Developer posts and news about this game.
Let's start with the playtest bit. On the store page you can now access the current build of the game via Steam. There's a "Feedback" button in the main menu if you want to share your thoughts on the game. It currently features two stages, a brand new tutorial and about 85 cards.
Let's talk about events, because I recently revised a few of them a little and added some new ones. Events are a staple of the genre. You enter a room and instead of a fight you have some kind of situation and have to make a choice about it, usually knowing the consequences of ea
When I started working on this game, I wasn't sure how to even create or acquire any of the visual assets I would need to bring the game to life. I figured I would simply start with placeholders and work out the details later. After a while I started adding prettier assets bit by
There's this meme currently being shown pretty often in dev circles. It's just showing the start of a project with the tag line 'make it exist first' and then a more polished screenshot with the tagline 'you can make it good later'. I like that one, because for the last two years
This will be the first month where I don't have some musings on game design while learning game design. I've been a bit focused on developing the game. For the last month I've been hard at work to expand the demo with one more stage. The second stage will take players into easter
When I started making the enemies for this game, I was trying to glean insight from more experienced developers talking about it. One thing the developers of Slay the Spire said stuck in my mind especially. They designed their enemies (especially elites and bosses) to pose challe
Ok, since I do have something to announce this time, let me get it out the way first: You can now download a demo of the game on itch.io: Life Altered on Itch.io More on that below in the progress report, but first... A look at different map systems for deckbuilders Most deckbuil
Sometimes there are ideas in a game that must subsequently change all other games of the genre in the same direction. Like cross-hairs in shooters (didn't exist in Wolfenstein 3D or the original Doom) or (for better or worse) fast-travel in open-world games. I thought for sure th
I recently listened to an interview with Jay Ma (one of the developers behind FTL and Into the Breach). She talked about how in her new game (the amazing Fulcrum Defender on PlayDate) she chose to have a replenishing health bar, because she got a bit tired of roguelike games that
This month I (among other things) finalized my infection mechanic (which is analagous to curses in many other deckbuilders). So let's have a look at how it works! The curse mechanic I'm familiar with is that you draw a curse like any other card and then it usually does something
One of the more ambitious features of Life Altered is its evolution system. The system is designed to solve two problems: 1. How do players further customize a die that already has 6 creatures on them? 2. How do players get rid of creatures that no longer fit the deck they are bu
I decided I wanted to try and use this space to give monthly (yeah, let's shoot for monthly) updates on how I'm doing with Life Altered. But first, an introduction: Hi, I'm Senescent Leaf, an indie game dev from Germany, making his first (commercial) game. My intention behind Lif