Rougelike. (Way out of budget) If we ever do make a rich-story RPG game, it won't have the Rougelike tag on it.
I guess you can say we're aiming to make a game that Azurean most likely have really high interest in - except longer play session.
Anyways, thank you everyone for the feedback and ideas! I'll definitely check out the games.
Since you seems really commited to be true to permadeath and the root of the gendra... it's called roguelike, not rougelike.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roguelike
[/assmode]
Anyway, whatever you do, good luck.
If it share the same quality as Winged Sakura, I'd be sure to buy it.
I'd love to have one that play like recettear (or better yet, Ys origins) for a change.
As for the games you can try, aside the classics (TBoI, Rogue Legacy, etc) there's also Our Darker Purpose, Ziggurat, and Risk of Rain.
Not saying they are perfect, but they're all interesting.
You know, the funny thing about this is I've always spelled "Rogue" as "Rouge" my entire life and my friends always tell me: "It's Rogue, Hong! It's ROGUE". I still write down "Rouge". I don't know why. I swear - If I ever implement a Rogue class, the first mistake is going to be the class name/title.
The quality should be better. Thanks to Steam and everyone's support, we have a higher budget now. We're hoping Mindy's Arc will get more sales later down the road so we can make our next title super awesome.
- The game require resource management like FTL. This means time is important ("jump" in FTL). To prevent player grind endlessly. The food will consume based on "Time Unit" when travelling. Each turn or certain time unit in battle will cost 1 food too.
- Has loot, a few slots per member. 2 hands slot for weapon/shield/dualwield, Armor, Helm, Boot, Trinket. Loot can be WIzardry style, but equipment tier margine should be small thus player don't rely a lot on RNG.
- Player can choose which node to travel, each node has different effect. For example, armory mostly has equipment loot, but also possible guarded by well-arm enemy. Granary has food(Fuel in FTL) etc......
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(Option A)Party members HP/Mana only regen little per "Node". To ensure player use good strategies for each battle to minimize wound. There are consumable items for recover HP/Mana. Party can rest for higher regen but consume food without moving.
(Option B)Party members HP/Mana is full beginning of each battle. But max HP will drop 10-15% of enemy damage. Thus A party must be rest or consume item cure wound to continue journey to avoid low max HP.
- A party consist of 4 members. Has front row and back row. Apply to enemy too.
- "Normal attack" shouldn't happen a lot in combat. Melee combatant has multiple style of attack, such as Defensive Strike, Overhead Strike, Cleaving Strike, each has pros/cons.
- If possible each class has it own skilltree. Try to let player choose what they want from multiple options.
- Perk/Traits to choose after few level up. If possible, separate passive skill and active skill during level up. Certain level gain passive skill, certain level gain active skill (Or upgrade an active skill).
- Each class can evolve into 1 of the 2 advance class. Example Knight can evolve into Paladin or Death Knight.
- If the party size is 4, try to have around 10 classes to choose from. Try make many classes can perform a way of combat healing. To avoid everyone say "Cleric/Priest is a must".
- If possible try to make the animation as good as NDS game Endless Frontier Exceed that kind of combat animation.
Thank you.
Anyhow, I'll throw out a few suggestions:
One thing I hardly (if ever) see in roguelites are character customization options. It'd be nice for once to be able to change the aesthetics of my character -- after all, I'll be spending a lot of time with them on the screen. Another nice thing to see would be some nice animations instead of the typical static sprites that you simply ram into other monsters with.
A lot of roguelikes/lites don't have much in the way of meaningful progression. I might be able to unlock a new skill or class, but if those classes play too similarly, it doesn't add much to the game. Similar to how in some RPGs you can choose a character to approach problems with brute force, stealth, or even diplomacy, it'd be nice to see similar options in a rogue game.
Varied environments: Most randomized games get boring quickly if you see the same the same thing too often. Maybe it's an inherent problem with procedural generation though, and it might be too much to ask for. I think some games try to solve this by increasing the number of random "events" (like dungeons and towns in Minecraft and Starbound), or by combining random generation with some hand-crafted elements.
For example, Binding of Isaac's rooms get boring pretty quickly and the unlockable characters mostly play the same. I suppose it's a matter of taste since some people seem to love it though.
Take this with a grain of salt though. Even though I've bought maybe a dozen or so roguelikes/lites, I don't think I've played any for more than ten hours or so. My favorite so far might be Recettear, which I'm still in the process of playing, although that's kind of a stretch since the only thing "rogue" about it are the dungeons.
As a side note, one of the coolest rogue-ish games I've ever played was Dungeon Hack, an old first-person dungeon crawler based on D&D:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxOLGd2_bwA