A Planetary Roguelike Game With Dynamic Progression

Welcome to the first of its kind devlog for my upcoming game called Roguesphere where you basically yeet enemies around a tiny planet (I'm still iterating on it's single line game description).

It's already 24 devlogs deep into development and it's actually a rework of a published game I have out there, which I will delete sometime soon.

My method of blogging and creating short videos about my games is clearly not working, so I took time off from it and reflected about how I could do better (just in time for the holidays).

By taking my time with my devlogs, I'm hoping to better:

• inspire others to go after their dreams (work on their own games)
• showcase other activities in my life that I balance with game development
• connect with people and create some excitement about the projects I work on

With that said, please allow me to indulge you about my situation and take the opportunity to introduce myself!

Personal Introduction

My name is Renz and I've buried myself in school loans earning a software engineering degree and I'm on the journey of breaking free.

I've been fortunate to have had experience working for a startup, but that opportunity ended and now I'm currently struggling to find a job so that's not helping me with my goals.

Unfortunately, I also have a passion for game development, which means I'm screwed because the games industry is the wrong industry to get into if I all I needed was money.

So, this isn't a sob story.

I know I'm lining things up for my life and I'm just waiting.

Now, let me get you caught up with my game.

// The Game

It's coming real soon at the end of February this year and you can actually pre-register for it!

Here's a gameplay reel.

The basic idea:

• Survive in planets where there are enemies that will hunt you down and shoot you, but your only way of fighting back is by shattering their bodies (shoving them into walls or into each other).
• Upgrade your character by collecting coins around the planet or earning coins by chaining kills.
• Select how hard the game gets each time you successfully survive a planet.
• You beat the game by surviving all 12 planets that the game gives you in one go.
• Earn game experience when you either die or beat the game, which you can then use to unlock new planets, characters, and other things.

There's a lot more that actually goes on, but those are the basics of the gameplay.

// Planet Design

Saturday December 30

I'm using the Unity engine to make this and for this devlog I'll be working on the difficulty pacing of the game over the holidays.

Specifically, the game has 24 planets and I want half of them to have more obstacles than the rest so the plan is to first manually add in more obstacles for 12 handpicked planets.

This way I can implement a system that only picks from the pool of planets with more obstacles in the early stages of the game.

Naturally, this should make it easier to survive because there will be more walls for you to hide in or cover yourself from getting shot.

Monday January 1

Happy New Year everyone!

With all the celebrations going on this season and me adjusting to this new back and forth workflow of devlogging and then working on the game, it took me another day than expected to actually finish redesigning the planets.

Here are a few examples of the planets I've populated with more obstacles!

Using these types of planets for the early stages of the game and then using the ones with less obstacles later on should help with the difficulty pacing of the game.

// Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment

It's a nice complement to the adaptive difficulty system I have implemented in the game. A system that automatically adjust parameters that affects the difficulty of a planet based on how much health you leave every planet with.

It adjusts parameters such as:

• How much each upgrade costs
• How much enemies will show up
• How long you will need to survive for which also means how much enemies you will need to kill to progress

The system had a good enough balance in the early access version where you only had to survive 10 planets to beat the game, but now I'm increasing that to 12 planets (the first 6 planets will have more obstacles and the last 6 will have less obstacles.).

It's a bit difficult to show you the system working, but that's okay because it's actually one of those things that players shouldn't really know anyway!

Just know that when the game all of a sudden feels like it's a little bit easier, it's because you're getting better :D (it will still be a pretty difficulty game no matter what so).

// End

That pretty much wraps it up for this one.

I'm glad to have finally 'properly' introduced Roguesphere.

Look out for more like this in the future as I finish up the game for the end of February.

If you're feeling generous, consider supporting my work in which I give thanks to you by giving you an early access version of the game, putting your name in the credits, and more!

Regardless, I'm thankful for your time reading this devlog.

Supporters

I also want to give a huge thank you to the generous people who are supporting me and my work this month.

• Laura Milligan
• Andrew Abrook
• Armaigne Rivero
• Fritz Rivero

Again, thank you so much for your time.

If you have any feedback or thoughts, I would love to hear from you in the comments.

See you in the next one.