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A jam submission

The Typist's Quest (7DRL)View game page

7DRL game jam enrty
Submitted by Nathan — 2 days, 4 hours before the deadline
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The Typist's Quest (7DRL)'s itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Overall#593.6253.625
Roguelikeness#793.5003.500

Ranked from 8 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Successful or Incomplete?

Success

Did development of the game take place during the 7DRL Challenge week?

Yes

Is your game a roguelike or a roguelite?

Yes

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Comments

Submitted (3 edits)

Really neat game! I feel like I've seen a lot of letter based games for some reason, but this still has it's own ideas that work well. I like how the letters you collect always correspond to actual words. Stuff like the enemies giving you all the letters from their names and attacks, and how the chests give you letters in the form of names of items. I also appreciate you were committed enough to the typing idea to also use it for menus and navigation. It makes the game feel very cohesive.

The idea of damage based on the rarity is interesting and works well most of the time. Sometimes it's a bit unbalanced though. I started one run with some common word (CRUSH maybe?) and felt like I never had enough damage to do anything. The next time I started with SLAY, picked up a Y upgrade, then cruised through the game one-shotting most enemies.

Speaking of upgrades, I feel that could've been communicated a bit clearer. I assume you add the damage/rarity for each letter, and upgraded letters are counted twice. This leads to confusing scenarios where sometimes an upgrade massively boosts a word, and other times does barely anything. Maybe the ability interface could show how the damage for a word is made up e.g. SLAY(100) = S(10) + L(10) + A(5) + Y(75).

Regardless, this is still a very well made game with a clever concept!

Submitted(+1)

It doesn't seem very roguelike to me. The separate combat screens feel more like a traditional rpg. I think the game play is interesting but a little unusual. A typing game generally has a time element which your game does not (or at least I didn't notice it). It could be a spelling game but then you would expect a penalty for mistakes. Your game could certainly do it's own thing but personally I don't find it captivating at the moment.

Developer

Thanks for your comment!

Regarding your first statement, I think we may have different definitions of what a roguelike is (according to your definition, Slay the Spire is a traditional RPG too). The criterias I used are 1. Proceduraly generated dungeons, 2. Permanent death, 3. Turn-based, and 4. The player has to manage his resources to survive.

I agree with you regarding the typing part, I had a hard time balancing everything and decided not to add additional penalties when making mistakes or taking too much time!

Thanks for playing :)

Submitted

I've never played Slay the Spire but I know of it and I know people have called it roguelike. I took a look at the video and you are certainly right. It doesn't look that much like a roguelike to me. I violated your definition of roguelike with mine being real time so that's ok.

Submitted

Playstation gave Slay the Spire as one of the monthly games. Having played it, it does feel more like a roguelike than the Typist's Quest to me. Because you keep getting cards and other stuff, every run feels really different. I didn't get that feeling from Typist's Quest. Maybe I didn't play it enough to see that in your game.

Submitted

Nice job! The letters-as-resources idea seems interesting, but in my short playtime I didn't really notice it become something I  had to keep in mind. Movement is a bit slow with having to type the direction each time and then wait for the animation, maybe increasing animation speed during movement / enemy turns could help there. Have you thought about a penalty for mis-typing? As far as I could tell there wasn't a penalty for mistyping, other than a little wasted time.

Developer

Thank you for your comment! I completely agree with the animation speed, I should have tweaked that a bit more :p

I thought about penalties, but decided to not include them. I aimed for a slow strategy game more than a skill-based system, so it's true that the "typing" tag may not be the best. I also struggled a bit when balancing the reserves you have when the game starts, and it's true that you only feel the necessity of sparing some letters by the end of the game.

Thanks for giving it a try!