Nightcrawl
Still a playtest version, leave some feedback below!
Instruction:
⬅️⬆️➡️ Move diagonally step left-right or up. Dungeon moves down on each step.
🅾️: C or Y/Z Swap weapons
Gather equipment, shield and gold, survive for as long as you can. No ending yet other than dying due to ever stronger enemies. Each non-shop tile is resolved automatically. Pickup up a weapon with one in hand will overwrite it.
Available on the BBS as well: https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?pid=151857#p
Combat:
Enemies have 3 things attached to them:
Damage: How much raw damage the enemy can inflict.
Skill: If the enemy has a skill
Weakness: Hitting enemies with an effective weapon will deal double damage.
Combat is resolved by the following:
1, Enemy damage is reduced by weapon damage
2, Health/shield reduced by enemy damage
3, You lose armor.
Skills:
Ranger: Will shot the player for 1 hp on adjecent tiles once.
Ruster: Will destroy the weapon after combat
Berserker: If not hit with effective weapon, will deal double damage.
Shops:
Will auto buy if player has enough gold.
Support:
My awesome supporters over at Ko-fi! They allow me to pursue this niche hobby of mine! If you'd like more, consider hopping over to my Ko-fi page, where I share pixel art, game devlogs, postmortems, code rundowns, all that gamedev jazz! And if you can maybe drop in a coffee so I can make the next one faster!
Thank you Csöndi, Nerdy Teachers and Fletch for allowing me to keep up this hobby! 
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Development log
- Version 1.6 - Legendary tweak, championsJul 30, 2024
- Version 1.5Jul 28, 2024
- Version 1.4Jul 24, 2024
- Version 1.3 is out!Jul 23, 2024
- Version 1.2Jul 22, 2024
Comments
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Really enjoyable, love the pixelart and the music too!
Eventually my choices caught up to me (probably should have clung less to that legendary and built up another weapon haha). Being able to look at the icon key was hugely helpful! Shortly before my tragic demise, I did start to feel like I either wanted an end goal or a save method, but I'm also not usually the rogue-like audience (but I've been really enjoying this?!).
I had one playthrough, work is starting now.
I've no idea if thats any good or not.
With v1.5, I think it is too easy now? My runs on older versions didn’t feel particularly successful (didnt count my steps unfortunately).
Now though, I was basically unable to die.
Thank for the feedback, it does seem that I have overtuned the legendary items totally my bad on that. will look into the balance of those if I can in the following days.
It's gotten really robust! I do think a symbol guide might be helpful at this point, and other than that...? Achievements? Score tracking? The game balance is pretty good. My death was a bit cheap here (One enemy took all 21 of my armor and the next just murdered me outright from full health) but might have been avoidable if I could remember the enemy skills better or how weapons swap/stack better. And you can guess from my gold I hadn't seen a shop in a bit.
One suggestion: when the player has only one weapon, the next weapon picked up should go in the empty slot, rather than replacing the equipped weapon. I always forget to switch to my empty slot!
Really cool suggestion, part of the 1.5 patch. The game will end quite soon one you run out of weapon/armor, it is part of how scaling works. Added a new tutorial.
Played v1.4! I really enjoyed the choice simplicity - I feel like this game would be perfect for putting on my handheld and passing the time on a plane or bus or something like that!
I eventually figured out how the stats and numbers corresponded to one another, but I’d love to see either an in-game tutorial or itch page info to explain how health is calculated, what each symbol means, etc.
Animations look great, and I love the background music! You’re definitely cooking with this one Achie!
Thank you so much! It means a lot! I would love to have a tutorial, lets hope I can cram it in the last remaining days!
Also not sure why the number and skill are overlapping here.
I did get to 126 steps and 30 vanquished on this run, a new personal best!
Thanks for the report, 1.3 should fix this!
I think something that is lacking is a reason to fight enemies. Fighting an enemy is always the worst option, and the player is usually better off going to a shop where they can't make a purchase than fighting an enemy.
Love to see you back! Thanks for trying it out!
1.3 adds a few changes, mostly enemies now drop gold, shops are a bit more rare, but there is a fixed one you can find at ever once in a while. Hopefully that will help with fighting enemies for gold!
Also you can now store 2 weapons, so cheese-nig weakness is more feasable!
Love this sort of game! Some feedback:
Some status messages about who I just fought (also listing their skills and weaknesses so I can learn the icons), or about what I just picked up, or when I just visited a shop. I felt at times a bit clueless about what I was hopping on.
Thanks for trying it out!
1.3 comes with a combat log (for now only that), will work on it more to include better item and shop descriptions as well. A bit hard to do with PICO-8 restrictions, hopefully it is readable.
If you press ENTER a menupoint will show up. If you press either Y/C or X it will toggle the logs on. Tell me how You like it!
Would it help if you have two full lines of text? From eyeballing it, if you move the 3x3 grid upwards a bit and the player a bit closer to the grid, there should be enough space at the bottom, I think.
But in any case, this is a lot better already!