Possession: Play as a ghost and possess other monsters! (1/19/20: Version 13)

[Rickton]

Possession, a traditional turn-based roguelike where you play as a ghost trying to make your way to the surface, has been released for Linux, Mac, and Windows!

You are incredibly frail, but have one advantage: you can possess the bodies of the monsters you encounter, and use their strength and abilities as your own. Hop from body to body as you attempt to make it back to the surface.

Features:

• Dozens of possessable monsters, from the horrifying to the hilarious, with a wide variety of powers.
• Special themed levels with unique hazards, creatures and layouts. Level creation is more varied than in most roguelikes.
• Item-less gameplay. The dead have no need for worldly possessions, they just slow you down.
• Quick to pick up and play.
• Entirely playable with just the keyboard, just the mouse, or a combination of the two.
• Mod support! Add your own creatures, powers and special levels, or change the ones already there. There's even already a mod available called The Sunken City, though it's mainly intended as an example for others.
• Choice between ASCII or Graphical mode.

Possession is available to buy on itch.io and Steam. There are downloadable demos on both platforms as well.

Source code for the engine is available on GitHub and licensed under the MIT license. It won't run; it only has the engine, no content. It's mainly intended to be a reference for modders.

A version of the engine by the name Roguelove is also available, so called because it's a roguelike engine designed to be used with LÖVE! This version of the engine is the recommended one for people who are interested in using the code for their own games, as it will be updated more features than are used in Possession (such as items), and is again offered under the MIT license.

Screenshots:

[Rickton]

There's now a demo available on itch.io.

[Rickton]

Version 1.0.6 (The minimap update) released!



Interface Changes:

• There's now a minimap! It can be disabled from the settings page.
• The stairs up are now colored yellow in ASCII mode, and have an up arrow attached to the tile in graphical mode. The up arrow is drawn on top of whatever else is on the tile, so if something is standing on the stairs it's easier to see them.
• The default preferences are now set to show creature stats on the sidebar. (This only applies to people who haven't played the game yet)

Gameplay changes:

• Flying creatures who move over water while on fire now have their fire put out

Code/modding changes:

• Tilesets can now have separate colors for the ground and the walls in ASCII mode (and the Graveyard has been updated to use this feature to more closely match its appearance in graphical mode)
• There's now a Map:get_blocking_feature function to check and return a movement-blocking feature in a tile

Bug fixes:

• Fixed a crash in the credits screen in ASCII mode

Steam version on Linux:

• Possession now launches using your system's libraries rather than the Steam runtime's. This is to fix an issue where the game was not launching on some systems (notably running Manjaro). If this causes a problem and the game's not able to launch on your system when it could before, please let me know!

[Rickton]

Version 1.0.7 (the zoom update) is released, as well as a demo version now being available on steam

Interface Changes:
-You can now zoom in and out. This can be done using the scroll wheel, or by using the - and = keys on top of the keyboard - rebindable from settings, of course! Only applies to the gameplay graphics, not the UI (UI scaling is the next project).


Modding:
-You can now easily add creatures to a special level by returning a levelCreatures table from a mod. Example: levelCreatures={graveyard={'graverobber'}}


Bug fixes:
-Fixed a crash that occurred when using the scroll wheel on the spell selection screen

[Rickton]

Missed posting this, but versions 1.0.8 and 10 have been released. I'm changing the version numbers to reflect the release number, rather than sticking with semantic versioning (1.X.X), because it didn't make much sense.

Version 1.0.8 Changes:
- You can use the Enter key on the numpad everywhere you can use the main Enter/Return key
- You can now select "it" as your pronoun when starting a new game
- The minimap gets less visible if you mouse over it

Version 10 Changes:
-The UI can now be scaled from the Settings menu. This only affects the in-game UI, not the other menus. I wouldn't recommend using it if you're not on a 4K screen, because it doesn't look very good. Anyone who does have a 4K screen, please let me know how it looks for you, and if I should update the rest of the screens to scale as well.
-If clicking would cause you to move, it now shows an arrow rather than the targeting reticule
-Fixed a crash that could be caused when receiving an achievement without Steam open

If you haven't grabbed Possession yet, it's now a spooky 13% off for Halloween on both Steam and itch.io!

https://weirdfellows.itch.io/possession (until November 4)
https://store.steampowered.com/app/629340/Possession/ (until November 1)

If you do have it and enjoy it, please consider leaving us a review!

[Rickton]

A few versions of Possession have been released since my last post.
V11:

Content Changes:
Removed the "Adjusting to New Body" condition
Levels are now generated 60 x 60 tiles rather than 75 x 75 tiles. This also decreases the number of creatures on the level (but the density is slightly increased)
The old 75 x 75 size can be enabled as a "Cheat" (now called "Game Modifiers") on the new game screen
The trail of slime from the snailperson is no longer applied on water

Bug Fixes:
Fixed a crash that could be caused by moving using the mouse and then getting shot with a healing syringe by the orc healer
Fixed a crash that happened when you quit directly from the new game screen
Fixed a crash that could happen when clicking on certain locations in the load game screen

Misc:
On a crash, the game now saves an error log in the following locations:

Linux: ~/.local/share/possessionroguelike/
Windows: C:Users(YourUserName)AppDataRoamingpossessionroguelike
Mac: ~/Library/Application Support/possessionroguelike/

V12:

New Features:
Rather than auto-assigning points to your stats when you kill an enemy, you can now choose which stats you want to increase from the character screen. There's a setting to set it back to the old style where it randomly assigns
Tombstones can now generate on levels where you've died, with the name of your character & date of their death.

Miscellaneous:
The game will now try to autosave if it crashes. It does this in a new file, so it doesn't risk corrupting your old save.

V13:

Biggest change this version is the introduction of the Mausoleum as a potential first level. It has the same creatures as the Graveyard (because I think they're a good set to learn the game on), but a different layout so there's a bit more variety at the beginning of each game.



Content changes:
Dwarven bombers are less likely to throw bombs on any given turn, hopefully making them slightly less annoying.
Added an AI-only cooldown for the Brainiac's hypnotize ability, so they don't spam it constantly.
Spiderwebs now only cause one turn of web paralysis.
Ratlings are now all in the same faction, so if you're possessing any type of ratling, other ratlings of any type won't generally be hostile unless something else causes them to be.
If the [redacted] is under your command, you're able to [redacted].

Interface Fixes and Changes:
You can now move the cursor over the tiles on the map borders.
The popups that show damage now have a small variation in their speed, and speed up as they get older. This way, if a creature takes two hits at the same time you might be able to read both of them.
Description boxes from mousing over sidebar buttons will no longer show while a window (for example, the spell screen) is open.

Modding:
Added a calc_damage callback, which can return a number to change the amount of damage being done.

Possession is currently 25% off for the Steam Sale: https://store.steampowered.com/app/629340/Possession/
I also recently posted a "2020 in Roguelikedev" post with a retrospective on 2019 and outlook for 2020: https://www.reddit.com/r/roguelikedev/c ... ossession/

[Lacotemale]

I had a read through your reddit post with great interest. I'm working on my own big game project at the moment. I did play the latest build recently and those crashes I mentioned before are all gone. I don't have any trouble really regarding the gameplay. For me I just feel the UI/UX could be improved upon. The buttons in particular are a bit small and could do with some padding.

Maybe "possession" being a main action could be in a separate location too. A bigger button with a different colour and increased font size would be better imho. On top of the sidebar would do. This would encourage the player to get involved in the main gameplay aspect of the game.

[Rickton]

Fair point about the buttons. I made them that size to more easily fit them on the sidebar, but I can see how they might be too small.