Sorceress

Sorceress is the working title for a traditional roguelike I’m working on. The major idea behind this game is the magic system which is still in early stages of development. The primary goal in the design of the magic system will be to create a feeling that the player is designing their own spells without the disenchanting knobs used in many other spell crafting systems. I wanted to outline the early ideas for how I expect the magic system to work.

As a general disclaimer, this game is still in very early development so many features discussed here may be subject to change before the game is made available.

Components

The first major idea is components. Each spell will use different components. And adding or removing components will change the spell. Some components might give the spell more range, others might increase the area of effect, and others might alter the nature of the spell entirely. Exactly how this will look is still largely in development, but what I’m working with currently is a mix of verbal components which provide a base spell template, and consumable physical components which will augment the base spells in various ways. For example, the sorceress might combine the verbal component for a magic missile, then add the component for fire to turn the spell into a firebolt, then they could add an are of effect component which turns the firebolt into a devastating fireball explosion. These physical components are consumable so if the character uses up too much of the physical components, they will be left with only the magic missile.

Progression

Firstly, there will be no metaprogression. Each run will reset the player. That includes permadeath and all the glory of mortality that comes with it. As the player progresses through the game, they will collect a different set of components which will give them access to other spells. Later levels will have higher powered components more readily available which in turn makes the spells they can cast more powerful. If this system is well balanced, it also means the spells the player has access to are different for each run and give the player a new and unique challenge with each run.

Current state of the game

I’m building the game using the Amethyst game engine which has been very pleasant to work with. I usually like working with traditional ascii rendering but I decided to put a little more work into the game by adding sprites. A lot of work still needs to be done on this, but as soon as the game is in a playable state I intend to make the game available for people to play during development.

In the meantime this is what the game currently looks like: