itch.io

Hmm interesting, then could be the gamepad, its a D-Pad (not thumb stick), maybe it cant register up+left at the same time.  

The up/down during jump thing tho would be awesome, I'm sure that will save me a good number of deaths. 

The only thing stopping this from being absolute perfection is the controls. Pushing up stops you in your tracks - and its extremely difficult to avoid that happening while jumping around or trying to outmaneuver the enemies. ESPECIALLY with a gamepad.

• Trying to move to escape enemies and coincidentally nudged up? Complete stop. Dead.
• Trying to jump over something but touched up? Drop like a brick into the enemy. Dead.
• Trying to use the Mage's levitate but brushed up? Not levitating anymore! Dead.

What would seem to eliminate this would be:

• Allow looking up while moving without it stopping you.
• Disable looking up while jumping/levitating (you can't attack while jumping anyway so it serves no purpose except to make you drop and get killed).
• Be able to jump at any point of attack animation (like you can with teleport). 
• Being able to jump much earlier at end of teleport animation. 

Being able to shoot while moving and jumping would be awesome, but I appreciate the game has probably been designed around this so it might unbalanced the game.

Update: beat that map and got to map 8, with what seemed to be unbeatable:

• Start as far away from enemy as possible.
• Hope to get one builder + farm in your hand, and place them in the corner
• place other farms when possible
• Ideally first place archers next to your boss, then drop pawns in front of archers if energy permits. 
• Drop pawns until you have at least 2 farms then start dropping better units
• Focus on picking off enemy archer/mages with your archers (kills them in one shot), and horses (since they can run right through everything and murder your leader) 
• Once you have decimated most of the opponents' ranged units and have a full army on the table, slowly push towards them creating a creeping wave of death. At this point you would have maxed out energy so can easily replace lost units instantly.
• The third general is by far the best, most HP and his special move affects ALL units. 
• As soon as in range, use the third general's special, and focus on enemy leader, they'll drop in 2-3 attacks and battle won!

Nothing could stop me, didnt need fireball or other magic (even when I put them in my deck they never appeared in my hand anyway...do they only appear if you have the magic-user general?)

That is... UNTIL I encountered a crippling bug - in map 8 suddenly archers could no longer attack (attack was always greyed out). Melee units could attack for a few more turns but then also fell victim to the no attack curse. 

Great concept, I think there's lots of potential here! Love the graphics and especially the darker colour palette. Look forward to seeing how it develops.  

Some thoughts which I hope are helpful:

• You click a unit, then act or move, then have to re-select them to get the action panel (atk) to appear, it could be a smoother flow if actions automatically appeared after moving?
• Nice to have: 
  • Right-click to cancel move/action, 
  • Confirmation prompt before it lets you attack your units. (I had arched selected, clicked attack, saw enemy was just outside his attack range, so clicked the other archer intending to switch to him - instead my archer killed my own unit!)
  • left-click on enemies to see their movement, tool tips on abilities to show what they do (I know you can right click on the unit but tooltip would still be nice and less diversions), 
  • ability to skip dialogue/tutorials (eg when you lose and replay a map)

• Nice: getting new cards after battles that promise new strategic options (like wall, farm etc) was cool.
  • Unfortunately, the fortress and walls did not seem worth the cost - walls were always destroyed immediately, and the fortress in two turns. Maybe walls could be cheaper and/or more HP, and fortress could be better if it had more HP and healed units, maybe something like 1-2 health per turn? 
• A spike wall could be a good idea for another type of wall, low HP but dmgs enemies who attack it, creating strategic options.
• Maybe already in the game later but an option to repair structures - maybe an ability for the builder?
• Positioning - since units don't block movement the enemy just runs straight through my tougher units to archer/builders and one-shots them. Could be more strategic with units light knights having zones of control or at least enemy units not being able to walk through opposing units?

The only other thing is more subjective - but with card-based games the RNG might end you up in situations where all cards req. a builder but I had no builders.

Could not beat map 3 after 4 tries - I never got the right cards at the start or got stuck like above. I had plenty of archer, pawn and knights in my deck, but I also tried a round with only units and no structures in my deck to avoid getting stuck but energy was coming in too slow to really fight back fast enough.

I know you can "discard hand" but it didn't feel efficient except in extreme cases. Maybe an option to discard a single card and get +1 energy would be a nice balancer here? 

Looking forward to seeing it develop!

Love the concept! but getting regular crashes in the tutorial :( 

After a few attempts, where it consistently happened in one battle, I think it might be to do with certain units the enemy hero has. 

If I cast transform on them the crash doesn't occur but if I don't, it occurs every time. When I mouse over the particular units in the victory screen, they appear to have no name in the tool tip:

Also, no matter how many times I beat the enemy hero, he doesn't disappear and always has 9 of those crash-causing units.

Update: played a normal game, selected the factions to ensure the Horde wasn't on the map. So far, no crashes. Gameplay is great, like a mix of HoMM and Total Warhammer.

Great concept, reminds me of some levels in Alpha Mission II and Cobra Command arcades which had giant motherships you could destory parts of, but allowing the player freedom to tackle it in any order. Very cool.

Finally beat it. Some tips for those like me who found it tough:

• The big eyes which give the power ups - the first one straight ahead in the middle is a good starting point. 
• The bigger the eye, the bigger its bullets - so sometimes "weakening" an eye even if you can't kill it yet can be helpful.
• I maxed out multiple first (I think 3x) then 1x power, then focused on rate with the occasional power, then focused on power. I found 1x speed upgrade was enough.
• Too much speed upgrades can potentially be more dangerous than good given the limited field of view.
• There appears to be enough upgrades to max everything and get some extra shields.
• My favoured route was start in the inner-middle for the first eye then the two eyes in the room, then the first part of the top, then first part of the bottom. 
• I generally avoided the bullets by just flying away completely,  but occasionally it was better to sit still and try to weave through the bullet hell than try to fly away, as that would lead to flying blind and crashing into something.
• The cost of an upgrade for 1x shield is probably not worth it if you take too many hits early on, in such case its better to restart. Only if I was into a decent run did I "waste" upgrades on shields.

Cool game. My only feedback is based on the final point - sacrificing one upgrade for just 1 shield feels a bit costly, especially early on. Perhaps at first "shield x 3", then next time "shield x 2" then the rest "shield x 1" as normal, would make it a better trade off and make early mistakes less dooming?

Just stumbled across this and had a blast. Just like the old classics (but slightly more forgiving). Did a quick write up:

https://newretrogames.wordpress.com/2019/10/02/infested/

Ahhhh thanks! I thought I tried back and front, but apparently not. Now that I knew exactly what the issue was I was able to defeat them and reach the last boss (which kicked my butt). 

I am completely stuck trying to get alien hearts. Even when the alien's shield goes down after 5 attacks (def goes down from  25 to 3), even with exotic gun (dmg: 14) damage is completely blocked. Is this a bug?

Can't wait to play more when it's out again, will do a write up on my blog. (I actually wrote about Nightkeep a while back too!)

Is the demo meant to end once you get to the witch's house? It showed me the scenes about the hero then returned to the world map and nothing more happened.

Glad to see the full game finally out! Played it and what a trip! Unfortunately I could not see the ending after getting to 200% due to a graphical glitch - everything is super zoomed in and I can't navigate properly or see what I am doing. 

Maybe if I saw that it would clear it up but, I have the feeling the ending doesn't end up explaining anything? Is the time loop and what is happening ever actually explained?

Love it! Reminds of when shareware games in the 90s did Christmas versions. 

Been seeing your regular updates, sounds like the game has come a long way. I've been waiting before playing again - any new updates in the near future or is now a good time to jump back into the game?

Wow these are awesome updates! New traps, new class, final boss? Also really cool to see "Holy magic that heals normal character damages undeads."Awesome. 

I hope "Each characters can equip accessories. (Like ring or boots ..)" was encouraged by my feedback :D

Looking forward to playing thru again and trying to reach the final boss

Stumbled across this game in the Itch devlogs, and was surprised how much content is already there. Can't wait for more updates!

Only real problem I encountered was the path-finding of trade wagons, they tended to ignore roads and go off and get stuck in a corner between buildings. I tried setting waypoints but they also paid them no attention.

Judging by the title, the Bronze Age and bronze upgrades will be final era in the game? Or will it later go further e.g. iron and steel?

Wrote an article on my blog: https://newretrogames.wordpress.com/2018/07/16/bronze-age/

Haha, hopefully my blog will bring new challengers.  I don't have much time to manage the blog unfortunately.. it used to get around 1,000 views a week, but probably less now since I rarely update it.. but hopefully you get some downloads out of it!

Awesome, really amazing how you updated the game so fast. Being able to sell items to the shop and increased inventory size are really nice additions.

I have now finally beat the game, and wrote an article on my blog at: https://newretrogames.wordpress.com/2018/06/12/sigma-finite-dungeon/

Hope that it helps more people to find the game!

My final thoughts:

• Classic tactical combat!  Exactly what I was looking for.
• Difficulty felt right, I needed to make good use of all my abilities to survive combats.
• The variety of classes is really good and adds re-playability. 
• There is a really nice variety of skills and spells. 
• It was always exciting to find a Skill Master or Scrolls (which I could use to learn or upgrade spells).

And a few "wishlist" items, if you ever plan to expand the game further:

• There's a nice range of weapons but I didn't find many equipment upgrades and in general equipment didn't add much depth. In my three playthroughs, I tended to find some better equipment on the 2nd or 3rd floor (usually after the boss fight), and after that all the items dropped or in shops were usually worse than my current equipment, until near the end of the game. Maybe more variety of equipment types (e.g. helms, amulets, boots) in addition to weapon and armour would help provide more chances for upgrade options. Also, equipment with more variety of effects (e.g. attributes like strength or dex, some grant skills/spells, or some grant abilities like boots that increase moving +1 distance or archer gloves that increase the range of bow attacks, etc. ) would add more reason to invest in equipment and make strategic choices over equipping your team.

• Since you can now sell items to the shop, to balance things it's probably necessary to lower the amount of gold dropped by enemies / at the end of battle. I ended the game with about 6,000 gold, even after buying every skill and every useful item in shops. 
• Another healing class would be cool, for example the solider could promote to paladin with defensive abilities and heal. 

No need for a double apology, just trying to help! Like I said, enjoying the game very much. Just about to take a work break and play a few battles now...

Found some bugs:

• Summoned a Jelly onto a square that had a coin on it. The jelly didnt appear though, and the game continued as normal for a bit. At some point, the game CTD (crash to desktop, no error msg). Every time I reload, it repeats the last turn before crashing again. My guess is its supposed to be the summoned Jelly's turn but since it couldn't spawn (because the gold was on the square), it bugged out. This also means I can't continue and have to start a new game :(
• One time one of my guys died during a tense battle. I quit the game in rage and reloaded the next day. In the battle, the enemies which killed the guy would attack the dead guys corpse every turn. Interestingly, my characters could also attack the corpse, and get EXP for it. Not sure what happened, but I guess it's something to do with closing the game just as a character dies? 
• When I promote a character, the class promote buttons are still present on the left side, clicking one crashes the game (CTD). E.g. I promoted my "novice archer" to "archer",  and both the novice archer and archer buttons were still visible. I clicked "archer" again and got a CTD.

Other feedback:

• I wouldn't mind more traps and hazards in the levels (maybe more things like water or pits to push enemies into). At present I have not had much opportunities to make use of traps or barrels with the push, drag, etc commands very often.
• Inventory size feels small for a game where you can have 5+ characters. I think having a limited inventory size is good in general, so that you have to choose what to carry and what to drop, but ideally would prefer at least twice the size (maybe through upgrades at the shop)
• On that note, also being able to sell stuff would be really awesome.

All in all, great game. Aside from the top bug, has been an overall smooth experience and have been enjoying immensely. Hope these reports help!

Really like this game. I was writing a long detailed post about my thoughts before accidentally refreshing the page and now its all gone, forever.

So instead now I'll just say its a nice mix of party-based tactical battles with dungeon crawling. 

Is it infinite or is there a final dungeon floor?

Ah I see, so annoying that you have to manually request that, but I guess it makes sense. For what it's worth, I tried marking the file as a false positive and submitting it to AVG also. 

I managed to quickly disable AVG for a couple seconds to load the game then reactivate it (otherwise it automatically deletes the gamefile without giving me any say in the matter). It was tons of fun, and exactly the classic FF5-style job system I'd been craving. Can't wait for more!

This looks awesome, but can't play it as for some reason my antivirus blocks it :(

Guessing it's a false positive - not sure if there's any way to change it?

Even though I couldn't try it out, love the look of the class system,  there really isn't enough classic RPGs with these anymore!

I finally updated the game (my first update broke the game, and I had to go back to the drawing board for a while)! If you have the chance, check it out and would be great to find any other bugs or feedback out.

Unfortunately due to some major code changes, save games won't carry over to the new version... Hopefully that kind of thing won't happen once I shift it out of "prototype" status. 

Thanks for reporting this, and thanks for playing! 

Both these should be fixed now, will hopefully upload the updated version tomorrow.

Post any bugs, errors, issues or other feedback here!

Current known 0.1.9b bugs:

• A bunch of Encyclopedia entries are blank or not yet added; they will be slowly added over time
• Some icons for skills not yet added
• The alternate CSS themes are experimental and aren't perfectly functional yet, some things might look a bit messed up in them

Hey Keyband, good to have you back! I saw you posted a couple games, looking forward to playing them soon!

I think quests will be a good idea, currently the game sort of has quests - when it or the farmer suggests something you should do. Later in the Adventurer/Dungeon side of game I think I will have more formal quests, like rescuing trapped miners from monsters, for example. 

Aside from that I haven't given the sequence problem much thought, I just updated the game with some massively cleaned up code, so from here, I'm gonna go back to brainstorming about the sequence idea and see what I can come up with. 

Thanks for the comment! Glad to see the update brought you back! ;) I am definitely planning on expanding the Workers-side of gameplay in the next bigger update, not only will you get more workers, but they will each have their own stats and skill rankings, and can equip tools. (this is built into the code but not implemented into the gameplay yet)! 

You were right, the Scythe price was displaying wrong - well spotted! Currently the HTML for upgrades is static, something I need to automate in the next update. 

#2 and #3 are not a bugs, per se, just to do with unlocking order. E.g. for Silo, you have to wait til you get the Upgrade Storage Shed upgrade, which unlocks after you explore the Cave. It IS a bit weird to give the Silo upgrade before its possible to afford it, though. 

It raises an interesting design question: I've noticed people tend to max out their resources and get all upgrades before moving on to a new section of the game whenever possible. Then, when they unlock new stuff they already have the resources to buy any new upgrades instantly, which trivialises the importance/impact of the upgrades.  

Ideally, I want a way to introduce new upgrades where the player can't already pay for them without some kind of new planning and work. E.g. when Party Slot is unlocked, you need 1000 wheat. To store that much wheat, though, you need the Upgraded Silo. But, to pay for that, you need 300 wood, so you first need the Upgraded Storage Shed. I think that makes an interesting chain of planning for the player. However, if the player has been maxing out every resource and upgrade as soon as it appears, instead, they can just buy the Party Slot as soon as it appears without much thought, reducing the significance of the upgrade to just a button click. 

Not sure what the best approach to that is though, without forcing it - ideas welcomed!

Thanks, that's valuable help. I didn't know anyone to playtest the game, so this is really useful. 

Hopefully those bugs are fixed now! You were definitely correct re: equipment. I was testing the game I realised it was odd to not be able to equip stuff yet. (I should also add a msg "You crafted a sword, it has been placed in storage" or something to also make that clearer. 

I couldn't figure out hiring bug, though... THAT one is weird. On my local copy of the game, you can hire no problem. But I played through it on Itch and I couldn't hire anyone either (even though it was the exact same version).. very weird. Since it works locally I can't use the debugger unfortunately --- and then it magically started working again for no apparent reason... Hopefully it works on your end too!

If all else fails, a Hard Reset (from the settings menu) often fixes the weirder problems, usually stemming from a change to the objects structures. But that means losing all your hard work progress fighting all those skeletons! I've been trying to avoid resorting to that, but could be a last resort. 

You are absolutely welcome to check back and provide any feedback or input, here in this post or on the game page/comments  Really helps!! Thanks again for putting up with the bugs!

Thank you so much, this is excellent useful feedback! 

Those bugs should definitely not be happening - coins shouldn't have been showing minus signs, and I could craft equipment last time I played. All you need to do is click on the item name.

Luckily I was easily able to replicate and thus fix the bugs. Crafting was easy fix - my last update added a skill check (some items have higher skill req.), but it failed if you have not yet learnt the skill at all (from trying to craft something at least once).  The coin trading was completely borked up somehow, the code there is particularly messy - will need to do a complete rewrite later... but for now it seems to work again! I tested trades in all directions with 1/10 at a time and seemed to all add up. 

The city-building idea isn't in the game yet, sadly, currently there's a small bunch of upgrades for the farm. However, I've definitely still go plans to flesh that side out more soon!

Edit: Had a quick look and the shin megami tensei battle system does look  quite interesting. Looking forward to watching some videos  on it more in-depth later, thanks for the tip!

Postmortem

This was my first time to really try to make a game. It was an old text-based RPG which is inspired by incremental type games! To keep things simple, it was entirely done using just JavaScript and HTML.

Success or Failure?

The game is more of a prototype. The incremental side needs fleshing out. It overall needs more content. But... it's a working, breathing, framework. You can: gather resources, explore caves, upgrade stuff, unlock new resources, fight monsters, craft weapons and armour, hire adventurers, and reach a final dungeon. I'd call that a success!

Breaking it down: 

• More than just numbers increasing - success! The game has item gathering, upgrading, currency exchange, item crafting, party management, exploration/dungeons, and RPG battles. These features can all be fleshed out, but its already a good variety of stuff. 
• A clear ending: a narrative with an end goal. Sort of. The game has a clear structure, with dungeons, but there is no real narrative and I wasn't able to create an end boss. The game does tell you when you reached the final dungeon, though.
• Avoiding ridiculous numbers - success! The multi-currency system works better than I expected. Having multiple currencies definitely pads things out. Moreover, the currency exchange market, with its shifting rates, means that you dont even get 100:1 rates, so it takes quite a while to upgrade money.

What Worked

I tried to make a game multiple times over the last 10 years. 10 years! I never succeeded. This time, for the first time, was different. Why?

There's probably no easy answer, but I'll try. 

Keeping the interface simple - It's purely text-based, there are minimal graphics (basically just icons) and there is no animation or sound. The characters (adventurers, NPCs, etc) always just appear in a list, without sprites aside from a portrait. Fighting is just the characters' portraits, and nothing is animated, exploring dungeons is just an "explore" button with a percentage that goes up. Inventory is a fixed order list - so no inventory-tetris to worry about coding. With just a basic CSS, it still looks a bit like a game. I think it worked surprisingly well.

Not so much simple mechanics, rather implementing them simply - not sure how to explain this, but something I felt I really did (surprisingly) well is finding simple ways to implement my ideas. There's a lot of complexity under the hood, for example, combat-turn calculation system, a passive skill training system, a functioning currency exchange market, craft-able weapons/armour. However, combat turns are "instantly" displayed in a text log, skills/weapons/armour don't do anything more than flat atk/def bonus. Currency exchange is randomly generated. I think this turned out quite well, though. My only real regret, mechanics-wise, is not being able to make combat more than just "attack / defend". 

Starting messy - A lot of people look back and say they didn't plan things out enough, and their code was too messy, and urge you not to do that. I say, if you are a beginner, you should! Rather than plan everything ahead, design notes on paper, and so on, I just started. Yes, the code was messy, and yes, sometimes I realised my approach sucked and had to rewrite stuff. But, I think this was valuable experience. When you are an absolute beginner, carefully planning ahead can make your scope too ambitious (because you don't understand what's technically feasible yet). By coding it straight out "by hand" first, it helped me to just try my ideas out and see how well something works (or doesn't). If something didn't work, it was much easier to figure out why. Only once ideas were concreted, my game code became modular.

Of course, this doesn't mean I think it'a a good approach. I just think it's useful for people doing first time projects to get started, and get their hands dirty. (It also depends on the type of project.) Once you're better at game design and coding, you probably should not take this approach. 

What Didn't Work

The main things that I didn't complete properly was fleshing out the incremental side, and adding a narrative. 

Two-games in one! - my idea to make something with RPG and incremental elements was good, but it was a mistake. It was actually making two games in one. And then a third game that ties them together. That was way too much work. I should have just chosen one, and stuck with that.  As a result, the incremental side is poorly fleshed out, and doesn't tie that much into the RPG 

My first post jam update began to address this, though. Lots of new craftable stuff that requires the incremental's resources and upgrades like "adding a party slot" which requires lots of wheat. Exploring also costs "food" (wheat), meaning now the incremental side is starting to fuel the RPG.

"code first, think later" - it was good to learn about code, but it's a short term solution. I should add that it only works in certain situations: RPG game design seemed to work pretty well, just thinking up ideas and dropping them in and see what happens, but incremental game design seems to require a more thought-out process, as everything needs to carefully interconnect. Narrative, likewise, and at least in this game, isn't something I could just add as I go. If I went back in time, thus I would strip my goal down to focusing on an RPG without much plot

But I'm happy with it. It just meant that my first game is more about learning to put something together and code, and ambitious story telling and a design-orientated approach will come in future games. 

The Future

I definitely plan to continue on the game. I still have lots of ideas of things I want to add, including:

• more incremental stuff, such as fleshed out village building
• more fleshed out adventurer management (start a guild, gain reputation, find talent)
• better combat (more than just attack/defend)
• class and skill system (train up adventurers, customise their class and abilities)
• and more of everything else!

Feel free to try it out and check out the devlog at:

https://newretrogames.itch.io/incrementalrpg

Bonus: Next Game Jam

I also have plans for a future MyFirstGameJam game in Summer. I drafted an idea ages ago for a Monopoly style game called Minipoly, with the goal of addressing the hideous balance issues in the original (which were apparently intentional to demonstrate the horrors of capitalism), to make something more dynamic and much, much faster to play.

Hey there! My game is inspired by old school RPGs, with a dash of incremental/clicker games (though more on the RPG side). It's my first proper attempt to make a game:

https://newretrogames.itch.io/incrementalrpg

Being text-based and browser-based, it's really easy to whoosh through everything, and I want the final game to feel more "solid" and rewarding to get through, so...

I need help on: ways to make gameplay take longer but in a rewarding sense - without artificial difficulty or padding.

I know there's a LOT of content that still needs adding/fleshing out, and that the game is still an early prototype. But... thinking ahead, my feeling is that regardless, it will be too easy to breeze through the game content.

This is in part from my lack of game/design experience - I am good at coming up with ideas for things to add, but not so much on how to properly "gamify" them. I'd like the game to take longer, but preferably avoiding artificial padding, wait timers or other forced things like that. Rather, I want it to feel enjoyable and involving, like eating a good steak.. and rewarding when you finally make progress. 

I have various ideas about how to do this, but not sure what's best! So would be good to hear ideas!

I'd like feedback on:

• If you beat the game (you get a "final dungeon" msg), how long did it take to get there?
• Any parts felt too fast, or too slow?
• Of course, any bugs, etc

ps. It *should* run fine on android browsers (tested on iPhone and it doesnt, sorry!)

Update 10.5: Stealth Updatez 

Manged to slip in a quick stealth update before the deadline:

• removed all the free items from starting inventory
• Added a few more weapons and armour
• Fixed exploration bug that allowed free exploration when in combat
• fixed crafting page bug that prevented proper displaying of item crafting materials

Managed to quick-fix a couple bugs. Since crafting works, I removed the free starting items - now you have to craft them yourself first.  To compensate, added a few weapons and armours to craft, so there's a slightly better range now. Technically, there's not much incentive to not just save up resources for the best equipment first, but at least the options are there.

The Future

The game is definitely more of a prototype than anything else, but I'm happy I got to create something that pretty much works. I can definitely work from the foundation I've built here, and although I will take a break to refresh, I hope to flesh it out quite a bit in future. Plans include, fleshing out the incremental side a lot more, and making combat much more interesting, and tying them together better.

• Farming: more than just wheat - planting seeds, milling flour, baking bread, getting livestock, and so on
• Village building: build taverns to attract adventurers, blacksmiths to craft items, alchemists to brew potions, and so on
• Loot: get loot from dungeons and other events, needed to craft better upgrades and gear for both the farming and adventuring
• Skills: a range of learnable skills building on the current passive system, with lots of battle abilities
• NPC interation: a keyword system to interact more deeply with NPCs and find clues
• Deeper adventurer system: reputation system and class system for adventurers
• Deeper worker system: workers get skills and play a bigger role in your choices
• Much more upgrades
• Proper narrative: actual story and plot and events to push you through the game

Update 10: Ender: The Endening

Finally here. The biggest news: I did a test run of the game, from beginning to end (without devmode!) and it's winnable. It's WINNABLE. You can beat the game from beginning to end. Crafting also seems to work, so far. Haven't had time to test it, but looks promising:

Ok, there are massive narrative gaps and balance issues, but the foundation is set. I've never gotten this far before in making a game, ever, so it's a big achievement for me and couldn't be more pleased with myself. I will probably take a break for a few weeks after this, but definitely come back and flesh out the content. There's tons more I can add. 

Final updates:

• Crafting implemented!
• New basket upgrade added, to increase wheat and wood capacity
• Stone and Iron resource discovery progession padded out a bit
• Dungeon progression is smoothed out a bit, with some extra steps
• Defending gets less effective if you repeat it every turn
• Fixed a few bugs, e.g. skill progression always saying "gathering skill"

Known Unfinished Things

• Money balance isn't well-tested - progression on the game depends on getting the first round of upgrades. It shouldn't normally be possible to get into a dead end, but it may be. For example, playing around on the currency exchange and losing money, might get you into a dead end where you cant afford the necessary upgrades to progress the story.
• You can have too many people in a party - you are only supposed to be able to have 4 people in the active party. Trying to make more than 3 adventurers (plus you) in the active party might break the game.
• Could not get a final boss fight - you just get a msg when completing the final dungeon. Anticlimatic, I know. But to make a special event like a boss fight, doesn't work with the standard explore and combat functions, so entirely new code would be needed.

Crafting

It was a bit of a rush, but crafting works! There's a bug for complex items - when displaying materials, it shows "object", but rest assured the creation process does work (and if you dont have enough materials, it'll then tell you more clearly what you need and how much. Probably won't get time to implement more than that by tomorrow.

Oh, and you start the game with a range of gear - enough to beat the game directly, anyhow. Have fun!

Defend tweak

It was too easy before to endlessly defend in the first dungeon, losing 1HP a turn until you die, then heal and repeat, grinding your "Defense" skill quickly. I found myself doing it even though I made the game! Patient players can still grind, but it shouldn't be that powerful.

So, defend now gives decreasing returns, each time you use it consecutively, its reduced by 0.1 (10%), down to a lowest of 0.1 per turn. Just taking a 1 turn break will "reset" it.

Progression Smoothing

Stone and iron-ore discovery has been shifted to one step later. Instead of having stone automatically upon discovering the cave, now you have to explore the cave first to find stone. Likewise, once it becomes a mine, you then have to explore the mine to find iron ore.

After exploring the mine, instead of going straight to a classic dungeon, a tab called "Deeper" opens up, exploring deeper into the mine. You can encounter slimes here. Next, it changes to "Tunnels". Finally, once you finish exploring tunnels, the tab changes to "Dungeons" and proper dungeons open up.

Finally, the Party menu doesnt open up until you've reached these proper dungeons now.

This all pads it out a bit more nicely.

Exploring is still a bit overpowered. When exploring, there's a 3/4 chance for combat. But you still get some % of exploration added. It's lower than if there was no combat. However, its easily breakable. E.g., just enter combat at 1HP, die instantly, repeat. You lose all combats but each time gain a little %, up to 99%. Combat can't push exploration past 99% so you have to win at least one combat to beat a dungeon. It doesn't "break" the game, since you can repeat dungeons and farm for XP regardless.

Still, it's not the best. I'll probably have to rethink that system one day.

Most probably, I'll do something like I did with the defense tweak. Encounter rates are still high, and encounters still give some exploration %. But... each lost combat gives less exploration % - so entering combat, fleeing/dying and repeating will give less and less exploration %, down to 0%, so that you can't game the system. Winning a combat will reset the exploration % rate back to normal, and will also lower the encounter rate, so the chance of multiple combats in a row gets less and less. Dying or running from combat will increase the encounter rate, as well as lowering exploration gains. So basically, you will be far better off winning combats.

 Next steps:

Possibly get a chance to fix and tweak small things before deadline

Write a postmortem in a day or two.

 Take a break!

I uploaded a preview build! Check it out:

https://newretrogames.itch.io/incrementalrpg

Warning: have not tested it at all!

Update 9: Live Preview Online!

As I chip away at the final things I can implement before the deadline, a few small but important additions today. Armour was finally implemented, and more work was needed on the passive skills system, its more complex now, but arguably more interesting. But I really spent most of the time getting things working and fixing the inevitable bugs that resulted. I'm aiming for update 10 tomorrow to be the final game jam devlog :O

Latest progress:

• Finally you can equip armour AND weapons. No more naked adventurers running around!
• Weapons and armour actually have an effect! (e.g. swords increase damage, armour reduces damage).
• A couple of new armours and new weapons added (mainly for testing purposes - try them out!)
• More UI tweaks, the resource menu expand/collapse is much cleaner now, NPCs can also be expanded/hidden
• Skills have been refined, and made more complex;
  • different skills have different "difficulty" to learn, making them take longer to learn, and once learned, they also have different "learning rates", taking longer to level up.
  • being "untrained" in a skill now imparts a penalty, while being "trained" gives you a bonus. (the bonus worked before but was hard-coded in, now its properly coded via functions).
  • untrained skills can have multiple "negative levels" meaning higher penalties, but as you level closer to 0 the penalty reduces with each level closer. Once you get to lv. 1, the skill is "learnt" you get the bonus instead of the penalty, which also increases with each level.
  • when you learn a skill, the game notifies you, if you are still in negative levels the game gives you a (pretty obvious) hint that you are improving in that skill.
• Gathering, Chopping, Mining, Combat and Defense skills fully working now, affecting the relevant skills outcome.
• Enemy's defense actually does something now!
• Trading skill added which improves market rates.
• NPCs now appear on a list on the left side, regardless of location, making better use of empty space

 Visual Tweaks

As mentioned, NPCs now appear on a list on the left side, regardless of location, making better use of empty space. 

The tab will show the NPCs in the current "room". I plan to make this menu become also more context-sensitive, later, though. E.g. it could show other general actions you can perform, that dont fit into normal area of the tab that you are on.

Game interface with left menus all collapsed

With all left menus expanded

Skills

I fixed up the code so gaining skills is no longer hard-coded per skill (I generally hard-code it in one or two areas to "test" my idea, then I create a function and use that instead). This means that adding new skills is now easy and scalable. More importantly, I expanded the skills system a bit and pretty happy with how it works now. It's way more complex now, though in relatively subtle ways.

Like before, when you perform an action, the game checks if you have the related skill. If you have it, a bonus is applied and the skill gets XP. If you don't have it, you get the skill, but "untrained". However NOW, untrained skills incur a penalty, as opposed to trained skills giving you a bonus, to whatever you are doing. Furthermore, skills have a ton of other properties. Untrained skills can be more "difficult" to learn, begining at lower levels (-1, -2, etc), and start with lower -XP levels, meaning it takes longer to reach the holy Lv. 1 when you start getting bonuses instead of penalties.

Skills can also have differnt learning rates, basically the rate it gains XP while untrained, and training rates - the rate it gains XP after its trained. Generally speaking, the untrained XP gain is double that of the trained XP gain rate.

Skills also have different XP curves (affecting how much the XP requirement increases for each level).

This adds a ton of customisation to skills, and (to me, at least) makes them a lot more interesting and variable.

You can see it in action here, in the currency exchange menu. The [dev] info (only appears when "devmode=1") shows the underlying variables. The base rate is 100 copper to 1 bronze, with a market rate of 1.03 meaning its 103 copper to get 1 bronze at the moment (a pretty good deal!). But you are also deeply untrained in the "Trading" skill. The initial level of -2, with a penalty of 2 per untrained level, meaning the maximum penalty of -4 value to all trades.

In other words, for buying copper, it costs 4 more than the actual market rate. For selling bronze, you get 4 less than the actual market rate. Eventually, from lv.1 onward you'll get a bonus of +1 per trade instead, getting more bang for your buck when buying and selling.

Next steps

There's a ton of stuff to do really. But I'll do what I can by tomorrow. Critical things are:

• add loot to monsters, esp. weapon blueprints
• flesh out incremental side a bit, more story and upgrades so there's a logical flow
• finish crafting system (currently it displays craftable items, but you cant actually craft anything yet)
• add final boss and victory sequence

If I can get those done tomorrow.. the game might actually be a "complete" experience. Basically a prototype, but hopefully an interesting one!

Update 8.5: More Currency & Skills + UI tweaks... and live preview online!

Well, we are almost there.. this will likely be the second-to-last main update! 

Unfortunately, today I barely had much free time, so didn't really get much done. The game "works" but there are a lot of gaps that need to be filled in for narrative and progression. Hopefully tomorrow! Nonetheless, an older version of the game is online, in preparation for the final game jam update:

https://newretrogames.itch.io/incrementalrpg

That's the version from about 2 posts ago, but feel free to try it out and play around with the systems, and find the inevitable bugs that lurk there!

What's New

• Finished implementing the currency exchange and got it fully working. You can now exchange back and forth from copper to bronze, which is enough for this stage of the game.  
• The passive skill system is now also fully implemented - characters can gain a handful skills after performing actions enough times, which level up overtime and boost the skill.
• Help system integrated into the game. Clicking a [?] in some places will toggle an info window
• Numerous UI improvements, NPCs appear with icons instead of just buttons! Rounded borders! Shadows under the menu! 

Visual Tweaks

Help info is contained in a default invisible div tag, and when you click the ?, it toggles whether that div is visible or hidden. Simple, but so effective. It's a nice way to give more info than a tooltip, but short of creating some sort of help manual. I will add a lot of these through the UI, which will be very helpful - especially since the narrative and game flow that would guide the player is not properly established, it makes the game actually sort of playable in the meantime. 

Normal menu popup, with help text hidden.

After the help is toggled on. 

Note also how the exchange rate for selling 10 Bronze is slightly different than the rate of 1:92 would suggest, due to rounding. For now, I like this, as it adds some variability to searching for good deals - sometimes the rounding will work in your favour and sometimes against you, depending on what trade you are looking to make at the time. 

The nicest update for me though is the new menus. I created a "shadow" div, which you can see in the above pics, to make the menus look like they are floating above the main area, which helps to distinguish the menu from the main game stuff, and I found out you can do rounded borders in HTML, which makes really look like old school RPG menus a la Final Fantasy now!

Currency 

The exchange system is fully implemented, with backward and forward exchange rates. You can trade 1 or 10 copper into bronze, and a market rate (as explained in my last post) is applied on top of the standard 100:1 base rate. Market rate randomly shifts, and is updated live in the currency exchange window (if its open). Backwards exchange rates work, but similar to real life, are always less value (in this case a flat rate of 25% less). 

So if you want 100 bronze, for example, and were lucky enough to get it at the lowest possible market rate of 100:1 the cost is:

• x bronze = x * (marketrate * baserate) copper
• 100 bronze = 100 * (1 * 100) copper
• 100 bronze = 100 * 100 copper
• 100 bronze = 10,000 copper

Exchanging back at this time, in theory would give you 10,000 copper back. But, for downwards conversions, with the 25% commission cost it ends up being 7,500 copper. Doh! A 2,500 loss. Just like real life, you don't always get back what you put in.

So instead, you hold on to your 100 bronze and wait for the maximum rate, which is 1.75 - or 175 copper for 1 bronze.

• x bronze = x * (market rate * base rate) copper
• 100 bronze = 100 * (1.75 * 100) copper
• 100 bronze = 100 * 175 copper
• 100 bronze = 17,500 copper - 25% commission
• 100 bronze = 13,125 copper

Exchanging 100 bronze back for this rate would get you 13,125 copper. Certainly, a lot less than the full 17,500 copper it's supposed to be worth - but look! - you only spent 10,000 copper for it originally. That means, a profit of 3,125 copper... all for doing nothing but waiting.

The rate is pure randomly generated every minute. A wishlist item would be to make the rate instead move in "points" much like real stocks and commodities, moving upwards or downwards over time, which, while still randomly calculated, would feel a lot more real. I might also need to tweak the 25% margin so that arbitrage is not too powerful, but for now it's good enough, and it's kind of cool to have an alternative source of money management.

Skills

Skills have been slightly fleshed out. Basically, when you perform an action associated with a skill, the game checks if you have that skill. 

If you have the skill, it gets a small bit of XP (1-10pts). Your skill level (generally) boosts whatever action you are performing; the higher your skill level, the higher the benefit.

If you don't have the skill, things get more interesting. You receive a penalty to whatever you are doing, but the skill gets added... but it's "untrained" and doesn't yet appear in your skill list. It is saved as lv. 0 and starts with -100 to -50 XP. You have to gain enough XP to not only pass 0 XP but get to +100XP and reach lv. 1. At that point, you have the skill officially, the game tells you that you've learned the skill and it starts appearing in your skill list. Current skills:

• Gathering: increases wheat gathered per click by 1 per skill lv
• Chopping: increases wood gathered per click by 1 per skill lv
• Mining: increases stone/ores gathered per click by 1 per skill lv
• Combat: increases damage of [Attack] by 1 per skill lv
• Defense: increases def when [Defend] is used by 0.1 (10%) per level

Both the player and adventurers can gain skills, later I will make it so workers also gain skills. Later I will have skill levels for Swords, Daggers, and armours and so on. Lots of potential here, such as a skill tree. E.g. once you get lv. 10 in Swords, it unlocks the duel wielding skill, enabling you to equip two weapons. I can also make a skill that adjusts the base market rate, e.g. down to 90:1, so that you always get better rates.

Hey there, got a question about submission rules. 

If we submit our game page before the jam ends, are we allowed to re-submit an updated version before the deadline? Or is it strictly a "one submission only" rule?

E.g. if I submit today, and some people play it and give feedback/find bugs, can I fix them and re-upload before the jam ends on Saturday? 

Sorry if this has been asked elsewhere, didn't find it on the info/FAQ pages!

Ah man, sorry to hear about that. Luckily I still use Windows 7 😅 the game looks basically playable already, but hope you get the chance to polish it off soon! Regardless of whether you finish it during the game jam or after, I'll definitely be playing. 

Nice work on getting this far! Been very interesting reading about how to approach narrative. I like how this approach, can have a linear conclusion yet allow a freedom of explore the narrative, which in itself can shape ones interpretation of the overall story. 

I think less people stop by on my page too, so perhaps like you say, everyone is in The Crunch! I think also as things get closer people are rather waiting for the big release!