Will Roguelite feature spice it up?
The Dragonhood had a gameplay loop of constantly sending dragons on adventures where they fought 1v1 to loot rare, powerful items and battle tougher opponents to find even better items. I personally liked it, but the game lacked something that would spoil the replayability. The answer to this question turned out to be the dungeon feature (not only that, but it's a big one).
The dungeons in The Dragonhood are basically a Rougelite feature where you choose 3 dragons and send them to the dungeon. There they have the opportunity to fight subsequent opponents until the final boss, defeating which is equivalent to completing the dungeon. Dungeons consist of different fields that the player can move through using Action Points. The most popular fields are Battle, Treasure and Bridge, the last of them is left for one-way traffic (it spoils lol).
Why is it Rougelite:
- player wins the battle -> can choose one powerful upgrade
- the player loses the battle -> loses 5% of his loot
- as the player explores the dungeon, he becomes more and more powerful, but must face even more powerful enemies
- if the player's dungeon party (3 dragons of his choice + upgrades of his choice) is cooked enough, he should be able to defeat the boss and complete the dungeon
- if a player is too weak, he can always give up and lose half of his loot
The power-ups that players loot are passive bonuses or special dungeon perks that buff one specific dragon or the entire party under certain conditions.
Dungeons in The Dragonhood are a very rewarding experience, both in terms of loot and fun. This is very different from the normal player experience and I believe that when a player enters a dungeon for the first time it must be a real hit of dopamine.
The Dungeons update introduced a lot of fresh and different mechanics, and I hope players can use them to build something crazy.
Over the past months I have also managed to visually improve the entire game and replace the old boring scrollbar selecting adventures with this cool interactive map!
Looking forward to the June Steam Next Fest and full release in July.
Wishlist here: Wishlist!
It is not about adding 'rogue-like' features to make your game look better on paper. It is about adding any features it needs to be great. In retrospect you could categorize those features as 'rogue-like'.
Totally agree with you, but I would still call it "rougelite". It's not that much oriented around random generation and it's is not punishing enought to call it "roguelike". Thanks for comment!