Nearly 3 years ago, I started Oneiro as a school project, and now, on June 18th, 2021, I've been able to hit the "Release App" button on Steam. I'm pretty excited to share it with all of the Steam community, and I sincerely hope you all enjoy it.
What is Oneiro?
Oneiro is a roguelite that throws the player into their own nightmares- into their "Labyrinth". The Labyrinth is made up of 4 Layers; each of these containing weapons, items, gear, enemies, and a boss that you're required to defeat to "conquer" the respective layer.
Each of these layers- with the exception of the 4th-, are procedurally generated each time you dream and will contain traps, weapons, items, gear, enemies, and many other objects- most of which are harmful to the player. Your Labyrinth is fragile as well, so a few hits on any wall is going to destroy it, and cave in the respective ceiling.
Creativity
In Oneiro, nearly every object has multiple purposes to encourage the player to use their noggin a little more than one might expect. For example:
- Instead of using the Grapple Hook to reach the next level, you may use the spike traps to launch a fallen ceiling into the air while standing on it to gain the extra height.
- Maybe you're low on health, but an enemy is blocking a treasure; Use that Grapple Hook to latch onto them, paralyze them and defeat them before they can react.
- Maybe you wanna play it safe from a distance; use some Throwing Knives on a wall near an enemy to destroy it, and cause the ceiling to cave in on them. Hell, if there's a torch on the wall, it'll fling itself off the wall and might burn the enemy.
The below gif shows off one of the Spear's many uses. Throw the spear, and latch onto it via Grapple Hook to travel a very far distance in a short time.
Items/Gear
As of Version 1.0, Onerio has just over 50 items/gears for the player to utilize. Items are passive, while any gear are consumables, such as Life Potions/Duplicators. You can find items through enemies, treasures, or Living Walls, and nearly every item in Oneiro can stack when you find duplicates, further enhancing their original effect.
- The Magical Lamp grants you 1 additional midair jump. Pretty good by itself, but you can have even more by duplicating it. Hell, there's an Steam Achievement for getting 10 of these.
- Ancient Amulet gives the player 5% extra attack when they equip a new weapon, a pretty mediocre amount at first, but if you duplicate it a few times, and find a few weapons, you're attack power can increase very quickly.
- Purity recovers 1% of your health every 10 seconds. Perhaps... 10% of your health would do you better; just find more Purity, or duplicate the one you already have.
There's virtually no limit to stacking item effects, and this allows for the player to find some incredibly powerful strategies.
Development
With Oneiro's development, I stayed true to the whole concept of a rogue game- in that- nothing at all is saved between runs. The only thing that'll change between your 1st and 100th run is the knowledge and skill you'll inevitably gain with each death. This is an extremely enjoyable aspect of rogue games to me personally.
This game has taken inspiration from a multitude of others, such as Risk of Rain, Binding of Issac, Dead Cells, and- well, many, other games; some of which aren't even of the rogue-genre. Over the course of development, it's evolved into something rather unique; Some weird hybrid of a melee-focused, first-person, roguelite title, and I'm not entirely sure if I've seen any game quite like it.
Being a rogue game, you'd expect Oneiro would be difficult to a degree, and you'd be right; I've taken that degree, and multiplied it a few times. The Labyrinth is unforgiving at times, the traps are lethal, the enemies can be overwhelming, and your first dream will probably last you a few minutes tops, but I assure you, it can all be overcome with strategy, knowledge, and execution.
Future of Oneiro
In regards to future development, I'd like to continue for a little bit; I'm definitely going to keep an eye out for bugs, and I'll watch for reviews and discussions in Oneiro's Community Hub.
If you want to talk to me and others who play Oneiro, feel free to join the discord. It's a small group of people in there, but we're all kinda sorta cool.
-Ryan, ZSG