"Catacumbas" - A free roguelike RPG

Hi,

I've worked on a little project in the last few weeks, a roguelike RPG called "Catacumbas".

You can play it for free here: 68kstudios.com/games/catacumbas

Hunger mechanics are fine, but I think they always drain way too fast. It´s like the character needs a steak every 10 minutes with snacks inbetween. And once you hit 0 you basically just drop dead within minutes, except a mage, they just heal themselves (?) I´d rather have levels of starvation, like beeing satiated gives you a buff while certain degrees of starvation will give you debuffs (reduced max health, reduced mental abilities, reduced strength etc.) and yeah, maybe in the end the character dies but this should take a while, starvation is a pretty slow death.

Thank you for your feedbacks...this hunger mechanics is a pretty good suggestion ;)

This is really good! You can really develop and expand upon this. I don't know what your intention on food balance is, but I played it down to floor 4, and until this point combat was a joke (too much action points, too small enemy damage -was playing knight, had 2 damage reduction maybe?) and all the money I collected went to food. I don't know what happens when your stomach is 0, do you die immediately?

Purely on a resource management basis, I think food should either last longer, or should be cheaper, so that player can look upon purchasing other items. Maybe things smooth out as we go deeper, but then it is a little bit slower on development, I think it's safe to introduce mambas on floor 3 for example instead of floor 4.

Basically, more food, increased difficulty is my suggestion. Roguelike people like sweet suffering.

Onto technical level, may I ask which the line of sight algorithm you implemented and how did you do it with construct?

This is amazing. Expand upon it and construct might finally have a worthy roguelike!

Thank you all for your feedbacks; I've just uploaded a small update to balance some stuff (like the hunger level increase, that is now a little slower).

You can find the version 0.6.10 at the same address: http://www.68kstudios.com/games/catacumbas/

Edit: I just realize, your the person thats making the "7th circle" game! Wow, your on your way if you keep this up!

Thank you very much. I'm also working the the sequel of "The 7th Circle": this is the Steam page

store.steampowered.com/app/1251850/Inferno__Beyond_the_7th_Circle

Started with ninja. Purchased the leather armor with my first gold. 1 damage reduction completely invalidates almost all enemy damage in the first few floors. Ninja is so fast that no enemy can stand the plethora of attacks, even with the puny damage output.

Found one bug: 1 amulet and 1 ring I unlocked with knight was visible in the armory, but their prices didn't display. When I bought them it did cost 100 gold ish. The same problem is NOT present for the shield that I had unlocked, which displayed the price correctly. (+1 attack ring and amulet of searching, to be specific).

I see that you have implemented xp gain from traps. Very nice.

I still didn't need to use any potions at all. Either our damage output is too large, or enemy damage input is too low. I am not sure if this problem goes away in later levels, like lvl 50 ish, but it's a long grind until then. I suggest that the whole game be like 40 levels instead of 100, and enemy progression is increased. Will need a lot of testing, but I think I would enjoy testing it out. Still, I suggest you keep a strict version library, just in case.

Br.

Hello!

I am really loving this game for some reason. The additional sounds and music has added a lot of atmosphere to the game! Awesome!

I still have some humble suggestions based on my own experience with the game. You don't have to take them too seriously, but maybe they will give some ideas, so I will just write them down, just in case.

Started with rogue, low str and weak weapon initially presented a slight challenge, and I could lose as much as half of my hp... but as soon as I bought the 50 gold, 1 damage reduction leather armor, enemy damage becomes laughable. Then it all went back to the same gameplay as knight. In fact, it was much better since I had a better search and lockpick skill, and found a lot of gold and items in hidden chests. With knight I couldn't even open a single locked chest, which is acceptable as a balance thing.

The throw knife skill of rogue is so bad considering its mana cost. It does laughable damage. In every manner of speaking, moving into attack is much better. Does it get better over time, or with increased mind skill? Another question: Lets say I have 12 action points when I'm next to an enemy. WHen I attack, do I make only 1 attack, or the number of attacks is based upon a combination of the weapon and the action points remaining?

I noticed that goblins have shield and can also reduce the damage I deal. Hadn't noticed this with knight, but it was noticable with rogue as I was dealing a lot of 0's. This is good. Enemy with armor can make it challenging.

A couple ideas:

-increased enemy damage or reduced starting hit points. This may mean that I want to get out of the level early for hp shopping instead of exploring all of it. This also means that constitution is more important stat, and health potions are essential. (I played with three different classes and never once felt the need to consume a health potion).

-remove the armor buff scroll or make it very expensive. Even the initial 1 damage reduction armor makes the damage output of certain enemies irrelevant. Mice and bats for example deal either 0 or 1 damage when I have 1 armor. When I increase the armor even later enemies deal no damage.

-Increase the effectiveness of all player spells. No spell I have tested was worth it, even the utility things like invisibility and combination of auto-crit when invis, are not worth the mana investment. It's almost always better to retreat, get a lot of action points, and slaughter the enemy. The spell scrolls, for example, it's almost always better to sell them for money.

-Introduce ranged and/or annoying/challenging enemies. If you already have ranged enemies, introduce them earlier. This would open up tactical play (like retreating and luring them to close combat, making use of doors, digging, etc.), and maybe make spell use more important. Every floor beginning from 3 onwards should have at least one annoying enemy that makes the player consider his resource use. The snakes for example should poison with more effectiveness, makes saving throws even the more important. A good idea might be to make the attacks of those "annoying" enemies cause status effects, like the snakes currently do with poison.

I will write more as I play, if you wish.

Hello. Glad I could both enjoy a game and help it grow. Here's the notes from my latest playthrogh:

Restarted with rogue, challenge was better. Didn’t have serious issues for a long time, but when I made mistakes (forgetting to buy food made me loose half my hp once) I paid for it.

At floor 10 I have 4 (1 from armor base, 2 scrolls I purchased, and 1 scroll I found) damage reduction, and enemies usually deal 0 damage, sometimes 1.

At floor 12 I took some damage in the first room. It felt like the start of the challenging part. But it turns out most of the damage was due to me forgetting to eat again. Throughout this level, only gnolls were able to hit me for 1 occationally, and I had 88 hp despite being one of the supposedly fragile classes.

Suggesiton: Maybe there should be a notification or effect on screen or sound effect to telegraph the hunger.

The enemies at floor 15 could occasionally deal damage despite having my armor maximized at 6 damage reduction. I also carry a def +2 shield.

Question: Does it also say “0” when enemies miss you? Or “0” only displays when they hit, but they deal no damage?

Suggestion: Deeper / invisible gold deposits can give more gold, making investments on pickaxes and vision scrolls more important.

Suggestion: Damage reduction armor buff scroll also increases encumbrance? And/or increases stomach cost of digging?

Suggestion: Searching shouldn’t break invisibility.

Suggestion: Alternative trap bonuses, scaling with floor (2xp x floor or 2gold x floor or % floor chance to get potion, etc.)

Suggestion: We need solid doors as well, which you can’t see through.

Improvement required: Enemy AI needs a touch, even when there’s more than 1 enemy in the room and I am inside the room, they often fail to surround me.

Suggestion: different types of poison and/or status effects that temporarily reduce base stats, like reducing strength, attack, etc. (I later noticed the status information tab in the inventory).

Question/Suggestion: Are some enemies capable of hiding? Sometimes I see rats coming out of nowhere, and once I thought a goblin suddenly became visible, but it’s impossible to determine if they came from another room or corridor.

Question: is it the same to perform the search action with 1 ap remaining or 10 ap remaining?

Bug: when entering a room by diggin a Wall through a neighboring room, the line of sight mechanic doesn’t work and you can only see 1 tile into the room.

I hope I'm not being a bother, but I sense that this is a great foundation for an extremely well crafted roguelike. It still needs something to distinguish itself from others, but I really would like to see construct having its own good rogue game and you've laid a nice foundation for it. Hope this will grow into something spectacular.

Question: Does it also say “0” when enemies miss you? Or “0” only displays when they hit, but they deal no damage?

0 is a missed blow, the minimum damage is 1 even with a DMG reduction of 10

Question/Suggestion: Are some enemies capable of hiding? Sometimes I see rats coming out of nowhere, and once I thought a goblin suddenly became visible, but it’s impossible to determine if they came from another room or corridor.

No, but some enemies (like rats) can reproduce themselves, so you can see a new enemy appears next to another of the same kind.

Question: is it the same to perform the search action with 1 ap remaining or 10 ap remaining?

yes

Bug: when entering a room by diggin a Wall through a neighboring room, the line of sight mechanic doesn’t work and you can only see 1 tile into the room.

It's not a bug, it's intended in this way. If you are in a tunnel in a wall, you can't properly see around you. It's a little disadvantage to not use the main door ;)

Thank you again, i'm going to publish a new update soon

Hello!

I’m lvl 16 rogue at floor 32, and I can’t open locked chests any longer, despite having the +2 lockpicking amulet and having found numerous lockpicking upgrades along the way. Current lockpick score is 11. Considering the fact that rogue has to be one of the best in this regard, the lockpick difficulty progression seems too harsh for later levels.

Suggestion: improve rogue lockpick progression OR reduce chest lock difficulty.

Suggestion: Focused status effect might improve lockpick skill as well.

Suggestion: Give rogue a lockpick skill buff spell.

Suggestion: Lower the chest lock difficulty increase, but make sure every level has a small number of challenging locks that even the rogue can have difficulty opening without buffs. Provide essential items inside those, like blueprints and food.

I removed my leather armor for an encumbrance 0 armor (Red cloth), which I enhanced to +5 with the scrolls I found along the way. This way I got rid of the encumbrance. That being said, some enemies can actually hit me for 2-3 damage now. But all enemies are actually the same thing with different stats. I really wish that up to this point we had some enemies with different behavior. This amount of challenge would be good for the first few floors instead of floor 30+

Suggestion: increase the challenge in earlier levels.

Suggestion: display a “miss” text instead of “0” when an attack misses.

Suggestion: provide a means to see the earlier events in the text bar provided below (with keys or small UI elements that, when pressed, show earlier events).

The game’s atmosphere is nice, especially better now with sound effects and music. The current music is good, but becomes too repetitive after listening it for 30plus levels. I turned the music volume down.

Suggestion: different music and/or ambient sounds for different tilesets.

The atmosphere can also make use of a little bit of story, especially if it’s creepy. Maybe we can collect story text pages. I would be willing to provide you with a lot of lore text, for items, monsters, story, etc… I am dungeon master for DND and Pathfinder campaigns for more than 20 years now. Just let me know, but maybe you already have a direction in your mind in this regard.

Improving weapons with the orbs is nice at earlier levels. But at the current level/floor, my shopping needs are over and I have more than 30k gold accumulated. Even the food is very expensive. Currently thinking of buying a lot of food before it gets really expensive to stay alive at later levels.

First ranged enemy at floor 37! Death Bringer! Finally! Have 45k gold. Unlocked some cool amulets and armor pieces, and shields. Can't understand which of those will be available for future characters and I'm afraid to test, because I don't want to lose progression. The progression is slow. Is it possible to make it so that the game has 50 levels instead of 100? The grind is really long :)

Suggestion: It would be nice if you could add a changelog to the menu :)

Wish you best of luck with all your games!