This Week in Dose Response 3

gamedev, project, update

Each week, the fine folks at the roguelikedev subreddit post what they’ve done. This is my update.

Download version 0.9 from 3rd of November, 2018 for Windows, Linux, Mac or Play in the browser

(Dose Response is a small open-world roguelike where you play an addict)

It’s been four months since my last update and also since I got to do any real work on the game.

This week, I’ve finally added the real endgame, removing the placeholder one. Previously, once you’ve reached the endgame condition (being able to pick up any dose without being compelled to use it immediately), you won the game if you managed to stay sober for 100 turns. Which is kind of boring, not easy to communicate and so on.

So now, a new NPC is spawned 80-120 tiles away and the camera pans to it and back. If you use any dose (food is fine), the NPC disappears again. But if you stay sober and reach them, you win the game. I like to think of it as reuniting with a lost friend or family member after you’ve managed to get clean and stay clean. But the game is abstract enough not to impose any particular interpretation on the player.

Here are some screenshots of the final moments:

I wanted to add one more showing the victory screen, but as soon as I bumped into the NPC, the game crashed :-). Naturally, that’s fixed now.

As you can see, the Victory NPC is of the same look & colour as the main player (white). I wanted to distinguish them from the other NPCs in the game and making them look like the player seems to do the trick nicely. The NPC is stationary and there’s always at most one in the game. So it shouldn’t cause any confusion. But if it does, I’ll pick another colour.

I’m really excited about this because I’m finally making progress again and also, this was the final missing gameplay piece. There’s a bunch of bugs and glitches that need fixing, but otherwise, the game is now feature complete (famous roguelikedev last words).

by Tomas Sedovic on 4th November, 2018