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For those who have tried Dragon’s Descent-I’m the designer for the game-Thanks to everyone for playing!  I have a few tips and designer’s notes about why I designed certain things a certain way:

 

--I did design this game for scoring, there’s a lot of possible strategies to do so, and many risk/reward/“investment” mechanics towards that end.  I tried to add dynamics to reduce dull strategies like monster farming/camping, while encouraging exploration and risk taking leading to higher scores.

--Find key, find exit.  Find the treasure room on each level if you can.

--Your dragon has momentum, which can take some getting used to but also means you can do some tricky maneuvers in a pinch.

--A good strategy for getting a high score is to keep moving deeper into the maze:  Each new level gives another treasure room to find, and enemies give more points on later levels.  Each boss you defeat also gives a lot of points, and they will appear every 3-4 levels. 

--Everyone should be able to get 500 points pretty easily, even if they have trouble on the first level :)

--Treasure rooms allow you to pick if you want more points (gem), more hit points (heart), or stronger shots (lamp).  It’s a trade off-you should probably “invest” in lamps and hearts early on, getting strong enough to survive later levels.  Each level has one treasure room, so once you have enough health and firepower to stand against stronger enemies, you can really rack up points grabbing gems in later levels.  

--There’s a treasure room two screens in from the start-you can start trying different strategies there! 

--The screen turns dark after a certain amount of time on a level.  You’re a dragon, breathe fire to light up a dark room!

--The Shadow shows up if you hang out on a level for too long.  It’s more or less invincible, so your best bet is to avoid it and hurry find the key and to the exit.  

--You don’t have to shoot every monster in the maze: they do give points, and drop health and lamp refills, but spending too much time chasing monsters can lead to the Shadow chasing you!

--While there are different strategies for scoring, the game tries to encourage you to get as far into the maze as you can.  Both the darkness and the Shadow are meant to keep players from farming points for too long on a single level, and to encourage them to go deeper.  Finding new treasure rooms to refill your health, fire breath, or score more points is another reason to go deeper into the maze.

I do recommend looking through the instructions (posted here:  https://atariage.com/forums/topic/286017-dragons-descent-rogueliteaction-game/) for more about how the game works-Feel free to message me if you have any questions or feedback-thanks again!

 

Edited by Revontuli
Default font size on mobile is pretty big - sorry about that!
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46 minutes ago, Revontuli said:

For those who have tried Dragon’s Descent-I’m the designer for the game-Thanks to everyone for playing!  I have a few tips and designer’s notes about why I designed certain things a certain way:

 

-I did design this game for scoring, there’s a lot of possible strategies to do so, and many risk/reward/“investment” mechanics towards that end.  I tried to add dynamics to reduce dull strategies like monster farming/camping, while encouraging exploration and risk taking leading to higher scores.

 

-Find key, find exit.  Find the treasure room on each level if you can.

 

-Your dragon has momentum, which can take some getting used to but also means you can do some tricky maneuvers in a pinch.

 

-A good strategy for getting a high score is to keep moving deeper into the maze:  Each new level gives another treasure room to find, and enemies give more points on later levels.  Each boss you defeat also gives a lot of points, and they will appear every 3-4 levels. 

 

-Everyone should be able to get 500 points pretty easily, even if they have trouble on the first level :)

 

-Treasure rooms allow you to pick if you want more points (gem), more hit points (heart), or stronger shots (lamp).  It’s a trade off-you should probably “invest” in lamps and hearts early on, getting strong enough to survive later levels.  Each level has one treasure room, so once you have enough health and firepower to stand against stronger enemies, you can really rack up points grabbing gems in later levels.  

 

-There’s a treasure room two screens in from the start-you can start trying different strategies there! 

 

-The screen turns dark after a certain amount of time on a level.  You’re a dragon, breathe fire to light up a dark room!

 

-The Shadow shows up if you hang out on a level for too long.  It’s more or less invincible, so your best bet is to avoid it and hurry find the key and to the exit.  

 

-You don’t have to shoot every monster in the maze: they do give points, and drop health and lamp refills, but spending too much time chasing monsters can lead to the Shadow chasing you!

 

-While there are different strategies for scoring, the game tries to encourage you to get as far into the maze as you can.  Both the darkness and the Shadow are meant to keep players from farming points for too long on a single level, and to encourage them to go deeper.  Finding new treasure rooms to refill your health, fire breath, or score more points is another reason to go deeper into the maze.

I do recommend looking through the instructions (posted here:  https://atariage.com/forums/topic/286017-dragons-descent-rogueliteaction-game/) for more about how the game works-Feel free to message me if you have any questions or feedback-thanks again!

Since you're here, I wanted to convey to you that from a player's perspective *and* a programmer's perspective (I design data-manipulation applications), this is likely one of the best constructed 2600 games Ive ever played, and Ill definitely be buying the game from the AA store within the next month or so. Congrats on a successful release!

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5 hours ago, Tempest said:

I really did like Dragons Decent, I just have a thing about games where the walls are deadly (I hate Berzerk for the same reason).  Just a personal thing.  Any 2600 game that has bosses is good in my book.

I'm currently working on an Atari 7800 version, where I actually had enough memory and processor cycles to program more sophisticated wall collision, so there's an option where the walls don't -have- to kill you :)  

 

Congratulations on getting past the bosses!

Edited by Revontuli
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Pac-Man 4K - 72,650

pacman4K_NTSC.thumb.png.c7b7fe04c599f1a480c7a7c0c9d4a797.png

 

VIDEO (17 minutes)

 

Timeline:

00:00 - My username on Atari Age

00:06 - Stella Emulator startup and title select

00:13 - Game Properties / Difficulty switches (B position)

00:34 - Pac-Man 4K startup and variation set to Cherries

00:45 - Start of run

16:54 - End of run and final score shown (72,650 pts)

Performed on December 30th, 2019

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