Need some thoughts on my small indie game in development

[wagzywagz]

Hey hey, I am looking for some insight into a cooking system for a rogue-lite game (think Binding of Isaac meets Vampire Survivor) that my small team is developing. We need to make a prototype in 2 weeks and we're leaning towards a simple game where you need to survive a living Dungeon by feeding it and satisfying its hunger. If it's satisfied, you get a recipe card that gives you a weapon upgrade.

The goal is to last as long in the game as possible and get to more levels. If you fail, your run ends and you start again. The two options we're thinking of to increase the satisfaction in your gameplay:

• Banking system: risk/reward by adding as many ingredients to a pot with it rewarding more and more points, but the more you add the easier it would be for a monster to tip over your pot making you start again
• Defence system: protect your pot of ingredients from being destroyed before your dish is ready

 

[Pifanjr]

Defence sounds good, but I would make the amount of food in the pot affect the amount of monsters that appear (to steal the food), with optionally the type of the ingredients affecting the type of monsters that appear.

Another optional mechanic could be to let the players eat some of the food out of the pot while defending it to restore their health, in exchange for getting fewer points.

 

[wagzywagz]

Defence sounds good, but I would make the amount of food in the pot affect the amount of monsters that appear (to steal the food), with optionally the type of the ingredients affecting the type of monsters that appear.

Another optional mechanic could be to let the players eat some of the food out of the pot while defending it to restore their health, in exchange for getting fewer points.

Thanks for your thoughts! This is a really cool! So essentially this would satisfy a player's cooking tasks/elements in the game?

 

[ZedClampet]

Maybe instead of always wiping your run, successfully feeding the dungeon ends a single run, and you stay at that point even if your next run isn't successful, or maybe you get to keep that level-up even if you have to start from scratch, helping you to make a longer run.

I really like @Pifanjr 's idea.

Maybe you are creating a home base where you are cooking, and each run sees you going farther and farther away for more rare ingredients and higher boosts, but you always end up back at your base. Maybe if you don't die, you are continually deciding at the end of segments whether to move on to the next segment and potentially lose all your ingredients or fast traveling back and cooking the meal. You can only return home at the end of a segment, so if you continue onward, you have to make it to the end or lose your finds.

Perhaps you also find crafting recipes along the way for crafting tables and new types of weapons. These might inspire you to get to the end of your current segment and immediately return home so that you don't lose these things.

Maybe you have to complete a certain number of procgen runs to get to the final area, and so doing longer segments to get better bonuses will put you in better shape when you finally reach the last segment.

Sorry, instead of helping you with your game I'm making a new one

 

[wagzywagz]

Maybe instead of always wiping your run, successfully feeding the dungeon ends a single run, and you stay at that point even if your next run isn't successful, or maybe you get to keep that level-up even if you have to start from scratch, helping you to make a longer run.

I really like @Pifanjr 's idea.

Maybe you are creating a home base where you are cooking, and each run sees you going farther and farther away for more rare ingredients and higher boosts, but you always end up back at your base. Maybe if you don't die, you are continually deciding at the end of segments whether to move on to the next segment and potentially lose all your ingredients or fast traveling back and cooking the meal. You can only return home at the end of a segment, so if you continue onward, you have to make it to the end or lose your finds.

Perhaps you also find crafting recipes along the way for crafting tables and new types of weapons. These might inspire you to get to the end of your current segment and immediately return home so that you don't lose these things.

Maybe you have to complete a certain number of procgen runs to get to the final area, and so doing longer segments to get better bonuses will put you in better shape when you finally reach the last segment.

Sorry, instead of helping you with your game I'm making a new one

Haha! Love it! Very in depth insights! If you don't mind, I have another question 🥹:

• How fun would a system be where to receive the buff you have to cook it with ingredients you gather from killed monsters, but you can gather enough ingredients to cook the dish multiple times over to increase the potency of the buff or save the food for the next floor in hopes of getting a better buff to makes stronger
• With that, having spices with you that act as a limited resource you can also use on an upgrade recipe to further enhance the buff (but can only be used 1-2 times per run)

👀

 

[ZedClampet]

Haha! Love it! Very in depth insights! If you don't mind, I have another question 🥹:

• How fun would a system be where to receive the buff you have to cook it with ingredients you gather from killed monsters, but you can gather enough ingredients to cook the dish multiple times over to increase the potency of the buff or save the food for the next floor in hopes of getting a better buff to makes stronger
• With that, having spices with you that act as a limited resource you can also use on an upgrade recipe to further enhance the buff (but can only be used 1-2 times per run)

👀

Making these strategic choices sounds like a lot of fun to me.