Rogue Matrix Debriefing

I want to take a few minutes to collect my thoughts about what did & didn't work with Rogue Matrix. I think I should try to do this with all of my games, just to give myself some direction in terms of design.

HOT POTATOES:

Music Generation: This was a successful little experiment which I'll definitely be exploring further.

Dungeon Generation: I like the look of the dungeons, layout-wise. I'll probably use this same algorithm if I ever make another roguelike, which I almost certainly will.

Light Strategy: There's just enough strategy involved to keep the game a little interesting. Check it:

The more enemies there are wandering around the level, the more the loot is worth. So to maximize your score on a given level, the best strategy is usually to pick up all the loot first, then kill the enemies. However, having more enemies around also causes your time to decrease faster, shortening your overall playtime & making it difficult to reach the later stages where loot is worth more. So then it would seem that the best strategy is to sprint through the first few levels to get where the big points are. But then you miss out on all of the items you could have collected, which are often essential for survival in the late game. So it's a balance, but there are enough random elements to keep the player from guessing at an optimal strategy for a specific game until all of the items have been discovered.

Look, I'm not saying it's a great game, but I do think there's a little more depth to it than first meets the eye.

COLD POTATOES:

Exploration is Boring: This is an immediate deathblow to a roguelike. Every part of every level looks exactly the same. Every enemy looks exactly the same. Exploration is a central game mechanic here & it just isn't much fun.

Worst Graphics Award: I mean, have a little bit of pride. Jesus.

Terrible UI: All that text in the infobar needs to be there because the game does such a bad job of explaining itself to the player. The strategic elements should be communicated to the player more elegantly through gameplay. It's Ok for a game to be hard to figure out completely, but only if figuring out the rules is designed to be part of the fun or the challenge. Here, it's just shitball UI & UX design.

CONCLUSION:

I think this game turned out alright considering the minimal amount of effort I ended up putting into it. I'll probably use this game as a starting point for building another roguelike in the future.