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A jam submission

Pogue Thacker, Rogue HackerView game page

A (stickless) twin-stick shooter about self-modification. Made for the 2021 7DRL Challenge.
Submitted by ZapJackson (@zapjackson) — 1 day, 15 hours before the deadline
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Pogue Thacker, Rogue Hacker's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Completeness#14.0004.000
Fun#63.6673.667
Innovation#103.6673.667
Scope#153.3333.333
Aesthetics#173.6673.667
Traditional Roguelikeness#1073.0003.000

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.

  • Completeness: It's fully implemented. The balance is a bit wacky but in that feels intentional, because of how the upgrade system works. Aesthetics: Great! The art's good, the music fits well with the themes, and the controls are pretty intuitive. Fun: I beat it three times, going through just to try new builds, so I had a ton of fun with it. The gameplay's pretty snappy and the unique build system is fun to experiment with. Highly recommend. Innovation: Mostly standard, except for the very interesting build system. You select the stats you want to raise/lower by navigating a grid via drops. It's a cool mechanic. Scope: It has a very reasonable scope. Traditional Roguelikeness: Well, it's real-time, but otherwise pretty trad-roguelike-y.
  • This is a massive, really fun game! The core is engaging; plus there are tons of enemies and stats and levels and loadouts. It took me a while to figure out what the number grid represented, but eventually I figured out how to connect the event log, the flashing grid numbers, and what was going on in the main play area. I like how the timed-shooting block works; you can trigger it by passing any of the four compass directions. I don't have much of anything to complain about; I wish I had an indication of when my shot was ready, and I don't feel like there's a lot of skill involved in using the arrow-key and plus/minus pickups, but maybe I'm missing something. I'll likely be playing this quite a bit more.
  • There is a lot going on here, many characters to choose from... unlockable characters? Although it's more of a shooter with a hacking game mechanic (that I didn't fully understand) and very much not a roguelike. But it is pretty fun.

Successful or Incomplete?
1

Did development of the game take place during the 7DRL Challenge week. (If not, please don't submit your game)
Yes

Do you consciously consider your game a roguelike/roguelite? (If not, please don't submit your game)
Yes

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Comments

(+1)

I liked this a lot, it was fun and challenging but simple on the surface, and then I finally figured out the grid mechanic and was able to pretty much punch through the game with no effort. Still fun tho! I don't know if this is intended, but I wanted to note that in the safe server corridors, you can enter a room and then bomb your way out to get the bonuses from all the rooms. Also, due to the fact that enemies freeze at a certain distance, zoom is a little OP. I am very bad at roguelikes usually but I liked these. The aesthetic was fun. I've unlocked all of the loadouts except the right middle, which remains a mystery, and don't know how I unlocked the right top. I also have no idea what some of the grid numbers are. Cool concept! 9/10

Submitted (1 edit)

Well this is just incredibly charming. I'm not sure I 100% understand the score/hp(??) grid at the top left, but I love the idea of manipulating it with the arrows in-level. That's a solid enough 7drl concept honestly, even before the delightful theme and character art (those eyes!!), music, background imagery, etc come into play. Great job!

(+1)

Some people are saying that this game won’t run in Chrome because of some kind of third-party cookie nonsense. I’m not setting any cookies, so I don’t know what this is all about.

I can explain: Chrome/Chromium only talks about cookies, but it actually means cookies and local storage. Your game doesn’t use cookies, but it seems to use local storage from a 3rd-party domain inside a frame. Chrome/Chromium rejects that as it would have been a 3rd-party cookie, probably because it could be used in the same way.

Developer

Oh, huh, thank you!  All I'm storing is character unlocks and high scores across sessions.  Do you happen to know if there's a way to do this that won't trigger this?

(2 edits)

Not sure what of this is most suitable:

  • If there’s no server backend needed, maybe hosting the part which uses local storage somewhere under the itch.io domain?
  • Not using a frame but just a link to the game so that the URL bar shows v6p9d9t4.ssl.hwcdn.net.
  • Instructing the Chrome/Chromium users to allow 3rd-party “cookies” (and hence also 3rd-party local storage) for exactly and only the site v6p9d9t4.ssl.hwcdn.net by doing the following:
    • Click on “Run game”.
    • Click on the lock in the URL bar.
    • Choose “Cookies”.
    • Switch to the “Blocked” tab.
    • Select the v6p9d9t4.ssl.hwcdn.net entry. (This entry doesn’t show up before you have clicked on “Run game” at least once.)
    • Click the “Allow” button.
    • Click on “Reload”.
    • Click on “Run game” again. Should work this time.

The latter is how I got it running with Chromium.

EDIT: Another possibility is to just directly open https://v6p9d9t4.ssl.hwcdn.net/html/3493339/pogue%20(1)/index.html

I very much like this game, though I haven't found out yet why I sometimes explode when hitting a "plus" box.

Could you be rolling over your HP to 0?

(+1)

It is good, but I do not get the numbers on the top left corner.

Experimenting with those values, and finding out what they mean is a huge part of the fun of the game

(+2)

I had a ton of fun with this one so far: It gives you a lot of freedom to learn about the mechanics, but without being so opaque that you have to stumble forever. There's a very classical feel to it in terms of both roguelike mechanics and old-school... I'm not sure if there's a word for them. Robotron-esques? Space Dungeons? It's got both genres down pat in a compact package, and while I don't have every unlock at time of commenting (still missing two unknown classes) I like the game a lot.