Part of the original plan for PBN was switching out societies every few rounds to keep things fresh. Unfortunately, this never really happened, in part because societies took a ton of work to make (had to make new spells, probably new creatures, multiple new missions) and only a portion of the […]
In games like this, almost everything is usually trying to kill the player. It makes sense from a gameplay perspective, of course. Monsters are there to be obstacles standing between you and your goal. In the Possession games, you can even make an argument that makes sense from a narrative standpoint: people and […]
Not all the creatures in the caves are mindless monsters that will attack until one of you is dead — though some particularly stubborn, foolish or brave ones will. Most creatures in the game have a fear value that can cause them to run away if it gets too high. When a creature […]
Boss design in games can be difficult. In the original Possession, bosses were pretty basic. They were creatures slightly stronger than most of the regular creatures on the level. None of them had any special abilities, except for the fact you couldn’t possess them. I made them unpossessable for a few reasons: one, […]
So I apologize for not really having posted anything recently. There’s been some work going on, but a lot of it has been kind of behind the scenes (probably worth a post, might be of interest to other game dev people), and honestly, there hasn’t been THAT much work done, either. […]
Not only will Possession 2 feature greater variety in its regular levels, but there will also be several “special levels” which you will sometimes visit instead of a regular level. The special levels are themed, featuring special tiles and design, and creatures that fit the theme. More interestingly, they usually […]
Happy New Year! It’s been a while since I’ve posted. Writing devlog posts just kind of fell behind over the holidays, but work has continued. Today I’m going to talk about the levels. Possession 1 had just one level generator. It worked pretty well, and made pretty good-looking caves, but […]
I’ve made some improvements to the creature AI, using a lot of the information from this article as a starting point. Different creatures now behave in different ways…most still act like they used to, blindly charging at you and attacking you. But they can also be (and become) hostile to […]
I am working on a sequel to Possession: Escape from the Nether Regions, the 7-day game I made earlier this year. I’m currently calling it Possession 2: Return to the Nether Regions, because it is a terrible name. Whether it’ll stick or not depends, but it’s growing on me. I’ve […]
For the last week, I’ve been taking part in the “7-Day Roguelike Competition,” which involves creating a new game in 7 days. Today’s the last day, and I’m done! In case you (somehow) missed my earlier (incessant) posts about it, in this game you play as a ghost escaped from […]
