Howdy guardians!
It is due time for our new devblog. We’re going to talk about what you can expect from the next update (and when you can expect it) as well as give details about how we perceive the ‘roguelite’ elements of the game and how we can improve them.
And these subjects are pretty much tied up together since we want our next update to offer more ‘rogueliteness’, what we mean by that is more replayability, more differences between two runs and hopefully a more compelling gaming experience.
Before diving into the fray, we just wanted to point out that what we’re discussing here is just a part of what we’re currently working on. Roboquest is now available on multiple platforms, the community is getting bigger and the addition of cross-platform and public matchmaking is a huge process. That means that a small studio like ours is all hands on deck at getting everything ready and as polished as we’d like and we’re working on a wide array of things at once. Don’t worry though, we got our priorities sorted and the core experience remains our top priority.
With that being said, let’s move on to the interesting stuff, the next update, its content and the roguelite part of the game.
Where we stand right now in terms of Roguelite
Right now, we feel like Roboquest is much more of a fast FPS than it is a Roguelite. It features perma-death and persistent upgrades, but does not feature many ‘mutators’. Mutators are game systems providing random elements which modify the current run so that each run feels different from the previous one (to various degrees).
Of course, the ‘random’ part of them and the amplitude of modification they bring should be controlled in order not to distort the core run n’ gun experience of Roboquest. But it should be enough to make those runs feel different and exciting.
That being said, there are currently three (rather small) mutators in the game: weapon drops, weapon affixes and perk choice rolls. Weapons in general don’t bring enough differences between runs to feel like an important mutator and perk random is heavily mitigated by reroll tokens (to such a degree that you can almost always aim for the same perk build all runs).
To sum this up, we feel like we need some other elements modifying your runs in an unpredictable (but pleasing) manner. And that has a lot to do with replayability and how compelling it is to start a new run.
What do we want to achieve?
We like to oppose two principles when discussing character progression during one given run: adaptability vs planning. Adaptability is the skill of getting the best out of the random options given to you during a run, planning is the skill of getting the best out of the options that are always there (right now in the form of classes, gadgets and to some degree perk build). Roboquest is mainly packed with planning for now and we’d like to infuse more adaptability while retaining most of the agency you currently have.
The core experience of Roboquest is runnin’ and gunnin’ and we don’t want to lose that. But we feel like the game needs more adaptability to make two different runs more varied and modify the play experience (an experience which is currently kinda limited to challenging yourself at doing better at the same thing).
We want to achieve a formula where you have the agency but you’re still encountering random elements that make you branch out of your intended build in unexpected (and sometimes funny) ways.
How are we going to do this?
We have one major system on our radar right now: items. We think they are the first step to infuse more adaptability (and more replayability) into Roboquest. Not only are they kinda bland right now, they also seem like a missed opportunity.
Therefore, we’re reworking this system to include more variety, randomness and importance in terms of character progression and power level.
The idea we’re exploring and iterating upon is that there is a wide variety of items (50+) and they are consumables (picking one item will consume it and grants its bonus for the entirety of the current run). Their effects range from simple bonuses to mini-perk effects.
We’ve witnessed several outcomes when trying out those changes internally:
- Your ‘build’ is somehow driven (or strongly influenced) by the item choices you encounter
- It gives more opportunities for players to find ‘exciting combos’
- Each run feels more unique
Obviously, the more item variety, the more impactful those outcomes are.
Hopefully, this system still allows for a lot of player agency since you get to choose which item to pick among several. We’ll be closely watching the potential loss of player agency to make sure it isn’t detrimental to the overall Roboquest experience, but so far we’re pretty excited about these changes.
Finally, and aside from items, we’re planning on modifying several other systems to make them more ‘roguelite’ or to simply make them fit the new formula. Though, we won’t be discussing them in detail now. This includes (but not limited to): health pickups, weapon categories and experience.
What is the next update going to bring?
All of the changes mentioned above are tied to each other, therefore the next update will include them all.
Aside from those changes / reworks, the update will include additional enemies, slight modifications of enemy behaviors, a perk selection rework, a few class modifications, a new weapon, a clean-up of the combat flow (to reduce the amount of interruption during combat), more performance optimization, the visual polish of several levels and many other smaller details.
But when is it landing?
Right now, we’re aiming for the end of April (though it may be later or sooner).
The changes we’re going for are kinda beefy and we need some time to deploy them correctly. We’ll continue to post this kind of devblog to keep you posted about our progress and the things we’re working on.
We will also be conducting our usual public playtest before the update lands.
And that’s it for this devblog! We hope you enjoyed it :)
See you in the next one, and in the meantime, happy robot bashing everyone!
=========
Roboquest Social Links
Roboquest Discord - https://discord.gg/roboquest
Roboquest Website - http://www.roboquest.com/
Twitter - https://twitter.com/RoboquestGame
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/RoboquestGame/
YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiusIjcrkm3HrAESaKZALYQ
Get Roboquest on Steam - https://store.steampowered.com/app/692890/Roboquest/
If you have a question about the game, you can find the FAQ here on the Steam forums. And if your question is not answered there, make sure to ask us in the community forums or on our Discord server (where you can interact directly with us!).