[Demo] [IndieGoGo] Netherworld – an abstract roguelike

[MZ|One]

Hi everyone!

I would like to show you Netherworld – an abstract exploration roguelike with open-ended tactical combat + you can construct your own spells! It all takes place in a very ethereal place called the Netherworld, and basically you have to defeat combat encounters, so that you can explore deeper into the universe and discover new locations where you can increase your statistics, construct new spellpowers, transmute dusts and crystals so that you can perform rituals, level up your vocations, pick up unique abilities and so on. In the end, you win when you overcome the ultimate battle, when you activate all the beacons in the world, or when you perform a super difficult ritual.



The most important and I think also the coolest idea is that you can construct your own spellpowers that you can then use in the battles to come. The spell construction is very modular and basically allows you to construct spells as combinations of various modifiers around a certain fixed central core. That means that when you construct an offensive strike, you can opt to make it deal enormous damage, but have a longer cooldown or cost more Spirit (mana), or vice versa, or you can attach a life leech rune to it, or you can make it affect an entire cluster (which makes it act basically as an AoE), or you can make it deal Luminosity or Chaos damage – or, and that is the most important part, you can make it do all that in the same spell.

It is a roguelike, which means that the universe is always randomly generated, and so are your opportunities to construct your own spells. There is an emphasis on a very open-ended approach to problems, so that you can play in many different ways and still achieve your objective.

Netherworld is currently on IndieGoGo, where I am trying to secure resources to cover my basic expenses throughout the development:
Netherworld on IndieGoGo > > >



There is no public prototype yet, because while I do have a playable version that I used to make the video, it is very much bits and pieces and it is unbalanced to the point when it is ridiculous. The core design is in place, however, and makes me sure that the complete game would be a real blast!

Let me know what you think! And also, if you like the idea, I really appreciate any help with the IndieGoGo campaign, contribution or otherwise.

Great Easter to everyone!

[Robin]

This looks incredibly amazing! I hope you'll make the £7,500 in time. In the mean time, I've contributed a small amount. (Second funder, woo!)

[adnzzzzZ]

This looks REALLY impressive, indeed. The first thing I thought about when I saw the game and that you could build your own spells was Path of Exile. That game has a really interesting passive skill tree (which kinda looks like your main game) and a gem based skill system. If your game can get even close to how awesome that is on PoE it will be a pretty great experience!

Good luck!

[MZ|One]

Thanks to you both, I appreciate it, and I especially appreciate the contribution, it particularly helps this early on! PoE does looks awesome – I'll make sure to check it out!

[MZ|One]

We have a short 'press release' that we distribute to people who run websites, but I think it can be nice to look at even to everybody else!

[MZ|One]

There's a playable demo now! Check it out – I am really interested in what you think! I hope you'll be able to pick it up – please always hover over the question marks that you can see at the bottom side of the screen, which try to explain what you need to do. So, I'll only give out two instructions:

1] Do read what's on the question marks.
2] Remember to click on the little dots as well – that's how you collect Essence.

Download on DropBox:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/59488139/nether ... ve/nw.love

Hope you'll have fun! If you'll get stuck somewhere, please let me know, so that I can make sure that it will not happen to other players as well.

[MarekkPie]

I find it a bit funky that you're including art from games that "inspired" Netherworld in your press release. Someone who just gives a cursory glance might assume that the people behind those games have some investment in this. Do you have their permission to use the artwork in advertisements for your game?

[Robin]

There's a playable demo now!

Unfortunately, it's not quite playable: every time, right when I start it, I get the following error:

Code: Select all

Error: world.lua:1380: bad argument #1 to 'lines' (C:/Martin/nw/worlds/world.data: No such file or directory)
stack traceback:
	[C]: in function 'lines'
	world.lua:1380: in function 'loadFromFile'
	world.lua:30: in function 'init'
	world.lua:17: in function 'new'
	main.lua:94: in function 'init'
	main.lua:86: in function 'load'
	[string "boot.lua"]:378: in function <[string "boot.lua"]:373>
	[C]: in function 'xpcall'

My guess is you need to add some setup code for when the game is run the first time (creating directories and files and whatnot).

[MZ|One]

Ooops, my mistake – hopefully it should work now. I accidentally left one address in that was not relative to the .love home dir, so that's what broke it.

That didn't cross my mind, about the artwork in the PR – I just wanted people to be able to relate the concept to other games that they possibly know, but I think that you're right. I actually did not send this to too many people, so I'll take it out before I send it to the others.

[Robin]

Ooops, my mistake – hopefully it should work now. I accidentally left one address in that was not relative to the .love home dir, so that's what broke it.

Neato! I finished the demo, and it's really cool. It was rather slow for me, but it might have been better if I didn't have all those other programs open at the same time...

Also, I hope you'll put in an in-game menu in the finished game, so you can save it and load another game, for example. Or quit it.