Fundamental Gameplay

In this post I describe some of the fundamental gameplay aspects of TGGW. The combat system, the magic system and the recovery system.

The Combat System

TGGW implements a very simple combat system. There is melee combat and ranged combat. Melee works as common in roguelikes: bump into the enemy to attack it. The action is resolved in a very simple manner: your melee attribute is compared to the enemies block attribute to determine the chance to hit (simplified formula: 50 + 10(‘yourmelee’ – ‘enemyblock’)%). If you hit you make a constant damage/effect that is determined by your wielded weapon (possibly altered by the enemies armour attribute and resists).

Ranged combat is also simple, you press a key to enter target mode, you then select your target (the target cursor will turn blue if you are close enough to shoot it) and hit space. This will fire your equipped ammunition at your target. In this case the percent to hit is determined only by your missile attribute and the distance you are from your enemy (simplified formula: 50 + 10(missile – distance)%). The damage/effect is determined by your equipped ammunition.

The Magic System

The magic system is based on magic wands. Whenever you find a magic wand you can use its magic. Every wand has a mana cost, and you can use any wand as long as you have the necessary amount of mana. Magic has several benefits: all magic always hits (you cannot fail or miss your target) and works at unlimited distances as long as you can see your target. For this reason magic is very powerful. However, in order be able to use magic efficiently you will have to find magic wands, equipment that increases your mana as well as items to restore mana.

Health and Recovery

I have always slightly disliked the idea of automatic HP recovery in games, it leads to waiting or other boring game play styles. Games like Castlevania and Incursion does not recover HP automatically, it has either to be replenished by (rare) healing potions or by a checkpoint/resting. TGGW adapts this model inspired by Castlevania and Incursion.

Anything that happens to your character, be it damage, poisoning, confusion, or something positive like detection, boosted attributes etc, will last until you actively choose to rest. When you rest your character is “reset”: you recover HP and mana and all your temporary effects (good as bad) are removed. In order to rest you have to be alone (no monsters in sight) and you have to consume food. This means that the amount of food you have puts a limit on how much you can rest. Food is a quite scarce resource in the dungeon so you have to carefully plan your rests.