Hello! This entry will hopefully be my 7th 7DRL game, and after some experiments with the genre, I want to go back to numbers-and-combat-oriented gameplay, and also to have the game with a somewhat open scope so I can, for the first time ever, try to continue developing it after the jam ends.

I played a lot of Slay the Spire in 2024, and my first intention was to go in the direction of a ‘compact deckbuilder,’ which evolved into some crazy idea where a player has a hand of 5 cards and no deck. Then Balatro came, and I was afraid that the 7DRL jam and the genre in general would be flooded with Balatro-likes (which actually does not seem to be the case), so I ditched the idea of a card game but retained some elements of that 5-card-hand.

Basically, the main mechanic is to have 5 ‘skills’ that can actively or passively enhance each other, possibly leading to some overpowered combinations. In order for this to function, I would need to create a lot, like over 50, of those ‘skills.’ This is a lot of work (I’m not taking a week off or something), so sacrifices are to be made: game structure and levels will be linear, the plot will be silly, and bugs will be plentiful.

In order for this to be a proper dev log, I need to somehow catch up, as it is already day 4.

The technical stack is Unity 6. I had to quickly get to know a couple of new things there, like the new input system and tilemaps. I also wanted to use as much of Unity ECS as possible. I ended up reinventing things anyway and reusing some old elements, like Dijkstra maps, and the code is becoming more and more stitched-cadaver-like.

Last year, I bought a Wacom tablet, so drawing sprites is now way faster than anything I could do with pixel art. I’m using Krita with a 4-pixel-wide brush, no anti-aliasing, and flat color fills.

Game setting and plot were a second priority, but shortly before the start of the jam, I came up with the idea that some of my previous 7DRL entries (Force of Nature, Catalot, Fairy Princess) share the same universe. So, I decided to make an "all-stars" kind of game in a silly fantasy style to better align with my silly stick-figure drawings.

Day 1 was about groundwork and UI. I usually implement UI elements like menus and "how to play" sections first, just to get them out of the way.

Day 2 was about the mob controller, which included player movement and rudimentary AI for mobs. I also started on the "skill engine," which in theory should allow me to quickly create many abilities and items.

Day 3 was about the town that the player can visit between levels to buy and sell skills. The amount of time I had to spend on the merchant UI was absolutely out of control. This whole thing should have been thoroughly planned way in advance. I will probably scrap it later or remake it completely.

Hello! Today is day 5 of 7, and I am starting to consider renouncing civilization and retreating to the forest once the jam ends.

Day 4 progress:

• Implemented internal class engine, which mostly means that some cards can only drop for specific player character classes
• Implemented most of the pony spells, so 3 out of 4 characters are now done
• Added a quest giver NPC in town with some quest texts
• Added a win condition and some texts around it; the game can now be beaten
• The game now has 3 levels with different biomes and slightly different layouts, although all levels are still linear left-to-right corridors anyway
• Lots of drawing, mostly effects and some leftover card icons
• Late at night, I had a sudden urge to implement mouse controls for player movement and spell targeters, which, in theory, could allow the game to be operated on phones/tablets

Next steps:

• Lots of playtesting and balance
• Get the WebGL build to run and check how it works on itch
• Start some R&D related to sound and music. I’ve never had those in my games before, but I hope Unity has this covered

Ok, so work happens, and there goes the idea of an up-to-date dev log. But I managed to finish the game with almost 100% of the intended scope.

Day 5:

• Finalized all four classes and started balancing (which mostly meant playing the game over and over). The robot was the last one added and, as a result, ended up being the least balanced - either too weak or, on the other hand, able to sneak past everything and one-shot bosses with a frontstab. No in-between.
• Did some animation drawings and worked on the title screen. I knew I had to draw something for it - maybe characters standing around a campfire like in Diablo 2 - but that was way too time-consuming. The idea of a fantasy world map came just in time.

Day 6:

• Some wrestling with Unity and WebGL builds, which kept failing mid-process with crazy out-of-memory errors.
• Boss fights - implemented with the usual combination of bad coding practices and hacks. This is actually a really fun and rewarding part, but since it's always at the end of the jam, it inevitably leads to some military-grade dangerous programming.
• I gave up on adding sound effects, as I had zero experience in that area. I did the technical setup for music but had no tracks yet.

Day 7:

• I only had half a day and spent it trying to find music. This is something that should have been done way in advance or even in collaboration with someone who actually understands the topic. Music is so overwhelmingly critical for the atmosphere, but my only way of picking tracks was by listening to them during playtests and deciding if they didn't fit. Someone on the 7DRL Discord suggested that music should be chosen first, with everything else built around it. Maybe I'll try that next year.

Anyway, the game is finished and submitted! I'm happy with it - it’s compact, has a consistent style, features some broken mechanics, and includes carefully hidden jokes. And as I originally planned, it can be built upon and expanded. But first, I need to breathe. I can't even think about implementing serialization with the current state of the game's architecture.

Have fun going through a Mostly Grand Adventure!