Long has the fabled Demon's Crown laid in the depths of the dreaded One-Floor Dungeon, guarded by both an army of sorcerous skeletons and the dungeon's own twisted geometry. Armed with naught but a stout heart and a strong bow arm, can you succeed where all else have failed and retrieve the Crown?
Developed in the Love2D Framework. Didn't have time for sound effects thanks to spending my whole first day figuring out how to get the collision engine working, but I did manage to get my overall gameplay concept implemented, even if it's not quite as elaborate as I had planned.
Supports both keyboard and controller. Use the arrow keys/D-Pad/analog stick to move, and space/A to fire. Collect hearts to recover your HP, dash icons to increase your movement speed, and arrow icons to increase your fire rate.
The deeper you go, the tougher the monsters get. Find the Crown and claim victory!
Absolutely love the Non-Euclidean level layout :) Frustrated by a Contact with the enemy (fast moving screen 20/30 or so) taking away 6 hearts in one go. I got soooo far. OK one more try :p
Pretty solid action-roguelike! Would've loved to see more level variations, but what's there is tight and fun to play. I liked the player's speed and projectile speed, everything felt just right.
The difficulty and the graphics style remind me of old roguelikes like NetHack and Angband, which is of course a bonus. The enemies fire very quickly after they see you and I found it quite difficult to deal with.
Playing with a controller this was actually very fun! The mechanics where really polished and matched the difficulty level very good. After 20 rooms I felt I wanted some new challenges or some kind of award/power-up. Really nice work!
I really, really like this game! The relevance to the theme was a little unclear at first before I realized exactly what was happening with the rooms of the dungeon. Then I thought it was pretty clever.
I couldn't figure out the purpose of the 2 non-heart collectibles, though. Other than that, highly enjoyable! It got intense at the end as I knew I was about to die.
The controls are a little difficult, though. It's very hard to hit enemies with diagonal bullets, and it would be nice if I could move and aim simultaneously with different controls, such as WASD to move and arrow keys to shoot, such as in The Binding of Isaac.
The blue "dash" icon increases your movement speed, and the "bundle of arrows" icon increases your fire rate. I decided to make health items more common than the stat boosts, but I'm worried I ended up making the game too easy. XD
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PIXEL^310 Dec 2014, 07:25
Wow! I could see a post-compo version of this being pretty popular, it's kind of Gauntlet meets Binding of Isaac and i like it. I wander if a Gauntlet style multiplayer might work here, either with larger rooms or a larger grid to let everyone explore separately. Could be competitive like that too. Something to think about.
Cool game, although the controls were super sensitive for me? The dude was running like 1000 miles an hour. Maybe just me though.
Liked the randomness of the levels.
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Gwilym12 Dec 2014, 10:39
Really nice interpretation of the theme. And awesome that the map is randomly generated. Those last levels get brutal though :P. Managed it in the end :D
The issue I have is that a few times I entered a room and was immediately hit by an enemy taking away all my hearts in one go :(. Most games get around this by adding temporary invincibility, maybe that would work better then having the player pushed back? Or maybe have both?
Awesome game. I found it hard at first, but then it got better once I got the hang of some of the rooms and the monsters. The micro-graphics are great! Would be nice if there was a sound each time you loose a heart - didn't even catch that at the beginning. Well done, it feels very polished.
Yeah, there's supposed to be mercy invincibility in there (the brief knockback period), but it doesn't quite seem to work as intended. I tweaked the "patrol" formations because I noticed it was too easy to unwittingly run right into them right as you're entering a room, but I only ended up making a different set of entrances deadly. ^_^;
Again, I prioritized making sure the game ran the way I wanted it to over implementing sound. It's a sore spot for me (it's the ONLY LD game I've ever made that doesn't have sound), but for me it was a choice between that and making sure the dungeon generation worked as intended. I'll probably do a post-comp release with sound and a bit more polish.
Several very cool things here! The tiny graphics are tight, the way you "disobey" the layout fitting on the screen in the traditional sense, and the random generation that keeps retrying interesting all work very well together.
Controls were also nice and tight.
Really nice entry, great job. Only thing I needed was a little more variety.
I love the pacing of this game, and the random elements to it. Got a real feeling of success from making it all the way through to the crown! Interestingly, the game became more about constantly moving and dodging once my speed became high enough. I also worked out a strategy of leaving heart pieces I found if I already had full health, letting me backtrack to replenish it. My final run was pretty lucky, spawning 3 rooms with items (2x bows, 1x speed boost) adjacent to each other, and also getting through 3 levels of the dungeon in about 10 rooms. Well done!
Cool game! I like the randomly generated map. I also like it that some rooms are overlapped so there are actually more space than it seems on the screen. Nice work!
Right now I'm in the middle of an extensive refactoring of the game's code. Hopefully I'll actually have a post-comp version ready before the comp is actually over. ^_^;
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Would be great to see it expanded.
I couldn't figure out the purpose of the 2 non-heart collectibles, though. Other than that, highly enjoyable! It got intense at the end as I knew I was about to die.
The blue "dash" icon increases your movement speed, and the "bundle of arrows" icon increases your fire rate. I decided to make health items more common than the stat boosts, but I'm worried I ended up making the game too easy. XD
-AlucardX60
Liked the randomness of the levels.
The issue I have is that a few times I entered a room and was immediately hit by an enemy taking away all my hearts in one go :(. Most games get around this by adding temporary invincibility, maybe that would work better then having the player pushed back? Or maybe have both?
Awesome game. I found it hard at first, but then it got better once I got the hang of some of the rooms and the monsters.
The micro-graphics are great!
Would be nice if there was a sound each time you loose a heart - didn't even catch that at the beginning.
Well done, it feels very polished.
Again, I prioritized making sure the game ran the way I wanted it to over implementing sound. It's a sore spot for me (it's the ONLY LD game I've ever made that doesn't have sound), but for me it was a choice between that and making sure the dungeon generation worked as intended. I'll probably do a post-comp release with sound and a bit more polish.
Controls were also nice and tight.
Really nice entry, great job. Only thing I needed was a little more variety.
Right now I'm in the middle of an extensive refactoring of the game's code. Hopefully I'll actually have a post-comp version ready before the comp is actually over. ^_^;