Intro
a Crawler and Vania Experience (aCaVE) is a dungeon crawling, platforming, roguelike with a new adventure every time you play thanks to its procedurally generated complex cave systems.
aCaVE is a Rogue-like Metroid-Vania for ages 8+ to be released in the UK only for now in English.
Explore the intricate system of caves and dungeons to kill monsters to collect loot to become powerful to then kill even more monsters for yet more loot to… well you get it. Beware the longer you spend playing, the stronger and more intelligent the monsters get.
Every time you play, you will have a new character to play as with new stats and a new set of mazes to explore.
Platforms
The game for now will only release on PC and the arcade machine (which uses a PC anyway) meaning I will need to map controls that suit both a keyboard and an alternative setup for the keyboard that supports the arcade machine’s controls.
Language
For now, the game will only be released in the UK therefore I will also only need to have the game’s language in English though if I do decide to translate my game for foreign release I plan to release a German language pack.
Want to play the game? - 11/03/19 - 19:46
The game is not out yet so you'll have to wait!
Website Test - 11/03/19 - 19:44
This is a test update just demonstrating the blog-y type thing on the news page.
Just testing the multiple lines.
Game Info
Theme
The theme of my game (which was pre-chosen) is “Chocolate Pudding”. See the mood board (2) for a delicious example of a chocolate pudding. The way I am going to utilize this, is by having most/all monsters be made of corrupted chocolate pudding while the cave system itself is a chocolate pudding.
Background
aCaVE has lots inspiration from a wide array of seemingly unrelated games. Examples of these include how the game is mostly inspired by Rogue (hence it being a roguelike). The elements I took from Rogue include the perma-death system (where when the player dies, they die for good), no saving (I mostly included this because the game is going to be played on an arcade machine), and the level being generated as the player explores (I wanted this so the player would keep coming back to the game since if this were a real arcade, my intentions here would be to make money). I even imitated Mario’s platforming aspect with death as a risk if the player miss-times a jump (I wanted the player being good at getting around the level to be just as important as fighting through the level). I also was heavily inspired by Risk of Rain’s item system (where loot is gained as the player goes along that make the player more and more powerful) but to combat this I also want something similar to Risk of Rain’s “dange-o-meter” where the game will get more difficult as the player spends time playing (I wanted this to both combat the player getting more powerful as the player plays and to prompt the player not to waste time since this is an arcade game and I want players to play over and over).
Description
Here is an example of what could potentially happen:
You appear and instantly start exploring the labyrinth of caves looking for monsters to kill. You find a pack of 4 legged creatures (dogs) but they have spotted you too. Lucky for you there is a hole deeper than you can see between you and them, but these monsters attempt to jump anyway. 3 out of 5 of them do not make it but the 2 that did are now running at you. As 1 tries to eat your face off, you counter by kicking it back causing it to fall into the hole. The 1 monster left is not close enough to the hole to be kicked, so you run hoping it does not follow.
After about 5 minutes of killing creatures, and stealing their weapons and loot, you come across a room with seemingly floating platforms and a floor coated with ouching spikes. At the end is a beautiful glowing chest. With some quick well-timed jumps, you make it to the other side and claim your reward. You open the chest, but something is wrong, the chest is empty, and everything is shaking. A massive molten chocolate, 1 eyed worm bursts through a wall and starts attacking you by spitting out balls of half burned melted chocolate from its eyes aimed at you.
After a satisfying battle with a worthy reward, the monster’s own eye that is still somehow able to spit out flaming balls, you make your way back the way you came but as you go to jump a gap between to platforms, you realise you jumped too early and are now falling towards the floor of spikes.
In order to achieve all of this, variables will be used to store information that can then be checked for certain events to happen. For example, the player’s inventory will be an array of variables which would say how many of that item a player has. To store how many of an item the player has, an integer will be used that can be increased starting from 0. 0 would signify the player does not have that item, and 3 for example would signify the player has 3 of that items. If the variable holding the number of the jetpack item is 3, this would mean the player could float upwards for 3 seconds. The player’s as well as all objects on screen from a rock that can be interacted with to monsters will also need to store an x and y coordinate as variables. As well as this, some objects may need a momentum variable to look realistic. I’m going to need a variable on each object that tracks the health of that object; this is especially important for the player object which when that object’s health variable reaches 0, the game will end. The player object will also have a maximum health that will be calculated from the default times and/or minus (depending on item powerups related to health the player has).
