Hey all! This year I'm working on Shadow Dream, a survival Roguelike. The premise is you're a shaman entering a fading Dreamworld engulfed by shadows.  Your goal is to find Lumenstones and return them to where they belong.

Gameplay will revolve around light, exploring, managing mana, and achieving your goal before the shadows overwhelm you.

This is about the end of day 2 for me and I've implemented basic world generation, FOV, mana, and acquiring Lumenstones. I'm piggybacking off the style and architecture of Greedy Rogue, which I liked and worked quickly with. :)

End of day 4 and I'm happy with my progress so far. I have implemented a good chunk of the core gameplay (excluding playtesting), and am at a stage where I can tweak and add things as I'm playtesting. Just gotta be careful of feature creep. :P

Gameplay

The goal of the game is to restore obelisks found across the map. They can only be restored by lumenstones, which there are three randomly strewn across the map.

The main antagonist is shadows, which grow in strength over time. They start out anywhere from harmlessly following you, to minor harassment. With enough time, the harassments will become deadly threats.

To fight shadows, you will need mana and spells, which can be found and collected around the map. Emitting a glow allows you to see shadows, but it drains mana each turn. Spells can be learned from totems.

Progress

• Character stats Life, mana, lumenstones, crystals.
• World generation Flora, lumenstones, shrines (locations), totems, and obelisks. Some more work is needed here.
• Win/loss Lumenstones can be picked up and returned, and you can die.
• Shadows Early shadow behavior and growth. Needs lots of playtesting.
• Spells Casting spells, learning spells, and forgetting spells. Also damage and mobility spells. Some spells with the same name can have varying behavior and efficiency.
• Totems Activating totems, and channeling spells.

Lazers

Beginning 2nd to last day and I've created the jam page and submitted as a success! Still a bunch to do and right now I've been playtesting and tuning gameplay. Also, unlike last year, I decided to add sounds and music. :) Today I'm planning to continue to playtest and add content. Tomorrow will be all polish before finishing.

For the curious, you can play it here: https://gruebite.itch.io/shadow-dream

Changes

• Demon behavior is now more dynamic and the system is pretty simple but robust I think.  Still tuning the scaling.
• Environment interactions, like jumping.
• Progen more features: paths, flora
• Spells added a couple more spells
• Music & sound effects

Gameplay Snippet