Honour - a new score system

In the jam version of the game, the run time was the only stat tracked by the game and the only one that mattered. Now with the game expanded so much, I want to reward players for being accurate and playing on higher difficulties. 

The new equation takes accuracy, WPM, and total (correct) characters typed into account as well as run time. This aggregate score system is called honour. For now it's just a number on the results screen, but I have many ideas about expanding this.

As you can also see, cells now show their coordinates when emptied. This leads into a planned navigation update.

GoY v0.1.2: Get better at typing!

This small update focuses on the typing aspect of Grid of Yendor, and prepares for future releases with behind-the-scenes refactors.

• Added WPM and accuracy measurements/display
• Added honour - an aggregate score system based on WPM, accuracy, completion time, and characters typed
• Results screen shows more stats
• Cells show their coordinates when emptied

I'm planning to expand many of these features in the future, but for the next week I'll be taking a break from development to focus on real life. Thanks for all the feedback from the community, which has been a great help in finding bugs and expanding the game.

I took a break from programming, but that doesn't mean I stopped working!

Promo art has always been a weak point in my games. Mechanics don't matter if no one plays it. I'm redoing all the art on the game page (especially the cover) to make new players click that download button.

This was the old icon. It shows the name of the game but not much else. It's better than nothing, but it's uninteresting and won't attract players.

And here's the new one. It's a bit more complex, but it's still recognisable and shows the core game mechanic. Much nicer!

I also worked on BGM by changing some of my old tracks to fit the game. This is still in progress, but once I'm done there will be more variety than the single looping track in game right now.

I've mentioned elements before as a way to improve variety, but they haven't received any attention since. I did make some structural changes beforehand to make implementing them easier, but I was more focused on modifiers and wards, which were simpler to implement and explain to new players. I was also worried they would find elements too complex and quit the game. But now that the other features are done, I figured I'd get back to it.

Here are the (semi-)finalised list of primary elements and their effects:

• Fire: damage increase by one each attack (Implemented)
• Water: cell switches state from unfrozen to frozen (and vice versa) every attack. Invulnerable when frozen. (Implemented)
• Leaf: cell regenerates a character every two attacks (Inplemented)
• Dark: cell darkens making text hard to see (not sure about precise values/patterns yet)
• Lightning: casts a ward-piercing double-damage bolt every three attacks

These primary elements can also combine. I won't list them here, but that makes a total of 15 elements, which makes gameplay much more interesting, and less about typing speed as it's about choosing which enemies to fight.

As you can see the effects all depend on the number of attacks, and not an objective time unit. It did make implementing a bit easier, but it was primarily a design choice to make speed adjectives impact elemental effects, which adds dynamic complexity to the game.

There's still a lot of work to do adding animations and icons to properly show what the effects are, and I'll have to change the tutorial to include an explanation of elements.

Also added "drunk" and "chaotic" modifiers for enemies, which both randomise attack speed. I'm still working on the new cover for the game as well.

Updated the cover image to something much more interesting. I might retouch it before release but it's done for now. Also, all five elements are now functional.

Unrelated, but the game had a spike of views and plays in the last few days ;) It's even close to the top of "popular" for the dungeon crawler category now. Not sure if that's the algorithm pushing it up or a staff member adding it to some kind of verified list. But hey, it's nice no matter why.

OMG I loved it! It was a genius idea to take spreadsheet navigation to exploring dungeon type of game

Keep up the good work!

Currently the only way to discover the level exit is to enter an adjacent cell. This is fine on smaller levels, but searching for exits gets frustrating as level size and difficulty increases. With that in mind I decided to add two new cell types to the game:

These are the navigation cells, and they solve the problem by hinting where the exit is. Inscriptions reveal the exit’s row or column number, and signposts point to it (but don’t show distance). I think there’s great potential for dynamic gameplay here, and the skill ceiling for using these cells to get to the exit faster is very high.

Some situations in larger levels:

• A player finds a signpost which points back towards where they came from. They find the exit is just out of sight from where they’ve explored, saving precious seconds.
• A skilled player finds an inscription and a signpost. With this info, they work out the coordinates of the exit and are out of the level in less than a minute.

Movement should be less monotonous now, because a quick run doesn’t just rely on typing fast but also on using these hints well. To compensate, the average distance to the exit has been increased.

Elements are a great addition to the game, but their effects aren’t obvious, especially when the player is focused on fighting. I realised I had to show what they did in a simple way. I decided to use an icon approach with simple animations. Designing the icons and animating them took time, but it was worth it in terms of clarity and simplicity.

Here are the five element icons. I went for a simple look emphasising diagonal lines to fit the game’s style.

And here’s how they look in actual gameplay:

Cells can have multiple elements at once, and the icon system represents that as well.

I’m hoping to release this update next week, so fingers crossed that it’s happening.

The v0.2 update is finally out after more than a month of development! Really big milestone for the game, as it's now (somewhat) of a complete product.

The full release notes are here, but to summarise:

• 5 elements which which make enemies stronger, for that extra challenge!
• Signposts and inscriptions to guide you to the exit
• A new tutorial system for new player

Check it out!

Took a break from development and focused on the new player experience. I changed some potentially confusing labels and polished some visuals.

I’m really not sure if I should keep making web builds for the game. Obviously, browser games have less resources and can’t perform as well as native executables. The audio quality is worse and there’s input lag, to name two obvious issues. I’ve also had reports of the browser build lagging (which should make people download, but the stats show they don’t :&).

Despite the bolded disclaimer to download, the game has 10x browser plays compared to downloads, and many hits are from play-in-browser searches (so people wouldn’t even have found my game if I didn’t have a web build). I don’t know if I should let more people play a worse version of the game (which they do enjoy however judging by the reviews) or force them to download and get the best of what I made (but then some people won’t discover/play my game at all). Won’t get rid of the web build for now but if people stop enjoying it I’ll rethink if it really needs to be there.