One of the main mechanics we have in Grimroll is getting rewards for crossing out boxes. The rewards take the shape of different consumables, instant additional hits on other boxes and even more dice. There's plenty of dice types but today we wanted to focus on the rewards specifically.
The way you progress through the game and gain upgrades is by upgrading your items. Initially we had just 3 items that you'd equip, and we felt that this would be enough to start you off. It quickly became apparent that there wasn't a lot of decision making going on. You'd pick the 3 best items you could find and either get some build going off them or you'd die. We wanted more control, so we made each item have 3 slots of individual rewards, this gave us granularity and made progress more incremental.
It created a UX nightmare for us. How do you add upgrades and slot them in 12 different places across 3 categories while also allowing players to swap them around. We're still sorting this one out.
Number go up!
Having rewards that trigger an instant hit on some other area of the game was a huge part of the first playtest we did. Items there didn't have infusions so you would cross out a box on one item and then get an extra hit on another as a reward, then that other item hit gave you an extra hit on another item, or an enemy…and this basically spiraled into something we eventually called "the chain". It made you feel good because you spent one die and got several extra hits out of it.
We initially removed it from the game because we wanted the player to always be in control over when and how this happens. Our solution at the time was to instead give you a consumable item that would do the same thing, but you would get to decide when to use it. You would roll an extra die when you felt it was best.
Turns out this slowed the game down. Most of us want that reward right away and this made it so you would have to drag your mouse to the consumables area, click on it and then use the die it rolled on the box you want. We thought we were adding in control but instead we added friction and slowed everything down too much.
We realized that despite having the same feature in the game in a different form it still felt worse because of how you interacted with it. Naturally, we brought it back. So now you can start a run with just one extra hit from a box and after 30 minutes you might be getting 4 or 5 of them.
Progress
One of the main reasons why we removed instants in the first place was because we weren't satisfied with the way progression worked. We wanted to have something incremental. Instead of buying an item with multiple boxes we wanted to split this into smaller upgrades that progressively make your character stronger.
Pair that together with instant hits and suddenly you can go from just one box hit to 3 or 4 or 5. We learned that progression felt better when you build out these items and item rewards yourself over time instead of just buying several better items.
Progress as hooks
By adding in these multiple instant hooks, we could create additional relic style items which would use this count for additional features. Imagine getting to roll an extra die because you hit more than 10 boxes in a single turn. This is where we are now and we feel very happy with the state of the game right now. So much so that we’ll have a special announcement very soon! Thanks for following along, as always if you want to chat with us and know more about the game, join our discord channel and obviously, wishlist the game here on Steam!