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7DRL Challenge 2019

Hosted by Slashie, Darren Grey, jmlait · #7drl
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A jam submission

Precious MetalView game page

The Ihoin have a lot of gold they're not using. Take it from them and pay off your loans.
Submitted by thp — 10 hours, 22 minutes before the deadline
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Precious Metal's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Roguelikeness#14.0004.000
Scope#263.0003.000
Completeness#273.3333.333
Aesthetics#503.0003.000
Fun#582.6672.667
Overall#613.0563.056
Innovation#832.3332.333

Ranked from 3 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

  • Strange game. You must explore several space stations that have nothing but enemies. No loot, no equipment to find. Enemies do not drop anything. But you cannot skip these stations, without leveling enemies on more dangerous stations will instantly kill you. Kills are trivial, do not require any skill or thought. Bash with melee weapon if you have one, or shoot with ranged. And all of a sudden on next station you find a stash with precious metal that instantly covers your debt... There is no risk/reward tradeoff. Some juggling with damage types was planned, but probably not impemented. Technically it's a roguelike. But very boring one.

  • A cool little game, to be sure! I liked the use of guns in this, it made me much more careful in how I played. The game was a bit too easy after I got powerful items around level 2 or 3. I laughed at how there was basically nothing of worth, until stumbling across an entire room full of gold. Having a ship to travel to another planets was interesting, too.

  • Sometimes you spawn with great items, sometimes you don't. Just like Rogue! I like the back story a lot. The levels are full of enemies to kill, but seemed like there wasn't very much loot to carry back to the ship. Looks like I'll be in debt forever!

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Comments

VerdagonJam JudgeSubmitted5 years ago (1 edit)

Loved the game! You did a really nice job with this. The overall feel of the game was really on-point. I especially liked the crosshairs and the starry background. Do you make any other games? Are you planning on building on this one?

Submitted
Incendian Falls
Reply
thpDeveloper5 years ago

Thanks! I'm glad you liked it. I definitely plan on building it out a lot more. There's a lot of stuff that didn't make it into the 7DRL that I still want to get in there.

The only other stuff I've put out there for public consumption is other 7DRLs. All of them need to be updated at least as badly as Precious Metal does, though, and my 7drl from last year here on itch turned out pretty jank, I don't know that I can really recommend it. You can try out Cambium though, which is a bit finicky about running but quite playable and a fun little game if you can get it running on your system.

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patrickdavisonJam JudgeSubmitted5 years ago

This game has a lot of charming touches in its opening moments. Starting with a big "in debt" tracker is hilarious. And going around your ship, opening lockers, and using your navigation computer is great fun. I do think there are some real balance issues -- my second play through I had a sword and armor that seemed to make me invincible to anything encountered on the first 2 planets -- I reached level 4 without really thinking about it.

The biggest issue for me is that the maps I played through felt both large and empty. I didn't ever discover any objects in the world besides doors and enemies. At the very least, it would be neat if you had to track down items to "unlock" future locations from your nav. computer, rather them simply add on automatically.

Submitted
Ellipsis
Reply
thpDeveloper5 years ago

I'm glad you like it! I pretty much agree with all your criticisms, but on balance I am pretty happy with how it turned out.

My original plan for the game involved lots more work on map generation, I've got several different planned map types in my notes. And I wanted the discovery of new areas to work something like what you describe, hunting for clues that would point you towards the next level(s). But I spent so much time ironing bugs out of the sprawling map system and ship movement code that I just didn't have the time to implement any additional kinds of area or even flesh out that basic "space station" type any further with details like furniture and so on.

The same time sink meant that a lot of the numerical balance of the game never got done, so you're right that it can be pretty swingy based on what ship you get and whether your lockers randomly have good stuff in them. I tried to mitigate that a little bit by having the different ships guarantee certain items and randomize others, so there's some consistency in the initial loadout but you might get lucky and get a cool thing.

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patrickdavisonJam JudgeSubmitted5 years ago

That makes sense -- scope is always a real killer during jams. Would you consider adding some type of "fuel" resource to your planet locations? that could be a nice analogue to a "hunger clock" you NEED to stay at each planet long enough to find enough fuel to leave...or you could push your luck to keep looking for valuables...if you're going to keep plugging away at this version, that is. Cheers!

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thpDeveloper5 years ago

I'm definitely still plugging away at the game, since it turned out unexpectedly fun and I feel like it still has a lot of potential as a game with just a little more stuff added. I was thinking you'd search the alien computers for references to other places to raid, but I also kind of like your fuel idea-- I already kind of have fuel represented in the game, since you may have noticed that your debt jumps up a couple hundred bucks every time you fly to a new location, so it wouldn't be out of the way to add an explicit fuel collection minigame.

I'll probably release updates separately from this version, though-- I prefer to keep the 7DRL version as-is, aside from fixes for actual game-breaking bugs that crop up (like the crash bug I fixed already, or the one that made it impossible to win because I flipped a greater-than sign). As for the updated version, I'll probably want to publish it through my own site, anyway, for functionality's sake-- the current version attempts to post your scores to my scoreboard server, for example, but running within itch.io's ssl page means that the browser sees the submission as an XSS attack and prohibits it. (There went an hour or two of the jam spent writing the scoreboard server, too.) When I do release a version with new content and balance fixes and the like, I'll make sure to put a link to it on the main game page.

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