itch.io

Forge of the Elements  Beta 1.6 playtest

Hey all! I’ve been continuing work on my turn-based fantasy roguelike, resurrected from a project I abandoned about 20 years ago. Choose a race and class, descend through 25 floors, and combine elemental motes at forges to shape your equipment and magic. The full run is playable in your browser on desktop or mobile.

Beta 1.6 brings a broad art pass, expanded animations for all player characters, dedicated Tourist sprites, and lots of new rooms and discoveries. I’ve also revisited early and late-game balance and added map travel to make returning to familiar places easier.

I’m a longtime roguelike player and a data scientist who regularly uses AI for coding and research. This project also uses AI-generated artwork and music. My original goal was to make something my kids and I could play on a phone or tablet, and player feedback has helped it grow.

I’d especially appreciate feedback on:

• Difficulty: Do deaths feel fair, and can you understand what went wrong?
• The forge: Does combining motes make sense, and does it lead to interesting builds?
• Mobile: How do the touch controls, readability and performance feel? Please play in landscape.
• Presentation: Does the art feel cohesive? Any awkward sprites or animations?

If you try it, tell me your race and class, how far you got, and what ended your run!

https://jhffmn82.itch.io/forge-of-the-elements

You can review my game and I'll appreciate you: https://jhffmn82.itch.io/forge-of-the-elements

https://jhffmn82.itch.io/forge-of-the-elements

You can play as both elves and fae in my game.

Are you responding to my posts or what want me to say so you can argue with me? You mentioned declaration of war and now you want my opinion on superior AI intelligence.

Bro, this is a wendys.

Declaration of war? lol. Look there will always be room for old fashioned ways of doing things. I personally think hand churned butter tastes better too. I'm just pointing out that most people will adopt new technology and move on with their lives.

People have lost their minds over this issue. I expect it to die down once products not using AI assistance in code and art become a tiny minority. Let people enjoy their virtue signaling AI purity until no one cares anymore, and block the trolls.

Politics got involved and people are herd animals. They just want an excuse to other and attack other people.

I enjoyed the choose your own story adventure. Decided to go the dark magic route, influence humans, and followed the siren call into the sea where I was consumed by a ruined city. These types of books were always fun as a kid, trying to choose every possible path to find all the endings. 

Greetings all!

Forge of the Elements is a turn based traditional roguelike free to play via browser and mobile also available for download. This is a passion project and I've been encouraged by all the positive feedback I received from players on discord!

https://jhffmn82.itch.io/forge-of-the-elements

The game includes animated sprites, a detailed combat system, open character progression involving 5 starting classes, 5 races and 4 sub races, an elemental infusion system with 6 elements to allow additional spells and equipment effects, and 9 gods who offer additional character progression at the cost of restrictions to play.

There are 25 levels and 6 side branches, ranging from your basic dungeon, the under dark, the elemental planes, and the void to face the legions of chaos.

I just dropped beta version 1.5.

Major features include:

• Minimized user interface for PC and mobile
• Animated portrait art for all 16 race and gender combinations.
• Special Room redesign and additional interactables.
• Puzzle room revamp
• Rare map events
• New enemies and new abilities for existing enemies
• More engaging and difficult encounters in the early biomes
• A rework of spell animations and persistent ground effects

After coding for many years, I have discovered that the English language is in fact, the best programming language. I don't think I will be stopping, thank you.

In my humble experience, AI tends to make code longer with each pass and tends to make over defensive and verbose code. I find AI written code unreadable. But I can also feed AI written code into AI and have it rebuild the codebase to be human readable. So it's kind of a wash.  One problem with bigger projects is AI tends to iteratively make the same code longer and longer and longer and difficult to maintain.  But you want to know the best way to manage that? Also AI.

Here is the deal. I think we are in a new era. You can let people complain or make up fake ethical dilemmas to virtue signal their avoidance of AI. But it isn't going anywhere and every game going forward will be using it to generate code whether they tell you or not.

But the real important thing is it's more fun to build with AI. You can do more and do it faster and that lets you be creative.

I have been writing code for 20 years. Even on govt projects we use AI assisted code anymore. Ignore the  community and don't feel bad about programming at a higher level of abstraction. Online communities just like to engage in gatekeeping and bully people. Go have fun and use any tools you want.

Hey, I just wanted to give my feedback!

I thought the sound and visuals were very well done in game. The near misses were done well. Aesthetically the game is pleasing and the controls felt fluid.

I think you have a good concept and here are my suggestions, take it with a grain of salt.

1) I think you should break the game into sections with a clear objective. ie "Collect 10 cores before you crash!" This also opens you to different types of objectives.

2) I think the controls should listed more prominently (and I think you should also allow for keyboard controls.

3) I think you should think about visual hierarchy. Right now the object you avoid are more visually prominent. They have more glow and are larger. However, the powerups and collectables are muted and fade into the background. I would maybe tone down the glow from the objects you want to avoid, and draw the player's attention to the power ups and cores. 

4) Also, like many of the players in the comments I was expecting this to a shooter and was trying to figure out how to shoot. It's great that it isn't! But I wasn't sure what I was trying to do. Even if it's something like "Survive and Collect as many cores as you can before you crash!" Once I figured out how to collect 10 cores, I had a message "ready for warp" i think, but I couldn't find out how to warp. I'm assuming there is not a way to and you just survive as long as you can.

Anyway, I think you did some really great things and let me know the next time there is an update. I'd love to see how far you take this concept.

Thanks for the feedback, there is a link in the thread to download it. I should probably add some instructions, but if you follow the link you can open in your browser, from either chrome or safari install it as a web app. Then you can play it offline =)  I'll swing by your game this afternoon.

I hope it isn't asking to much to have you try again? I just made a massive performance patch. It should be playable in any browser.

And also updated some of the sprites. =)

Hey, so after I execute the command you mentioned, "npx -y @alipay/agent-payment@latest install", download the 9.3 kb skill.md, feed it to my claude agent, and give it the instruction "I have authorized installing dependencies and initiating purchase" in Chinese am I good to go?

Let me know if you need my social security number and mother's maiden name as well.

Dang, you made it all the way to floor 25 on your first go?

yeah, absolutely, I will try it out tomorrow

Thanks for trying it, and sorry about that! Were you playing in the browser or through the itch desktop app? The app downloads the whole game first (it's big right now, around 170 MB, which I'm cutting down in the next patch). If it was the app, try the Play button on the page in Chrome or Firefox instead. It streams in and starts much faster. If it was in the browser, can you tell me what device and browser you're on?

Absolutely, I will give it a good go tomorrow and post a review in comments for your game. I just pushed a beta update 1.3. It might be a lot if you aren't familiar with roguelikes. It isn't quite the beast DCSS or ToME 4 is, but it gets very crunchy. That said, roll up a dwarf fighter, spend your attribute points on level up, and hit things and you will be ok. Even better if you try it out on mobile. It's designed to run on mobile, but the only devices i have on hand are a pixel 9, Lenovo tablet, and ipad mini 4 to test it on.  

Hey everyone.

I built a roguelike. It has animated sprites, plays in a browser. You can download it and play it offline. You can also play it on android and phones mobile devices. Thought I've only tested it fixed number of devices.

Forge of the Elements

I'm a big fan of roguelikes and grew up playing DCSS and ToME 4. But, I tend to prefer shorter, more casual roguelikes.

I wanted to build something a bit like Shattered PD for my kids to play. So far they really like it, though they struggle with getting past the second biome. I'd say the game is slightly harder than pixel dungeon, but much more forgiving than a more hardcore game. Right now there are 5 races, 4 subraces, 5 classes, 6 elemental affinity paths, and 9 gods. Progression is open ended. Abilities unlock as you increase stats, affinity in an element, or increase piety with a God. You can also infuse your mainhand, offhand, and armor with an element and the effects become more powerful as you gain affinity. Spells and Abilities also tend to increase via stats, spell power, divine power (from items), increasing affinity (elemental spells), and piety rank (prayers) with your god. 

There are currently 50 active powers ( 3 spells per element, 2 prayers per god, and a few starting abilities) and 89 passives.

Oh and there is also crafting. You can craft a variety of magic sigils, enchant your equipment, and improve your equipment. There is even a whole god dedicated to the forge.

The game is feature complete. I'm just squashing bugs and balancing the game... there is a lot.

Give it a try! If you want a suggestion, roll a human cleric of Chad the Unclad and punch everything to death in your underwear.

Forge of the Elements

Hi everyone! I’ve been building Forge of the Elements, a turn-based fantasy roguelike, and Beta 1.2 is now available on itch.io.

Explore 25 floors across five biomes, from the Dungeon to the floating islands of the Realm of Chaos. Choose your race and class, gather six kinds of elemental motes, and craft and enchant equipment to shape your build. You can also follow gods whose powers and restrictions change how you play.

The campaign now includes the final encounter and a complete ending at the Forge of the Elements.

It’s free to play in your browser on PC and mobile, with installation for offline play available through the standalone site linked on the page.

I’d appreciate feedback on difficulty, character builds, readability, and controls. If you give it a try, let me know how far you get!

Play Forge of the Elements

Hi everyone! I’ve been building Forge of the Elements, a turn-based fantasy roguelike, and Beta 1.2 is now available on itch.io.'=

Play Forge of the Elements

Explore 25 floors across five biomes, from the Dungeon to the floating islands of the Realm of Chaos. Choose your race and class, gather six kinds of elemental motes, and craft and enchant equipment to shape your build. You can also follow gods whose powers and restrictions change how you play.

The campaign now includes the final encounter and a complete ending at the Forge of the Elements.

It’s free to play in your browser on PC and mobile, with installation for offline play available through the standalone site linked on the page.

I’d appreciate feedback on difficulty, character builds, readability, and controls. If you give it a try, let me know how far you get!

Hi everyone! I’ve been building Forge of the Elements, a turn-based fantasy roguelike, and Beta 1.2 is now available on itch.io.'=

Play Forge of the Elements

Explore 25 floors across five biomes, from the Dungeon to the floating islands of the Realm of Chaos. Choose your race and class, gather six kinds of elemental motes, and craft and enchant equipment to shape your build. You can also follow gods whose powers and restrictions change how you play.

The campaign now includes the final encounter and a complete ending at the Forge of the Elements.

It’s free to play in your browser on PC and mobile, with installation for offline play available through the standalone site linked on the page.

I’d appreciate feedback on difficulty, character builds, readability, and controls. If you give it a try, let me know how far you get!