Announcing ICoV's successor: A Violent Revelry

[Julian]

Behold
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1823190/A_Violent_Revelry/

I would love to hear what aspects of ICoV you'd like to see in Revelry as well as what could be improved or removed.

[Sheesh]

We've had quite a lot of discussions in the past on discord, but from the top of my head:

Improve: (Squad) AI, pathfinding, performance (e.g. blood pools)
Keep: precise hitboxes, deliberate combat, the systems driven gameplay with stacking mementos, synergies or the gradual way temperature worked
Add: robust seeding system for weekly runs/boards or to share seeds for fun runs/achievements/challenge runs/whatever; some way to get rid of rat tails and bollocks like that
Remove: meta-progression and in-game mana/money being the same currency, that led to trying to save up (leveling) for many people which didn't really work

If the game works somewhat like ICoV regarding branching paths, kill the god, optional looping:
'Twas a bit silly how enemies scaled with the intention to eventually kill you, I'd like a more managable system that leads to a satisfying ending.
Say, every god you kill gets removed from the game, the path to them gets blocked, and you earn a bonus as well as a malus for killing him...
E.g. killing Obsidian (magic) would make your spells cheaper, but spells wouldn't crack anymore but shatter outright when not recharged;
or killing Shield (armour/defence) would give you considerably more armour with every pickup, but damage exceeding it would actually hurt you (instead of 1AR blocking 100000 damage)
Combine that with reasonable scaling and the game turns into some sort of puzzle where you'd have to figure out the order in which to kill all the gods according to your character/playstyle - eventually saving/restoring the world after killing them all to get some closure.

[Hibachi]

Things to keep / improve:
- The health system. "yellow" health, negative HP, and healing surges throwing foes away (and destroying walls) was an important part of what made ICoV good.
- Multiple paths.
- The meta progression, with XP better used during the run or for one-run upgrades and boosts than for farming permanent stats. It's the only game IMO that managed to have such a system and doing it right, most of the time the player ends doing trash run to farm and get past some threshold. The game getting more difficult once the player leveled enough was a good move too.
- Altars, and their god's influence on your run.
- The hub puzzle, with all that stuff to figure out.
- Multiple characters with different stats and loadouts
- The achievement panel with hints on how to unlock stuff
- Environmental stuff. Trees falling, fires, etc.

Things to consider, I enjoyed them but they may not be everyone's cup of tea :

- Treasure hunt. Yeah, I'm that one guy who thought figuring where the chests are is fun.
- Optional dungeons. Sure, they were slowing down the run and were really dangerous, but they were worth it. They were also the "right" way to progress past character level 200 as the free levels they provided was almost the only way to reliably get levels.
- General vagueness about what does what. Figuring how ICoV works was most of the fun for me, especially when I finally started to find some exploits.


Stuff that can GTFO :
- Poisonous swamps / terrain. Seriously.
- Stat checks. Like that guillotine in the hub. AFAIK it was the only one, might as well have none next time.

Wishlist :
- A proper NG+
- A proper way to restart from a blank state

Obviously, that's only my opinion and what's on the top of my head. I have obviously no idea if any of that is already included or can't be put in it because it wouldn't fit the design you have for the sequel.

That weapon system you made for the new game seems pretty fun, BTW.

EDIT : Also, +1 to Sheesh's post.

[AbsoluteZeroHero]

I would like it if you made pure throw and magic builds more viable. With the new perk system and equipment you could make it so thrown weapons return on throw , boomerang , an/or teleport back after a set time. Pure Mage could have spell chaining, wands , staffs , or multiple spell uses before recharge.

[WheelieWonka]

In Celebration of Violence is probably my favorite roguelike of all time so I'm super excited that you're making a follow up!

I checked out the store page for the new game (Wishlisted and Followed) and going by the information on the page you've already adding a ton of awesome new gameplay and mechanics so that's exciting.

I don't have much to contribute to the discussion of things I'd like to see in the new game, but the one thing I would like to bring up is the possibility of online multiplayer. I know it's no easy task but off the top of my head that would be the first thing I would like to see in the game.

I did want to ask a specific question though, you posted a reply saying that the world is generated at the very start, does this mean it's one large open world this time? Because if so that would have been #2 on my most wanted list.

[Julian]

Originally posted by Karull:

but the one thing I would like to bring up is the possibility of online multiplayer.

I would love that too but it's looking unlikely right now :/ I was hoping that having already made ICoV I could get the basics down quickly and have time to work on things like multiplayer but I haven't found myself with that kind of time.

Originally posted by Karull:

I did want to ask a specific question though, you posted a reply saying that the world is generated at the very start, does this mean it's one large open world this time? Because if so that would have been #2 on my most wanted list.

The world isn't completely open; I wasn't able to make that work performatively. It's composed of connected areas about the size of ICoVs' that can be freely travelled between.

Here's an example of a partially explored world.[imgur.com]

[WheelieWonka]

Originally posted by Julian:

Originally posted by Karull:

but the one thing I would like to bring up is the possibility of online multiplayer.

I would love that too but it's looking unlikely right now :/ I was hoping that having already made ICoV I could get the basics down quickly and have time to work on things like multiplayer but I haven't found myself with that kind of time.

Originally posted by Karull:

I did want to ask a specific question though, you posted a reply saying that the world is generated at the very start, does this mean it's one large open world this time? Because if so that would have been #2 on my most wanted list.

The world isn't completely open; I wasn't able to make that work performatively. It's composed of connected areas about the size of ICoVs' that can be freely travelled between.

Here's an example of a partially explored world.[imgur.com]

Yeah I understand multiplayer requires quite a bit of effort, and from the AVR trailer I can see you've spent your time well on vastly improving the gameplay, mechanics, and even presentation.

And okay I see how it works now, that is still a massive improvement over ICoV as "navigating" through the different paths the game offers was never really all that clear to me. Being able to see the various maps and how they are connected is great, and being able to freely travel between makes it even better.

Can't wait for AVR, I wish you the best as you continue forward!

[FetalFreak]

I've been hyped for your new title since I found out about it. I don't have much input that hasn't already been said but if it's possible I think having full controller support would be a nice addition.

I'm sure you're to busy actually creating the game to worry about this but if you decide to have console ports PLEASE don't go with the one's that worked on ICOV. That was a disaster and seeing how much work and passion you're putting into this project I'd hate to see some scummy company completely butchering it.

Keep doing what you're doing mate, can't wait to see what more you have in store for this game!